In the last chapter we considered the rise of the interchangeable system of manufacture and saw that it started in the shops of Eli Whitney, at New Haven, and of Simeon North, at Middletown. The lives of these men are of much interest, particularly that of Whitney. His struggle in defense of his patent rights on the cotton gin is instructive for all who see a high road to fortune in the patenting of a valuable invention.

Measured by its economic effect, the cotton gin is one of the greatest of inventions. As an industrial factor its success was immediate and far-reaching. It developed the agricultural resources of nearly half the United States, made possible its gigantic cotton crop, vastly increased the wealth of this country and, to a scarcely less extent, that of England; and yet toward the end of his life, Mr. Whitney said that he had hardly more than “come out even on it”; and this in spite of the fact that his patent was sustained and was apparently one of the most valuable ever granted.

A patent for an invention which meets a widespread and pressing need, and for which there is a tremendous demand, is difficult to defend. Watt’s rights in the steam engine were established only after a long and bitter fight, and he would have failed and died a disappointed man had it not been for the indomitable courage and business skill of his partner, Matthew Boulton. Whitney was a far better business man than Watt, but his partner was not in any way the equal of Boulton. If he had been, the story of the cotton gin might have been different.

Whitney saw the futility of depending solely on patent rights and wisely turned his splendid talents to manufacturing; where, without patent protection of any kind, by methods then new, but which have since spread throughout the world, he built up a fortune. Someone has said that the besetting sin of mechanics is invention. This may, or may not, be true, but it is worth pondering whether superior methods and business judgment are not still the best industrial protection.

Eli Whitney, whose portrait is shown in Fig. 30, was born in Westborough, Mass., in 1765. He came from that best school of mechanics, the New England hill farm. Most of the early American mechanics, like him, came from the country and had the same training of hard work with simple implements, and learned to turn their hand to nearly everything, and to work with few and rough tools. From his boyhood he showed mechanical talent. When he was fifteen, with his father’s consent, he began making nails with the aid of such rudimentary tools as he could contrive. This was during the Revolutionary War, when nails were in great demand and brought a high price. By hard work he built up a profitable little business which he carried on for two winters in addition to the ordinary work of the farm during the summer. The business grew beyond his capacity to care for alone, so he set out on horseback to a neighboring town in quest of a fellow laborer. Not finding one as easily as he had anticipated, he rode from town to town with the persistence which was a strong trait in his character, until forty miles from home he found such a workman as he desired. During this journey he called at every workshop on his way and absorbed all the information he could respecting the mechanical arts. When the nail business ceased to be profitable after the war, he turned his attention to knife blades and to the making of the long pins for bonnets then in fashion. He showed so much skill that he nearly monopolized the latter business.

When nineteen years old, Whitney determined to obtain a liberal education, but he was not able to gain his father’s consent until he was twenty-three. Then, in 1788, with money made partly in his little manufacturing business and partly from teaching school, he entered Yale College. He completed his college education with but little expense to his father who paid a few of the last of his college bills, for which the son gave his note and which he paid soon after graduation. His work at college was creditable, rather than brilliant; he left a marked impression behind him for good judgment, sound reasoning and steady, intelligent work.[170]

There were few school facilities in the South at that time and many of the wealthy planters had their children educated by private tutors. In the fall of 1792, the year in which he graduated, Whitney was engaged as a private tutor in a family in Georgia. On his way there he met Mrs. Greene, the widow of General Nathaniel Greene, who was returning to Savannah after spending the summer in the North. When Whitney reached Georgia he found that, despite his engagement, another had been given his place and he was stranded, practically penniless, a thousand miles from home and not knowing which way to turn. Mrs. Greene kindly invited him to make her house his home. He did so, and began to study law under her hospitable roof. Here he met Phineas Miller, a native of Connecticut and also a graduate of Yale College, who had himself come south as a tutor in the Greene family and after General Greene’s death had become manager of his estate. He was a man of cultivated mind, of eager, hopeful temperament and later he married Mrs. Greene.

