Stories of Great Inventors | Page 8

cost so much to clean the cotton.
Mrs. Greene said, "I know who can help you.
"Apply to my young friend, Mr. Whitney. He can make anything."
She then showed the gentlemen her frame and other things which Mr.
Whitney had made.
Mr. Whitney said he had never seen cotton or its seed.
None was raised near the home of the Greene's.
Mr. Whitney did not make any promises.
But the next day he went to work.
He went first to the city of Savannah.
There he searched among the warehouses and boats.
At last he found a small parcel of cotton.
This he carried home.
He shut himself up in a small basement room.
His tools were poor.

He made better ones.
No wire could be bought in Savannah.
So he made his own wire.
Mrs. Greene and a Mr. Miller were the only persons allowed to come
into his work-shop.
Day after day the children wondered to hear the queer clinking and
hammering.
They laughed at Mr. Whitney.
But that did not trouble him.
Before the end of the winter the machine was nearly perfect.
Its success seemed certain.
Mrs. Greene was very happy over the work.
She was eager that people should know about this wonderful invention.
She could not wait until a patent was secured.
A patent is given by the government.
It is given to prevent others from claiming an invention.
Often it keeps people from manufacturing the article without the
permission of the owner.
So Mrs. Green invited a party of gentlemen from all parts of the state to
visit her.
These gentlemen were taken to see the machine do its work.
They were greatly astonished.

For what did they see?
This curious little machine cleaned the cotton of its seed.
And it would clean in a day more than a man could do in months.
They went to their homes.
They told everybody about it.
Great crowds began coming to see it.
But they were refused permission to do so.
This was because it had not yet been patented.
So one night some wicked men broke into the building.
They stole the cotton-gin.
You can well imagine how dreadful this was.
Mr. Whitney had no money.
So Mr. Miller agreed to be his partner.
Mr. Miller had come to Georgia from the North.
He, too, was a graduate of Yale College.
He afterward married Mrs. Greene.
He became Mr. Whitney's partner in May, 1773.
Perhaps you wonder why the machine was called a gin. It was a short
way of saying engine.
A gin is a machine that aids the work of a person.
The cotton-gin was made to work much the same as the hand of a

person.
It dragged the cotton away from the seed.
And now begins the sorrowful part of the story.
Before Mr. Whitney could get his patent, several other gins had been
made.
Each claimed to be the best.
The plans were all stolen from Mr. Whitney's.
[Illustration: ROLLER-GIN.]
One was the roller-gin.
This crushed the seed in the cotton.
Of course this injured the cotton.
Another was the saw-gin.
This was exactly like Mr. Whitney's, except that the saws were set
differently.
Many lawsuits were begun.
Mr. Whitney went to Connecticut.
There he had a shop for making the gins.
When the suits began he had to return to Georgia.
In this way two years went by.
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.
[Illustration: 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