What were the effects of the invention of the cotton gin?
The effects of the cotton gin were obvious to the plantation owners and the textile factories in the Northeast and Europe. A single slave cranking a small ‘gin could clean ten pounds of cotton in a day. A slave using just his hand to clean cotton was lucky to clear a pound a day. Once steam powered ‘gins were developed, the capacity for producing cotton was only limited by the amount of cotton a farmer could produce. The ‘gin was the tecnological invention of the time for the South. It revived the South’s one crop economy, the domination of southern society by large planters, and the revival of slavery. Now, more and more slaves could be used to grow more and more cotton and the price would rise as the demand would increase from the textile mills. The South could also now expand westward knowing the cotton crop would be profitable.
