Old Friend Mr. Eli Whitney

The cotton gin is singularly one of the destructive inventions of the 19th Century. Slavery in the United State of America was slowly diving into nothingness at the inception of the 19th Century. The cost to capital ratio was too small, without the cotton gin, to be very investment worthy. It took a large amount of time to get a small amount of cotton picked and de-seeded (de-seeding took the majority of the time). With the invention cotton gin, the amount of effort that went into de-seeding dropped to near nothing, therefore increasing the cost to capital ratio, making it again a viable economic option. The cotton gin cannot be separated from either the economic or racial ramifications, as the go hand in had with each other, for as one increases, so does the other.