Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader (17 page)

If a way could be found to remove the seeds more easily, upland cotton had the potential to become a very valuable export crop. Why? The Industrial Revolution had transformed the English textlie
industry (which turned the cotton into thread and the thread into cloth) into a monster and caused demand for cotton to soar.

As late as the 1730s, spinners and weavers made cloth just as they had for centuries: slowly and by hand. One person, sitting at a spinning wheel, could spin raw cotton into only one string of yarn at a time. It took 14 days to make a pound of yarn, which one or two weavers could then weave into a single piece of cloth.

In the mid-1700s, English inventions with colorful names like the flying shuttle (1733), the spinning jenny (1764), the water frame (1769), and the mule (1779), changed all that; so did the introduction of steam power in 1785. Now a single unskilled laborer—even a child or someone formerly thought too old to work—could tend machines that made hundreds and eventually thousands of strands of yarn at once, or that wove it into yards and yards of cloth, faster than the eye could see.

Because of these inventions, the English textile industry's appetite for cotton became enormous and grew exponentially from year to year. In 1765 spinners and weavers in England had turned half a million pounds of cotton into cloth; by 1790 the new machines were consuming 28 million pounds of cotton per year, nearly all of it imported from other countries. As demand for raw cotton soared, it got harder and harder to find enough of it to feed all of the new machines.

How much of the imported raw cotton came from the American South? Almost none. As late as 1791, the year before Whitney arrived in Georgia, exports for the entire South totaled a few hundred bags at most. But not for long.

So how long did it take Whitney to solve the problem that had vexed Southern planters for years? Ten days. It took several months to perfect the design, but after just 10 days, this Yankee, who'd landed at Greene's plantation purely by chance, managed to invent this revolutionary machine.

The design was so simple that it was a wonder nobody else had thought of it before. It consisted of a wooden roller with wire “teeth” that grabbed the cotton fibers and pulled them through a
slotted iron screen. The slots in the screen were wide enough to let the teeth and the cotton fibers through, but they were too narrow for the seeds, which separated out and fell into a box.

A rapidly rotating brush then removed the cotton fibers from the teeth and flung them into a bin. This allowed the user to feed raw cotton into the machine indefinitely, without having to stop every few minutes to clean the teeth.

Using Whitney's cotton gin, in one day a laborer could clean as much as 10 pounds of upland cotton, which before would have taken 10 days to clean by hand. If a larger gin powered by water or a horse was used, a laborer could clean as much cotton in one day as would have taken more than
seven weeks
to clean by hand.

Over the next several decades, Whitney's cotton gin transformed the South. Tens of thousands and eventually millions of acres of wilderness were cleared to make way for enormous cotton plantations. By 1810 U.S. exports of cotton to England had grown from almost nothing to 38 million pounds, making the South the largest supplier of cotton to that country.

And that was only the beginning. By the start of the Civil War, the Southern “cotton belt,” as it came to be known, was exporting
920 million
pounds of cotton to England each year, more than 90% of its cotton imports. Cotton had become, as one historian described it, “the largest single source of America's growing wealth.” Cotton was king.

But Whitney's invention had more far-reaching effects than increasing U.S. exports. The industrialization of cotton production vastly increased the supply of cotton cloth. That changed cotton from one of the most expensive fabrics on Earth to one of the cheapest—and in the process, it clothed the world.

Between 1785, the year that steam power was introduced to the textile industry, and the early 1860s, the price of cotton cloth fell by more than 99%. That's the equivalent of a price of Tommy Hilfiger jeans falling from $5,000 to $50.

In the past almost no one had been able to afford cotton, (how many $5,000 pairs of jeans could you afford?), and things like
leather and wool made poor substitutes. (Don't believe it? Treat yourself to a pair of wool underpants and you'll see what we mean.) “Most of humanity,” historian Paul Johnson writes in
A History of the American People,
“were unsuitably clothed in garments which were difficult to wash and therefore filthy.”

Cheap, abundant cotton cloth changed that, too. “There is no instance in world history where the price of a product in potentially universal demand came down so fast,” Johnson writes. “As a result, hundreds of millions of people, all over the world, were able to dress comfortably and cleanly at last.”

There is yet another aspect to Eli Whitney's cotton gin—an ugly, inhuman side, that cast a shadow over all of the good it did. Many Americans think of Whitney's invention as an emancipator, a machine that freed the slaves from having to do the hand ginning of cotton. On the contrary, the rise of cotton cultivation in the South actually helped to entrench the institution of slavery, condemning millions of black Americans to its horrors just when many opponents of slavery thought it might finally be dying out.

Between 1775 and 1800 the price of slaves had fallen from about $100 per slave to $50, and abolitionists predicted that if the institution were left alone, it would die on its own. Or at the very least, as slavery weakened, it would become easier to abolish.

But the invention of the cotton gin changed everything. As the amount of acreage brought under cultivation in the South soared, so did the demand for slaves to work the plantations. Between 1800 and 1850, the price of a slave rose from $50 to as much as $1,000. Slavery, formerly thought to be in decline, quickly became integral to the new Southern economy.

As such, the leaders of the Southern states became increasingly militant in their determination to defend it and even expand it beyond the South. For a new generation of Southern leaders, the institution of slavery—because of the prosperity that came with it—was something to be defended, even to the death.

The cotton gin had made it happen…and made the Civil War inevitable.

