The North And The South: Resorces
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aves' spinning jenny, completely revolutionized the British textile industry, and eventually made it the most profitable in the world ("Industrial Revolution"). Despite valiant attempts at deterrence, many immigrants managed to make their way into the United States with the advanced knowledge of English technology, and were anxious to acquaint America with the new machines (Furnas 303).
New England was where this information was brought. People like Samuel Slater can be credited with beginning the revolution of the textile industry in America. He emigrated to Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and there, together with a Quaker merchant by the name of Moses Brown, he built a new and different version of the spinning jenny (geocites.comTimesSquare). This small mill would later become known as the first modern factory in America. It would also become known as the point in which the North began its economic domination of the South.
Although slow to accept change, The South was not entirely unaffected by the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Another inventor by the name of Eli Whitney set out in 1793 to revolutionize the Southern cotton industry. Whitney was working as a tutor for a plantation owner in Georgia (he was also, ironically, born and raised in New England) and therefore knew the problems of harvesting cotton (Brinkley et al. 200). Until then, the strenuous task of separating the seeds from the cotton before sale had been done chiefly by slaves and was very inefficient. Whitney developed a machine, which would separate the seed from the cotton swiftly and effectively, cutting the harvesting time by more than one half ("Industrial Revolution"). This machine, which became known as the cotton gin, had great results in the South. In the next ten years, cotton production figures increased by more than 2000 percent (Randall and
Donald 36). This started the expansion of the Southern plantations. A single worker could now do the same ...