Explanation: Eli Whitney, the inventor of the Cotton Gin, believed that his invention, by reducing the amount of labor needed to process cotton, would hasten the demise of slavery - which everyone in 1790s America knew was on its way out anyway!

… it had the exact opposite effect. By making cotton easier to process, demand for cotton grew and became even more profitable - and cotton is an extremely labor-intensive plant to harvest. And guess who did the harvesting of cotton in 1790s America?

There were other factors at play as well, but the cotton gin was extremely instrumental in revitalizing the economic viability of the system of chattel slavery in the American South. Cotton would become the sole pillar of the Southern economy going forward, and with it, slavery.

Industrialized the refinement of cotton

Can’t industrialize the harvesting of cotton

Surely increasing the demand for raw cotton beyond the current supply of raw cotton will reduce the amount of humans used to make cotton, right? R…right?

Just goes to show that the solutions to societal woes are never technological, but political.

If you’ve never picked cotton, I invite you to give it a shot, just one little bush.

Aren’t they fluffy?! See the brown bit? Those are hard and pointy. Had one slide 1/2" under my skin, never even had a pocketknife do that. BTW, you can’t get all the cotton without really getting your fingers in there. Now imagine bending over and having to go fast under master’s whip.

Got your cotton bolls? Good. Now get the seeds out. Dare ya. Oh, and don’t waste any cotton!

Enough depressing stuff, have a laugh about the racist field trip.

I had to write an essay in uni about an inventor and I got eli Whitney, we were supposed to talk about their contribution to engineering and manufacturing. I ended up spending 90% of the essay ripping him a new one for being a fraud and effectively causing the American civil war

Jevon strikes again