登陆注册
5201900000010

第10章

ELI WHITNEY AND THE COTTON GIN

The cotton industry is one of the most ancient.One or more of the many species of the cotton plant is indigenous to four continents, Asia, Africa, and the Americas, and the manufacture of the fiber into yarn and cloth seems to have developed independently in each of them.We find mention of cotton in India fifteen hundred years before Christ.The East Indians, with only the crudest machinery, spun yarn and wove cloth as diaphanous as the best appliances of the present day have been able to produce.

Alexander the Great introduced the "vegetable wool" into Europe.

The fable of the "vegetable lamb of Tartary" persisted almost down to modern times.The Moors cultivated cotton in Spain on an extensive scale, but after their expulsion the industry languished.The East India Company imported cotton fabrics into England early in the seventeenth century, and these fabrics made their way in spite of the bitter opposition of the woolen interests, which were at times strong enough to have the use of cotton cloth prohibited by law.But when the Manchester spinners took up the manufacture of cotton, the fight was won.The Manchester spinners, however, used linen for their warp threads, for without machinery they could not spin threads sufficiently strong from the short-fibered Indian cotton.

In the New World the Spanish explorers found cotton and cotton fabrics in use everywhere.Columbus, Cortes, Pizarro, Magellan, and others speak of the various uses to which the fiber was put, and admired the striped awnings and the colored mantles made by the natives.It seems probable that cotton was in use in the New World quite as early as in India.

The first English settlers in America found little or no cotton among the natives.But they soon began to import the fiber from the West Indies, whence came also the plant itself into the congenial soil and climate of the Southern colonies.During the colonial period, however, cotton never became the leading crop, hardly an important crop.Cotton could be grown profitably only where there was an abundant supply of exceedingly cheap labor, and labor in America, white or black, was never and could never be as cheap as in India.American slaves could be much more profitably employed in the cultivation of rice and indigo.

Three varieties of the cotton plant were grown in the South.Two kinds of the black-seed or long-staple variety thrived in the sea-islands and along the coast from Delaware to Georgia, but only the hardier and more prolific green-seed or short-staple cotton could.be raised inland.The labor of cultivating and harvesting cotton of any kind was very great.The fiber, growing in bolls resembling a walnut in size and shape, had to be taken by hand from every boll, as it has to be today, for no satisfactory cotton harvester has yet been invented.But in the case of the green-seed or upland cotton, the only kind which could ever be cultivated extensively in the South, there was another and more serious obstacle in the way, namely, the difficulty of separating the fiber from the seeds.No machine yet devised could perform this tedious and unprofitable task.For the black-seed or sea-island cotton, the churka, or roller gin, used in India from time immemorial, drawing the fiber slowly between a pair of rollers to push out the seeds, did the work imperfectly, but this churka was entirely useless for the green-seed variety, the fiber of which clung closely to the seed and would yield only to human hands.The quickest and most skillful pair of hands could separate only a pound or two of lint from its three pounds of seeds in an ordinary working day.Usually the task was taken up at the end of the day, when the other work was done.The slaves sat round an overseer who shook the dozing and nudged the slow.It was also the regular task for a rainy day.It is not surprising, then, that cotton was scarce, that flax and wool in that day were the usual textiles, that in 1783 wool furnished about seventy-seven per cent, flax about eighteen per cent, and cotton only about five per cent of the clothing of the people of Europe and the United States.

That series of inventions designed for the manufacture of cloth, and destined to transform Great Britain, the whole world, in fact, was already completed in Franklin's time.Beginning with the flying shuttle of John Kay in 1738, followed by the spinning jenny of James Hargreaves in 1764, the water-frame of Richard Arkwright in 1769, and the mule of Samuel Crompton ten years later, machines were provided which could spin any quantity of fiber likely to be offered.And when, in 1787, Edmund Cartwright, clergyman and poet, invented the self-acting loom to which power might be applied, the series was complete.These inventions, supplementing the steam engine of James Watt, made the Industrial Revolution.They destroyed the system of cottage manufactures in England and gave birth to the great textile establishments of today.

The mechanism for the production of cloth on a great scale was provided, if only the raw material could be found.

