[Illustration:  THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA.  As designed by Thomas Jefferson.]

[Sidenote:  Eli Whitney.]

[Sidenote:  His cotton gin, 1793. McMaster, 195-196.]

234.  Whitney’s Cotton Gin, 1793.—­Eli Whitney was a Connecticut schoolmaster.  He went to Georgia to teach General Greene’s children.  He was very ingenious, and one day Mrs. Greene suggested to him that he might make a machine which would separate the cotton fiber from the cotton seed.  Whitney set to work and soon made an engine or gin, as he called it, that would do this.  The first machine was a rude affair.  But even with it one slave could clean one hundred pounds of cotton in a day.  Mrs. Greene’s neighbors promptly broke into Whitney’s shop and stole his machine.  Whitney’s cotton gin made the growing of cotton profitable and so fastened slavery on the South.  With the exception of the steam locomotive (p. 241) and the reaper (p. 260), no invention has so tremendously influenced the history of the United States.

[Sidenote:  Early manufactures.]

235.  Colonial Manufactures.—­Before the Revolutionary War there were very few mills or factories in the colonies.  There was no money to put into such undertakings and no operatives to work the mills if they had been built.  The only colonial manufactures that amounted to much were the making of nails and shoes.  These articles could be made at home on the farms, in the winter, when no work could be done out of doors.

[Sidenote:  New manufactures established.]

[Sidenote:  Invention of cotton spinning machinery.]

236.  Growth of Manufactures, 1789-1800.—­As soon as the new government with its wide powers was established, manufacturing started into life.  Old mills were set to work.  While the Revolution had been going on in America, great improvements in the spinning of yarn and the weaving of cloth had been made in England.  Parliament made laws to prevent the export from England of machinery or patterns of machinery.  But it could not prevent Englishmen from coming to America.  Among the recent immigrants to the United States was Samuel Slater.  He brought no patterns with him.  But he was familiar with the new methods of spinning.  He soon built spinning machinery.  New cotton mills were now set up in several places.  But it was some time before the new weaving machinery was introduced into America.

CHAPTER 23

JEFFERSON’S ADMINISTRATIONS

[Sidenote:  Jefferson’s political ideas. Higginson 239; McMaster, 216.]

[Sidenote:  Republican simplicity.]