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Show Old Masters ;l i H ELY WHITNEY H Bo C. C. G. M ASK the first ten men you meet who Ell Whit- M ney was and nine of the ten will be unable to " M answer. But ho should have a place close up to H the head of the class among the industrial chiefs of the 19th century. H He was born in Westborough, Mass., Decern- H her, 1705. He graduated from Yale in 1792 and M went to Georgia to teach school. After a while M his health broke down and the widow of the lM great revolutionary general, Nathaniel Greene, 'M persuaded him to make her house his home. M From the days of the first civilization of men M cotton had been the most universally used article M of clothing among men and women. The trouble M had been not to weave the fibre into clothing M but to separate the fibre from the seed. So se- M rlous was this that to separate a pound of clean M cotton from the seed without waste was a day's M work. M The planters of the South were as poor as the M farmers of the North and the war had left them M all in debt. M Several planters were one day discussing the M difficulty of separating cotton from the seed. M They were that day dining with Mrs. Greene. M At last she said: "Gentlemen, apply to my young M friend, Mr. Whitney; he can make anything." At M the time Whitney had never seen a cotton pod. M But he found one and studied it. Others had M tried to separate the seed from the cotton. He M decided to try to separate the cotton from the M seed. He had to make his own tools, draw his fl own wire, make his own frame to absolutely ere- fl ate the whole thing. M The usual troubles followed him. His ma- H chine was stolen in the night and soon several H appeared on the market. H His patents were contested and the juries al- H ways decided against him. Georgia never would H pay him anything but South Carolina voted him H $50,0Q0 and North Carolina gave him a percent- H age on the cotton ginned. Congress refused to H renew his patents. H But the miracle the machine performed can H bo estimated by the fact that whereas before his H invention the cotton export of the United States H was but eighty-one bags in 1790, it was advanced H to millions of bales ten years later and cotton H suddenly became king. H Whitney later made a great improvement in H fire arms and made a fortune from that Inven- H tion. Whitney died in New Haven on the 8th day of January, 1825. H It is hard to imagine what a blessing his in- H vention of the cotton gin was. It cheapene'd the , H clothing of millions and tens of millions of people H 75 per cent In a few brief years. What had been H a halting, insignificant labor become almost at H once one of the world's greatest industries and H increased the comfort of mankind immensely. H It made the sale of cotton one of the chief revenues of half our states. It gave the country H a now standing and credit among the nations H and the southern states a new power In the coun- sels of the republic. I It was but a simple invention but it solved I a problem that the world had tried in vain to solve for more than thirty centuries. H It made cotton seed which had been a great H vexation a nuisance by its abundance until an- V other genius, found a way of making it a source of sufficient revenue great enough to meet all the expense of cotton raising, leaving the clean H fibre all revenue. H In the same way the separating of rice from its hull had been a hindrance to its cultivation 1 1 Hi through all time, until a man from the North HI went down to the rice fields, examined the plant HI and noted the difficulty, then sent North for a Hf simple threshing machine, fed the rico straw Into H It even aB wheat Is fed and found It worked on H rice just as well as on wheat. And now rice is Hf being planted over vast areas and soon, if we H! have not already, we will produce more than 1 enough for home consumption. Hi The lesson of it all Is, and Luthur Burbank H emphasizes the fact, that when the American H farmer perfects himself in his work, the United H States will bo able to feed the world. Hi More and more secrets are being made clear H every year. Three score years ago the farmers Hi in the Northern states looked to their wheat H crops for their profits and to keep up the fertility H of the soil only planted their wheat on the same M land every other year, alternating with red clover H which they ploughed under in the spring and H summer followed the field until planting time in m September. m They did not know that It was not the clover H which restored the fertility of the land, but that it was the nitrogen which the clover coaxed out of the atmosphere. The perfect farmer will bo the m best educated men. The good book says: "He H that maketh two blades of grass grow where only M one grew before, is greater than he who conquers H a city." What, then, should be the measure of H the fame of one whose genius causes a little pat- H ent to expand until it clothes a world? |