Forty-Six, Cotton Gin

Forty-Six

Cotton Gin

 22 June 1824

 I have been thinking since Sunday about the things that John has told me, and I am not really certain how it is that I feel.  I want to understand, and I think that it may take some time to fully do so.

John spoke to me on several things as we walked along.  He is quite fond of speeches it seems, given enthusiastically with great waving of hands and a skip in his step.  His eyes sparkle as he speaks of the cotton gin, and of the improvements that he is working on.  It seems that as a part of his employment, he is spending a few hours each day working on such improvements, for it is his belief, and the belief of Mr. Terry, that short-staple cotton will become quite the crop in Alabama.  It seems that the ginning of this crop presents some problems, and it is those problems that John intends to remedy.

John told me that he had apprenticed as a blacksmith, his father believing that a man needs a practical trade as of a certain age, for the contemplation of Plato's and Mr. Wesley's writings can take you only so far.  John also worked alongside his father in the plying of the carpentry trade, both as a coachmaker, and as a house builder.  These trades were very useful in prosperous times, and in lean times, they depended upon friends and family.  Fortunately, such times of dependence were few and short-lived, but they had the effect upon John that he always wanted to be useful.

Given his experience in blacksmithing and carpentry, John wished to work on solving a problem with the cotton gin that first took up his father's and grandfather's time and energy, and those of some of their fellow tradesmen and farmers.  Several of them have partly improved the gin, with working models being implemented.  He told me how a man called Eli Whitney had seen one of the working models in a visit to South Carolina and Georgia, and how Mr. Whitney drew up plans and applied for a patent.  John said no one gave it much thought until Mr. Whitney tried to enforce the patent by demanding one-third to two-thirds of all cotton that has been ginned, even when they did not use Mr.  Whitney's gin.  This seems rather preposterous, and John just shrugged his shoulders saying that Mr. Whitney finally gave up and went into gun manufacturing where he was a good deal more financially successful.

John said that short-staple cotton is already making an impact in South Carolina, Georgia, and now Alabama.  He intends to help make things easier in the production of it, and the milling of it.  However, he is troubled by one thing:  slavery.  He says that the production of cotton requires a lot of hands to pick the cotton, for no machine has been invented that can successfully do it.  And he says that the main way that people get the hands to pick the cotton is through the institution of slavery, and this goes against his personal and religious beliefs.

I shall save until later what John has told me of his view towards slavery, as the dinner hour approaches, and it will take some time for me to write what he said.