Growth of the Cotton Industry

1. Growth of the Cotton Industry The invention of the cotton gin made the South a one-crop economy and increased the need for slave labor.

2. The Who’s Eli Whitney From Massachusetts (the North) Inventor of the cotton gin.

3. The What’s One of the biggest disadvantages of processing cotton was the difficulty of removing the seed from the cotton plant. A big disadvantage of farming cotton was that cotton rapidly used the nutrients in the soil.

4. The Cotton Gin Patented by Eli Whitney in 1793, the cotton gin was a machine that removed the seeds from short-staple cotton. The cotton gin revolutionized (greatly changed) the cotton industry by allowing cotton growers to process tons (literally, not figuratively, tons) of cotton much faster.

8. Effects of the Cotton Gin Because of the Industrial Revolution in Britain and the United States, the demand for cotton skyrocketed. (Why?) Because the cotton gin allowed farmers to process cotton faster, many cotton farmers expanded their cotton trade. Cotton became an incredibly profitable business and many farmers in the deep south became cotton farmers and ditched their old crops.

10. The Cotton Belt This “boom” in the cotton industry in the Deep South created a region of the country that became known as the “Cotton Belt”. The cotton belt was an area of high cotton production. So many farmers were growing so much cotton that they hired crop brokers known as “factors” to manage their cotton trade, supply them loans, and give them advice.

11. The When’s By 1840 the United States was producing more than half of the cotton grown in the entire world. By 1860 the U.S. was producing roughly (about) one billion pounds of cotton.

12. Who? 1. Who invented the cotton gin?

13. What 2. What did the cotton gin do? 3. What was a major disadvantage of growing cotton? 4. What was the “cotton belt”? 5. What did a “factor” do?

14. When? 6. When was the cotton gin patented? 7. When was the United States producing more than half of the cotton grown in the entire world.

15. Where? 8. Where was Eli Whitney from? (north or south) 9. Where was most of the cotton being produced in the United States? (north or south)

16. The Why’s 10. Prior to the cotton gin, why had cotton not been a very profitable crop? 11. Why did the demand for cotton increase in Britain? 12. Why did the cotton gin lead to an increase in demand for slave labor?

17. Homework Read pages 380 & 381. Then, on a blank piece of paper, create a southern plantation. (If all you have is lined paper, that’s fine, but don’t have spiral thingies on it and don’t rip it out of your binder) On your plantation you must have a plantation house, an overseer’s house, a warehouse, a barn, a cotton-ginning shed, slave cabins, a smoke house, and fields. (look on p. 383 to give you a better idea of what this might look like) For now, the only writing part of your assignment is to label what is being grown in the fields, the positives and the negatives of the crops that are in your fields, and what those crops are used for. Tomorrow we will continue working on this assignment.

18. Label Your Plantation You should have labeled your crops in your field. Hopefully you have given me a positive/advantage/pro & negatives/disadvantages/cons about each of the crops along with what each crop is used for. (you should have at least 3 crops)

19. Continuing Your Labeling Now you have to label the buildings in your plantation. But, you just have to label the building and tell me what it is used for.

20. Some you might be confused about: Smoke house: Used for drying or curing meat or tobacco Overseer’s house: Where the slave manager lives (usually a white male) Barn: Where supplies are kept to maintain the farm (ex: mechanical reaper, feed for animals, steel tipped plow) Warehouse: Where the harvested and processed crops were kept Stable: Where the horses were kept

21. 9. The routes traveled by the Cherokee on their way to Indian Territory are…