Whitney Conceals Cotton Gin

[wkwillis]

One man with a hand cranked cotton gin could gin as much cotton as fifty men by hand. So Whitney conceals the gin and goes into business buying raw cotton and selling clean cotton. He has a warehouse and buys both kinds of cotton, but sells more cleaned cotton than he buys.
His first year he makes fifty times the average annual income, and his second year he puts in a steam engine and makes one thousand times the average annual income. He is the richest factor in America within ten years.
So what does an inventor do with all that money? Can anybody say "machine gun" boys and girls?

 

[Glen]

One man with a hand cranked cotton gin could gin as much cotton as fifty men by hand. So Whitney conceals the gin and goes into business buying raw cotton and selling clean cotton. He has a warehouse and buys both kinds of cotton, but sells more cleaned cotton than he buys.
His first year he makes fifty times the average annual income, and his second year he puts in a steam engine and makes one thousand times the average annual income. He is the richest factor in America within ten years.
So what does an inventor do with all that money? Can anybody say "machine gun" boys and girls?

No, I can't. Why would you jump to the conclusion that Eli Whitney was prevented from making a machine gun based on money, or that if he had the money that is what he would invent.

Whitney was an early innovator in terms of mass assembly. I think he starts the modern factory with all that money, and makes all sorts of items.

 

[wkwillis]

No, I can't. Why would you jump to the conclusion that Eli Whitney was prevented from making a machine gun based on money, or that if he had the money that is what he would invent.

Whitney was an early innovator in terms of mass assembly. I think he starts the modern factory with all that money, and makes all sorts of items.

I read a book about him. He spent way too much time trying to get paid for his invention of the cotton gin instead of inventing something else.
Why a machine gun? Because he attempted to mechanize industrial production of guns instead of doing cut to fit. He worked on cut to size production methods. He had to invent many, many new methods and tools.
This way he gets the money earlier when he could do something with it. Not necessarily machine guns.

 

[Wendell]

One man with a hand cranked cotton gin could gin as much cotton as fifty men by hand. So Whitney conceals the gin and goes into business buying raw cotton and selling clean cotton. He has a warehouse and buys both kinds of cotton, but sells more cleaned cotton than he buys.
His first year he makes fifty times the average annual income, and his second year he puts in a steam engine and makes one thousand times the average annual income. He is the richest factor in America within ten years.
So what does an inventor do with all that money? Can anybody say "machine gun" boys and girls?

Actually, if Whitney keeps it to himself, then does slavery end sooner?

 

[Grettir Asmundarsen]

Slavery should, indeed, end sooner since it was the invention of the cotton gin that made cotton king.