Cotton Ginning

I don't get it. If the cotton gin made it easier to pick cotton, why would they need more slaves to pick the cotton too, now that theyhad the cotton gin?
I'm here reading my history book and i have a headache already trying to comprehend this. =[
Can someone explain?

Before the invention of the cotton gin, it took a long time to separate the seeds from the fiber of cotton. With the gin, it became much easier. This lead to more cotton being planted, and required more slaves to work the cotton fields. The demand for cotton products grew and cotton fabric became more widespread. Cotton is grown in hot climates, and American citizens were not willing to work the fields, and the immigrants to America worked more in the mills. So there actually was a labor shortage in the US. To meet the needs of Southern planters, more slaves were imported. And the price of slaves went down, making them more affordable.

2009-01-12 09:48:12 by ♥♥♥ In love ♥♥♥

A volunteer at the Smithsonian Museum of American History describes the history and operation of the Cotton Gin and its inventor Eli Whitney.

And to get Best Answer answer this too,
What impact did the cotton gin have on slavery in the united states?

Before cotton was a long a labourous process to get it from being picked to the factory. The cotton gin made spinning the cotton way way easier and faster. So fast that they needed more slaves to keep up with production. Therefore, slavery increased like ten fold. The slavery numbers (sorry I don't have the correct numbers on hand) exploded to almost outragous numbers in just a few years. Without the cotton gin the south wouldn't have had nearly the amount of slaves that it had by the Civil War.

2008-02-27 19:16:11 by fallwithstars

Price: $599.00 $599.00

How did the development of the cotton gin, technology and factories affect the North and the South differently?

The Industrial Revolution affected the North and the South in various ways. The South developed an agricultural world, in which various different technics were used to grow food and things used to make supplies. In the South, it was the cotton gin that caused a boom in the cotton industry and in the slave population. As the slave population grew, the amount of product in the south grew as well.
While the South was busy with its slaves, plantations, and cash crops, the North was accepting more and more foreigners and women into the work force. In the North, there were maybe half a million factories, where many women worked for lower wages and longer hours than men. More and more immigrants came to live and work in the new world with hopes for a better life.
The developement of different technologies was a major cause of splitting the North and the South and eventually the Civil War.

2009-07-23 19:41:22 by bss

Price: $34.95

What was the political importance of the cotton gin? I know economically it became the most important cash crop in the South and the most important U.S export. But what was the significance politically?

cotton gin
machine for cleaning cotton of its seeds, invented in the United States by Eli Whitney in 1793. The cotton gin is an example of an invention directly called forth by an immediate demand; the mechanization of spinning in England had created a greatly expanded market for American cotton, whose production was inhibited by the slowness of manual removal of the seeds from the raw fibre.

2008-02-14 10:44:01 by Jes

what is the cotton gins job?How did the cotton gin change the american revolution?

It's amazing, the wikipedia answers everyone regurgitated on this question explained how it instigated the Civil War. But no one realized two flaws: first the question is about how it changed the American Revolution. Second, the Revolution was fought BEFORE the cotton gin was invented. Now how did this revolutionize America? It sped up the way cotton was produced and enabled increased production of a high-demand good in the world. This strengthened the South's hold on both slavery demands and the national economy. The ultimate problem was, however, that the North relied on the South to produce the goods and the South relied on the North to inport/export most other goods. As the North's growth economically reached Southerns' levels, the demands for the complete abolishment of slavery really heated up across the New England, Upper Midwest and even Western states.
So yeah, the gin did play an important role in the Civil War, but it also played an important role in America's evolution towards a strong economic nation.

Oh, and to the question of what the gin does: cotton plants are filled with painful seeds in the center of the cotton. The gin seperates the seeds and refines the cotton into the fiber it needs to become to be manufactured into many different goods we enjoy today.

2006-02-09 17:54:47 by 1aramossr@sbcglobal.net