The romance of cotton begins on a New England farm.It was on a farm in the town (township) of Westboro, in Worcester County, Massachusetts, in the year 1765, that Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton gin, was born.Eli's father was a man of substance and standing in the community, a mechanic as well as a farmer, who occupied his leisure in making articles for his neighbors.We are told that young Eli displayed a passion for tools almost as soon as he could walk, that he made a violin at the age of twelve and about the same time took his father's watch to pieces surreptitiously and succeeded in putting it together again so successfully as to escape detection.He was able to make a table knife to match the others of a broken set.As a boy of fifteen or sixteen, during the War of Independence, he was supplying the neighborhood with hand-made nails and various other articles.

同类推荐
  • 天厨禁脔

    天厨禁脔

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 郁洲遗稿

    郁洲遗稿

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 明伦汇编人事典养生部

    明伦汇编人事典养生部

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 福盖正行所集经

    福盖正行所集经

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 皱水轩词筌

    皱水轩词筌

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
热门推荐
  • 神创星球

    神创星球

    眼前的事物都一晃而过,有时候我真的把握不住,任由消逝我只能做到我能做到的,仅此而已。
  • 大傻猫

    大傻猫

    猫妖喜欢着不该喜欢的人!董青叶和她命中注定在一起的人又会走向何处?不定时的穿越、心怀怨恨的阿飘、目的不明的外星人、疯狂的作家,这一切究竟是什么情况?异国情缘中往往是虐人的恋爱。她们最终是否会走在一起?
  • 逆天九小姐邪王离我远点儿

    逆天九小姐邪王离我远点儿

    前世她是金牌杀手却因为相信爱情而死。一朝重生穿越到了玄幻大陆,将军府的废物九小姐。“没有人会在欺负你了,你走好,我会帮你报仇的”人不犯我,我不犯人人若犯我,我定百倍偿还
  • 品质与修养(学生心理健康悦读)

    品质与修养(学生心理健康悦读)

    俗话说:美色好看,美德感人。所以品质与修养的培养是极其重要的,因为优秀的品质加良好的修养就等于美德。《品质与修养》针对在思想道德修养、科学文化底蕴、语言表达能力等方面的问题,从多个角度、多个侧面加以研究分析,寻找解决问题的办法和途径,很具现实指导意义。全书注重实用性、可操作性。材料丰富翔实,经验之谈让读者感悟,适当的理论化又让读者得以升华。
  • 中医美容养颜速查手册

    中医美容养颜速查手册

    美丽,女人一生的追求。养颜,女人一生的事业。中医美容养颜成本低、方法简单、使用安全,是最有效、最受欢迎的养颜方法。《中医美容养颜速查手册》从调养体质入手,分别针对女性比较关心的美白保湿、润肤除皱、祛斑除痘、美眼明目、美唇护齿、美发护发、美颈、丰胸、瘦身美体、护手美甲、美足、滋阴防衰等问题,作了具体而详细的阐述。
  • 逆闯仙劫

    逆闯仙劫

    他本是一个默默无闻的农村孩子,却误食了万年难得一见的龙魂果。他本是一个练武废才被族人遗忘的孩子,却得到了青龙指引踏入修真界。他本是一个平凡无忧无虑的孩子,却身负血海深仇不得不渴望拥有更强大的力量。
  • 太子殿下的一等悍妃

    太子殿下的一等悍妃

    星空满天,南穆国的花街柳巷洋溢着浓浓的胭脂味,莺歌燕舞的美人们可并未因为今天是太子的大婚而停止寻欢作乐,反倒看上去对男人更多了几分殷情。而,谁有会想到今儿本是南穆国太子南穆御的大婚,可,已是夜幕降临,这个风流倜傥的太子爷,居然毫不顾忌女方是当今丞相叶烈风的女儿,还在魁兰香饮酒作乐。“爷,您还是快些回去吧?若是皇后娘娘知道您今晚还在这,奴才……奴才就算有十个脑袋也不够砍啊!”……
  • 穆天子传

    穆天子传

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 我在这迷路

    我在这迷路

    跟随你的步伐,我已迷路,可否指引我再次前进
  • 港漂女日记

    港漂女日记

    从内地西北边省辗转到世界金融中心之一香港,高智商低情商的校花初入职场一路崎岖坎坷遭遇只有电视剧中才有的剧情。远离家人朋友,与初恋男友分手,历经餐厅侍应生、画廊助理、拍卖行实习生、律所助理...从小语种转战金融...在繁华都市中拥有的只有自己一颗坚定的决心和排除万难的勇气,试看港漂女如何在香港找到属于自己的路,经营自己的工作、爱情和生活。