Stories of Great Inventors Part 13

By this time everyone knew the value of the gin.

Mr. Whitney went to New York.

There he became ill.

His illness lasted three weeks.

Then he was able to go on to New Haven.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SAW-GIN, 1794.]

There he found that his shop had been destroyed by fire.

All his machines and papers were burned.

He was four thousand dollars in debt.

But neither Mr. Miller nor Mr. Whitney were the kind of men who give up easily.

Mr. Miller wrote that he would give all his time, thought, labor, and all the money he could borrow to help.

"It shall never be said that we gave up when a little perseverance would have carried us through," he said.

About this time bad news came from England.

The cotton, you remember, was then all sent there for manufacture.

English manufacturers now claimed that the cotton was injured by the gin.

This was in 1796.

Miller and Whitney had thirty gins working in different places in Georgia.

Some were worked by cattle and horses.

Others were run by water.

Soon, however, the manufacturers found that the Whitney cotton gin did not injure the cotton.

The first lawsuit was decided against Miller and Whitney.

They asked for another trial.

But this was refused them.

Everywhere through the South they were cheated and robbed.

Yet all the time the South was growing richer because of the cotton gin.

Slaves grew more and more valuable.

For negroes can endure the heat of the cotton fields.

But white men can not.

The planters of the South bought more and more slaves.

So slavery grew stronger because of the cotton gin.

Several states made contracts with Mr. Whitney.

They agreed to pay him certain sums of money.

But South Carolina broke her contract.

All these things made Mr. Whitney sick at heart.

He said that he had tried hard to do right by every one.

And it stung him to the very soul to be treated like a swindler or a villain.

The people of Georgia tried to prove that somebody in Switzerland had invented the cotton gin.

Tennessee broke its contract.

There were high-minded men who tried to help Mr. Whitney.

They were able to do only a little for him.

In 1803, Mr. Miller died.

Mr. Whitney was then left to fight his battles alone.

Things grew a little brighter as time went on.

Mr. Whitney received some money on his invention.

But the greater part of it had to be spent in lawsuits.

A suit was begun in the United States Court.

But the time of his patent was almost out.

He had made six journeys to Georgia.

One gentleman said that he never knew another man so persevering.

In 1798, Mr. Whitney made a contract with the government of the United States.