By Caroline Clemmons
Although we share it with the South, one of the Southwest’s common sights is the cotton gin. Eli Whitney patented the first cotton gin in 1793. His invention increased the speed and quality of harvesting cotton. In the over two hundred years, the cotton gin has changed immensely. There is slight controversy over whether the idea of the modern cotton gin and its constituent elements are correctly attributed to Eli Whitney.
The popular image of Whitney
inventing the cotton gin is attributed to an article on the subject written in
the early 1870s and later reprinted in 1910 in The Library of Southern Literature. In this article, the author claimed Catharine Littlefield Greene suggested to Whitney the use of a brush-like
component instrumental in separating out the seeds and cotton. To date,
Greene's role in the invention of the gin has not been verified independently.
Ancient Production
The worm gear roller
gin, which was invented in the Indian subcontinent during the early Delhi Sultanate era
of the 13th to 14th centuries, came into use in the Mughal Empire sometime
around the 16th century, and is still used in the Indian subcontinent
through to the present day. Another innovation, the
incorporation of the crank handle
in the cotton gin, first appeared sometime during the late Delhi Sultanate or
the early Mughal Empire. The incorporation of the worm gear and crank
handle into the roller cotton gin led to greatly expanded Indian cotton textile
production during the Mughal era.
It was reported that, with an
Indian cotton gin, which is half machine and half tool, one man and one woman
could clean 28 pounds of cotton per day. With a modified Forbes version, one
man and a boy could produce 250 pounds per day. If oxen were used to power 16
of these machines, and a few people's labor was used to feed them, they could
produce as much work as 750 people did formerly.
The Indian roller cotton gin,
known as the churka or charkha, was introduced to
the United States in the mid-18th century, when it was adopted in the Southern United States. The device was adopted
for cleaning long-staple cotton, but was not suitable for
the short-staple cotton that was more common
in certain Southern states. Several modifications were made to the
Indian roller gin by Mr. Krebs in 1772 and Joseph Eve in 1788, but their uses
remained limited to the long-staple variety, up until Eli Whitney's development
of a short-staple cotton gin in 1793.
Whitney's Model
Whitney's cotton gin model was capable of cleaning
50 pounds (23 kg) of lint per day. The model consisted of a wooden
cylinder surrounded by rows of slender spikes, which pulled the lint through
the bars of a comb-like grid. The grids were closely spaced, preventing
the seeds from passing through. Loose cotton was brushed off, preventing the
mechanism from jamming. The invention of the cotton gin caused massive growth
in the production of cotton in the United States, concentrated mostly in the
South.
Cotton production expanded from 750,000 bales in 1830 to 2.85 million bales in 1850. As a result, the region became even more dependent on plantations that used slave labor, with plantation agriculture becoming the largest sector of its economy. While it took a single slave about ten hours to separate a single pound of fiber from the seeds, a team of two or three slaves using a cotton gin could produce around fifty pounds of cotton in just one day. The number of slaves rose in concert with the increase in cotton production, increasing from around 700,000 in 1790 to around 3.2 million in 1850.
The invention of the cotton gin led to an increased demands for slaves in the American South, reversing the economic decline that had occurred in the region during the late 18th-century. The cotton gin thus "transformed cotton as a crop and the American South into the globe's first agricultural powerhouse". Because of its inadvertent effect on American slavery, and on its ensuring that the South's economy developed in the direction of plantation-based agriculture (while encouraging the growth of the textile industry elsewhere, such as in the North), the invention of the cotton gin is frequently cited as one of the indirect causes of the American Civil War.
Modern Cotton Gins
In modern cotton production, cotton arrives at
industrial cotton gins either in trailers, in compressed rectangular "modules" weighing up to 10 metric tons each
or in polyethylene wrapped round modules similar to a bale of hay produced
during the picking process by the most recent generation of cotton pickers.
Cotton arriving at the gin is sucked in via a pipe, approximately 16 inches
(41 cm) in diameter, that is swung over the cotton. This pipe is usually
manually operated, but is increasingly automated in modern cotton plants.
