cotton

Eli Whitney’s cotton gin expanded slavery across the Deep South.

Like the men on the line, I pulled on white cotton gloves and, as the machine inched forward, began lifting watermelons from the ground, up onto the table above me where the packers waited.

Operating these new technologies were an army of young women clad in tailor-mades, or coordinating jackets and skirts, and easy-to-launder cotton shirtwaists, or blouses—all early triumphs of New York’s nascent ready-to-wear industry.

With the 1793 invention of the cotton gin—which separated cotton fibers from its seeds with a previously undreamed-of efficiency—America’s plantation economy expanded exponentially and so did its use of slave labor.

He is best known for his invention of the cotton gin, a machine that transformed cotton production, with tragic consequences for workers.