Part II of the story of Eli Whitney starts on page 239.

Before they allow some people to buy guns, maybe police should skip the background check and give the applicants an IQ test. Here's why.

• A Washington man became frustrated trying to untangle Christmas lights in his driveway and became even more frustrated when his daughter came home and drove over them. So he went inside, got his .45-caliber pistol, took it into his backyard, and fired several shots into the ground, after which he was arrested.

• A man at Dallas–Fort Worth Airport damaged a window and caused panic among passengers when he accidentally fired his hunting rifle at a security checkpoint. The gun went off while he was demonstrating to guards that it wasn't loaded.

•
A 32-year-old man was treated for a gunshot wound in his thigh in a Kentucky hospital. He had accidentally shot himself, he explained, while practicing his quick draw…with a snowman.

• Daniel Carson Lewis was charged with criminal mischief, driving while intoxicated, weapons misconduct, and assault after shooting a hole in the Alaskan Pipeline north of Fairbanks. Result: 280,000 gallons of crude oil were spilled over two acres of tundra before crews could stop the leak, the worst in about 20 years. Cleanup costs were estimated at $7 million. He did it, said his brother, “just to see if he could.” He faces up to 10 years in prison.

• Chaddrick Dickson, 25, was treated for wounds received while trying to get the gunpowder out of a .22-caliber bullet by holding it with pliers and smashing it on the floor. The bullet exploded, hitting him in the leg. Dickson needed the gunpowder, he said, to put in his dog's food “to make him meaner.”

•
To get the attention of officers in a passing police car after getting a flat tire, a man in Pretoria, South Africa, shot his gun at it. The officers didn't help him with the flat, but they did charge him with attempted murder.

We don't want to scare you, but some strange creatures have been showing up on our doorsteps lately. They weren't invited…and they won't go away.

I
NVADING SPECIES:
Golden Apple Snail

BACKGROUND:
A native of South America, the golden apple snail became a popular addition to aquariums around the world because it is considered “pretty.” In the early 1980s, some private snail farms found a new use for the easy-to-raise, protein-rich snails. They were shipped to snail farmers in Taiwan and the Philippines in the hopes of starting escargot industries.

LOCK THE DOORS, HERE THEY COME:
Unfortunately, the escargot business never took off and prices plummeted, so farmers simply dumped the snails. Bad idea. Golden apple snails are voracious eaters, munching continuously for up to 24 hours a day, and their preferred food is rice seedlings. And what's the primary source of food and employment in Asia? Rice.

Laying as many as 500 eggs a week, the renegade snails quickly multiplied. By the mid-1990s they had destroyed an estimated two million acres of rice fields in the Philippines alone, and had spread to nearly every Asian nation, causing billions of dollars in damage.

And they're not done yet. The snails were discovered in U.S. waters in the 1990s, probably escapees or throwaways from aquariums. Several states have made owning a golden apple snail a crime.

INVADING SPECIES:
Zebra Mussel

BACKGROUND:
Originally from the Caspian Sea in Russia, by the 1800s, this freshwater mollusk had spread into other waterways in western Europe. In 1988 the zebra mussel showed up on this side of the Atlantic. How? Transatlantic ships probably brought the mussels over in their ballast tanks and unknowingly dumped them into North American ports.

LOCK THE DOORS, HERE THEY COME:
Female zebra
mussels produce as many as a million eggs per year, with a very high survival rate. Once they appear, they take over, depleting rivers and lakes of oxygen and killing off native clams, snails, and fish. Not only that, they get into water pipes that feed to power plants and public waterworks, causing massive clogs. It's estimated that they cause $5 billion of damage every year. By 2002 they had spread to the Mississippi, Arkansas, Illinois, Ohio, and Tennessee Rivers…and they're still on the move.

MORE BAD NEWS:
The zebra mussel brought a friend. The small (10-inch) but superaggressive round goby fish tagged along in the ballast tanks and has found a new home in the Great Lakes. Its long breeding period and ability to feed in complete darkness give it a competitive edge over native fish species…which it eats. The fact that it eats baby mussels too—though not enough to control them—means that the goby has an unlimited food source and will likely follow the zebra mussel, wreaking havoc throughout the Mississippi River system and beyond.

INVADING SPECIES:
Northern Snakehead Fish

BACKGROUND:
This Chinese fish is considered a delicacy in Asia. You can find them in some Asian markets in the United States. In June 2002, a man was fishing a pond in Crofton, Maryland, when he caught a fish he didn't recognize. Biologists later identified the 26-inch specimen as a snakehead. How'd it get there? An unnamed man admitted to dumping his two pet snakeheads after he got tired of feeding them. A subsequent search of the pond turned up more than 100 babies.

LOCK THE DOORS, HERE THEY COME:
The snakehead, dubbed “Frankenfish” by the press, can get up to three feet long and an adult can eat prey as large as itself…including birds and small mammals. Worse: With no natural predators, it can devour everything in sight. Then, if conditions are just right, it can use its long fins as legs to
crawl across land to find a new pond or river
. It can actually survive on land for up to four days.

Officials are hoping that hasn't happened yet and said they'll use a pesticide to kill the snakeheads—and everything else in the pond—just so the Frankenfish doesn't spread. “It's not a dead or alive thing,” biologist Bob Lunsford told the
Washington Post
, “we just want it dead.”