The need for trailers to haul the product to the gin
has been drastically reduced since the introduction of modules. If the cotton
is shipped in modules, the module feeder breaks the modules apart using spiked
rollers and extracts the largest pieces of foreign material from the cotton.
The module feeder's loose cotton is then sucked into the same starting point as
the trailer cotton.
The cotton then enters a dryer, which removes excess moisture.
The cylinder cleaner uses six or seven rotating, spiked cylinders to break up
large clumps of cotton. Finer foreign material, such as soil and leaves, passes
through rods or screens for removal. The stick machine uses centrifugal force to remove larger foreign matter, such as sticks and
burrs, while the cotton is held by rapidly rotating saw cylinders.
The gin stand uses the teeth of rotating saws to pull the cotton
through a series of "ginning ribs", which pull the fibers from the
seeds which are too large to pass through the ribs. The cleaned seed is then
removed from the gin via an auger conveyor system.
The seed is reused for planting or is sent to an oil mill to
be further processed into cottonseed oil and cottonseed meal pellets for animal
food. The lint cleaners again use saws and grid bars, this time to separate
immature seeds and any remaining foreign matter from the fibers. The bale press
then compresses the cotton into bales for storage and shipping. Modern gins can
process up to 15 tons (33,000 lb) of cotton per hour.
Modern cotton gins create a substantial amount of cotton gin
residue (CGR) consisting of sticks, leaves, dirt, immature bolls, and
cottonseed. Research is currently under way to investigate the use of this
waste in producing ethanol. Due to fluctuations in the chemical composition in
processing, there is difficulty in creating a consistent ethanol process, but
there is potential to further maximize the utilization of waste in the cotton
production.
Cotton is still a big crop in many areas. The boll weevil is still feared for the destruction it can create. The boll weevil (Anthonomus grandis) is a beetle that feeds on cotton buds and flowers. Thought to be native to Central Mexico, it migrated into the United States in the late 19th century and had infested all U.S. cotton-growing areas by the 1920s, devastating the industry and the people working in the American South. During the late 20th century, it became a serious pest in South America as well. Since 1978, the Boll Weevil Eradication Program in the U.S. allowed full-scale cultivation to resume in many regions. Close surveillance continues to make certain that none of the little critters invade again.
Cotton and My Life
For two decades before I was born and
again for four years when I was a child, my father managed a cotton gin. He had
worked at one most of his adult life. Our family had no idea this business was
related to the Civil War or slavery, nor did our many relatives who farmed
cotton.
After teaching two years, my father quit
that job at the urging of two of his brothers because he could make more money
working at the gin. This is a disgraceful, sad testimony to the plight of education
and teachers! I have to stress Daddy always regretted not sticking with teaching.
If you’ve not been around a working
gin, you’re in luck. These large plants belched pollution in aid of processing
raw cotton into bales. Modern restrictions have decreed that they cannot burn
burrs or pollute the landscape as in ages past. Trust me, they’re still not a business
you’d want as a neighbor!
My late brother used to joke that at
any crossroads where there was a cotton gin, there was also a café. While this
is generally true, we lived at two places where there was only the gin, the gin
office and scales, and a couple of houses—one for the gin manager and one for
the lead ginner. Sometimes there were a few dwellings amounting to little more
than the most basic housing (shacks) for other workers.
Sources:
Wikipedia
https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/cotton-gin-and-eli-whitney
https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/cotton-gin-patent
https://www.thoughtco.com/the-cotton-gin-and-eli-whitney-1992683
What an interesting article! I never knew how labor intensive cleaning cotton was.
ReplyDeleteIt's unfortunate the true history of the cotton gin and how it inadvertently led to the Civil War isn't taught in American history to our children. Thank you, Caroline, for sharing your impressive knowledge of the ginning business.
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting post. I doubt many younger people know about the cotton gin and cotton is so big in West Texas. Thank you for your blog post.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Caroline, for this interesting post, not only by learning more about the cotton gin and production from your research, but also reading about your father and family's involvement with the business.
ReplyDelete