COTTON 217 
we do not know. Whether or not the thought had 
its birth in his fertile mind is also a mystery. But 
this matters not. He became interested in the 
great problem of profitable cotton production. 
Maybe this was a problem of the plantation where 
he resided; maybe the thought came as a chance 
suggestion. Be that as it may, he made the prob- 
lem his. He fitted up his shop and went to work. 
His educational equipment and his mechanical 
inclination favored him, and soon hope came, the 
clouds parted, the ideal became more than a fancy. 
Soon it was a reality, the cotton gin a material 
thing. 
Of course it was crude, undeveloped, only par- 
tially practical at first. The next year the patent 
was granted and given to the world. 
The germinal idea was alive, its incubation soon 
ended, the gin was born, soon to be a working suc- 
cess; soon to make an industry; soon to build an 
aristocracy; soon to make the fortunes of men and 
nations. 
One of the first inventors who contributed to the 
success and perfecting of the gin was Hodgin 
Holmes of Georgia. As early as 1796 he secured 
a patent on his gin which represented some use- 
ful features not possessed by the Whitney patent. 
THE MAGNITUDE OF THE INVENTION 
The cotton gin is an example, perhaps the most 
remarkable on record, of the power of a single 
labor-saving machine to influence the social and 
industrial interests, not merely of a nation, but in 
a great measure of the civilized world. ‘What 
Peter the Great did to make Russia dominant,”’ 
says Macaulay, “Eli Whitney’s invention of the 
