Show making slavery profitable twos THE HE invention of the cotton gin was partly responsible for the civil war for it was the first laborsaving device in america that made slaveholding slave holding profitable ell whitney a young yae graduate working down in georgia invented the gin in 1791 at a society dinner one night he happened to sit among a group of big plantation owners who were discussing the high cost of cleaning cotton thinking he was a greenhorn they kidded him about making a device that would take the seeds out of cotton cheaply everybody laughed when whitney said he bet he could make one ten days batet latet la tei it was whitneys Whit turn to laugh he had built a simple little machine which cleaned cotton with amazing ease news of the revolutionary invention quickly spread throughout the neighborhood and chitre y found himself famous in a week the tremendous laborsaving labor saving value of the gin was shown by the fact that i 1 could clean a thousand pounds of cotton while the ordinary man was picking the seeds out of five pounds but the real value of the gin W was as even greater than appeared on the surface for the first time it made the growing of cotton profitable in america before that time less than acres in au all the south were planted in cotton the cost of cleaning it was too high since a slave could clean only pounds a month he was not worth his upkeep the cotton gin made him very valuable |