The cotton gin was a mechanical cotton stripping machine patented by Eli Whitney in 1794.¹ To understand why the integration of the cotton gin was important to American society and the economy, it is important to understand what America was built on. Ultimately, slave labor was the largest institution in the United States and is a sole reason as to why it was able to survive for such an extended period of time. Slaves would be sent from many places such as Africa and Europe. This is why the utilization of ships is so important in the century that precedes the Cotton Gin. Ships directly led to the establishment of the slave trade and the slaves then were distributed all throughout the Union. These slaves were mostly located on plantations where they would plant and harvest crops for their owners. Some people theorized that slavery as an institution would collapse because of the shrinking profitability of cotton cultivation.² However, around 1794 when the Cotton Gin was patented and then distributed, "North Americas creation of basic consumer goods, including mostly cotton, was more efficient and cost effective than in Europe."³ Therefore, the major crop being developed in the Union was cotton. Eli knew that there was struggles in the time consumption it took to harvest and strip cotton, along with the huge labor industry, so he invented the machine that would be able to increase these planters profits. This invention was so successful for so long that Eli Whitney wanted his patent renewed when the term ended.⁴

Why did the Cotton Gin have such a big impact on the American economy and society overall? The obvious answer is that Eli Whitney saw the coincidence of the declining labor industry and largest crop in the union and then solved one half of the time consuming problem. However, we believe that besides the correlation between cotton and the economy, the biggest impact was the technological innovation and the labor industry talks that resulted from the cotton gin. Technological innovation was important for the survival of the Union because if communication, transportation, and the economy stayed primitive, the US would become weaker than its counterparts and collapse. The Cotton Gin was a huge inspiration to other inventors who wanted to establish a legacy or gain a large amount of wealth. The shear increase in productivity and profit the cotton gin had showed these inventors who went on to innovate in communication and infrastructure development that you can solve a huge problem with just one invention. One newspaper called Niles Weekly Register claimed in 1818 that "the Cotton Gin not only replaced the labor of 3,000 men, but 330,000 hand working men."⁵ This leads into the improved efficiency of labor. The cotton gin had a huge economic impact on America because it not only labor productivity but also the increase of slavery. Unfortunately, while decreasing the amount of laborers needed to strip cotton, the demand for cotton harvesting skyrocketed and led to "the increase of slaves in the Union from 790,000 to 4,000,000 over a decade."⁶ We believe the invention of the cotton gin had important economic and social impacts by increasing the cotton growing profit margins, led to the growth of slavery, encouraged others inventions like the telegraph, and evolved the ways that producers thought about the relationship between labor and machines.