Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America (review)

Few inventions play so great a part in the history of American technology as the cotton gin. As Angela Lakwete shows, the adage that Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin and the concomitant claim that this invention sustained a pre-industrial, agrarian economy in the South persist as a part of American mythology. Similarly, the complexity of the gin's evolution, and the growth of a core of skilled southern mechanics manufacturing gins are much overlooked.

Her account will disabuse anyone of the illusion that Whitney invented the first gin. She efficiently details the much earlier use of foot and hand-powered gins in India, China, the Levant, and the Caribbean, and shows that these gins were based on the pinch principle that allowed cotton fiber to flow through rollers while retaining the seeds.

Lakwete documents the importance of the Whitney gin in applying a different technique to cottonseed removal. The revolving wire teeth embedded in the gin clearly favored output over fiber quality and this—along with notably important patent battles—proved problematic for Whitney and his business partner, Phineas Miller. Clearly, Whitney catalyzed efforts to devise gins that might yield large amounts of short staple fiber unharmed by the ginning process. Persistent attempts to strike a balance between the fiber quality textiles firms wanted and the quantity of cotton output planters craved focused inventive efforts and drove incremental improvements. Hence, the Whitney gin was succeeded by many iterations of the saw gin that substituted circular saws for wire teeth in the struggle to deliver large quantities of undamaged fiber.

Although gin inventors responded to economic opportunity, their inventions often failed to surmount the tradeoff between output and quality. Lakwete punctures the notion that Whitney's invention, or its successors, emerged in fully functional form and makes clear that the receipt of a patent by no means immunized one from challenge; neither did it assure mechanical or commercial success. Gins often proved hard to construct or failed to work up to expectations.

Lakwete further argues that the rise of gin manufacture in the upcountry South promoted a localized industrialism. Certainly there were numerous southern gin patentees; many were highly skilled, and some of them were enslaved. These mechanics often worked with others similarly focused on gin improvement. Lakwete traces the formation of geographic pockets that united skilled producers with the advantages of proximity to market. Nevertheless, her case seems overstated.

She acknowledges that, although most of the South's gin makers lived and were born there, dependence on northerners remained. Within the South, a few firms, along with others in Massachusetts, dominated gin production. The largest gin makers often hailed from the North. Further, it was frequently northerners who patented promising versions of the gin. Lakwete makes a virtue of the limited scale of most southern gin making contending that these firms ". . . elaborated a distinctive southern model of industrialism. They established proprietary firms and partnerships even though textile factories incorporated" (p.102). We are left to ask: why?

Still, Lakwete reveals the extensive technological learning that took place among gin makers, mechanics and the planters, and documents the mobility of patents and mechanics within the South's gin making industry. Her argument that many southern planters proved receptive to dramatic changes in gin technology is convincing. Efforts by inventors such as Fones McCarthy—a native of upstate New York—to patent based on mechanical principles previously unused in ginning receive close attention. Although intended to turn out large amounts of undamaged short staple cotton, the McCarthy gin—built mainly in the north and in England—became a technological standard in cleaning the long staple variety. Various other attempts to replace the saw gin foundered, though not for lack of effort.

This book would be improved by the inclusion of tables listing the types of gin improvements patented, and the names and places of residence of the gin patentees from Whitney forward...