Shortly after Whitney’s coming, a large party of gentlemen from Augusta and the upper country, consisting principally of officers who had served under the General in the Revolutionary army, were visiting Mrs. Greene. In the course of the conversation the deplorable state of agriculture was discussed, and great regret expressed that there was no means of separating green seed cotton from its seed, since all the lands which were unsuitable for the cultivation of rice and long staple cotton, would yield large crops of green seed cotton. The black or long staple cotton had already been introduced successfully in the Sea Islands, but it could not be grown inland. It was vain to think of raising green seed or upland cotton for the market unless some machine could be devised which would facilitate the process of cleaning. Separating one pound of the staple from the seed was a day’s work for one woman. During this conversation Mrs. Greene told them that Whitney could invent their machine, saying, “He can make anything.” This incident turned Whitney’s attention to the subject. Encouraged by Miller he dropped his law studies, went to Savannah, obtained a small parcel of raw cotton, and set himself at work on the problem. With such resources as the plantation afforded he made tools suited to his purpose, drew his own wire and by the close of the winter had so far developed the machine as to leave no doubt of its success. The first model he made (made, it is said, in about two weeks) is still in existence in the possession of his grandson, the present Eli Whitney. The three essential elements of his gin, the rotary wheel with forward pointing wires or teeth, the slotted bar, and the revolving brushes for cleaning the teeth, remain practically unchanged today.

At that time the market was glutted with such products as Georgia produced, trade was languishing, and there was little employment for the negroes or support for the white inhabitants. Mrs. Greene indiscreetly showed the first machine to visitors and the news soon leaked out that a means had been devised for separating more cotton in one day, with the labor of a single man, than could have been done in the usual manner in the space of many months. An invention so important to the agricultural interest could not long remain a secret. The knowledge spread throughout the state and so great was the excitement that multitudes from all quarters came to see the machine. It was not deemed safe to gratify their curiosity until patent rights were secured, but so determined were they that the building was broken into by night and the machine carried off. In this way the public became possessed of the invention, and before Whitney could secure his patent a number of machines were in successful operation. They deviated only slightly from the original and gave Whitney much trouble later in establishing his rights to the invention.

In the spring of 1793, Miller and Whitney formed a partnership under the name of Miller & Whitney, for developing the business, and Whitney returned to Connecticut to perfect the machine, obtain a patent, and manufacture and ship to Georgia machines to meet the demand. At the start they made a fatal error of policy in deciding to buy the seed themselves, gin it and sell the product. Protected by their patent, they planned to maintain a monopoly of this business. Later they were willing to manufacture and sell the machines for general use or to sell the rights. If they had done this at the start much of the opposition which they incurred might have been obviated. Whitney, at least, was a clear-sighted business man and if he had realized the magnitude of the result of his invention he would probably not have chosen this course.

There is not another instance in the history of invention of the letting loose of such tremendous industrial forces so suddenly. The inventions of Arkwright, Watt, Fulton and Stephenson have affected society quite as profoundly as did that of the cotton gin, some of them more so, but in none of these cases were the results so immediate. In 1784, only eight years before Whitney’s invention, eight bales of cotton from the United States which were landed at Liverpool were seized on the ground that they could not have been produced in the United States.[171] In 1791 the total production of cotton in the world was estimated at 490,000,000 pounds, of which the United States produced 2,000,000 pounds, or only ¹⁄₂₄₅, of which 189,316 pounds were exported. In 1792 they exported 138,328 pounds, an actual decrease of 51,000 pounds from the previous year. In 1793, the year after the gin was invented, there was an exportation of 487,000 pounds; in 1794 of 1,601,000 pounds; in 1795 of 6,276,000 pounds. By 1800 the total production had risen to 35,000,000 pounds, of which 17,790,000 pounds were exported. In 1845 the total estimated output of the world was 1,169,600,000 pounds, of which the United States produced nearly seven-eighths.[172] At the present time the output of the United States is about 15,000,000 bales, or 7,000,000,000 pounds. Less than 1 per cent of this is “Sea Island” or long staple cotton. All the rest is upland or green seed cotton, cleaned on the Whitney type of gin, and made commercially available by his method of cleaning.

The intensity of the demand for the use of this machine made it practically impossible to defend a patent right upon it. The patent laws of the country, as has been stated, were crude at that time, and the infringement suits were tried before juries composed of the very men who were interested in breaking the patent.

Nearly all of the great inventions have been developments to which a number of inventors have contributed, as in the case of the steam engine, the locomotive, and the steamboat; but the fundamental invention of the cotton gin was due to Whitney and to Whitney alone. And yet in a letter written to Robert Fulton, at a later date, he says:

It should in justice be said that at first there was no widespread disposition on the part of the Georgia planters to avail themselves of the invention unlawfully, but later nearly all, deluded by the general attitude, joined in the attack upon the inventor’s rights.

The unfortunate policy adopted by Miller & Whitney worked to their disadvantage in two ways. First, they could not themselves produce machines fast enough to gin the rapidly increasing crops; and second, their policy of buying the seed and ginning it themselves meant financing the entire crop and called for a vastly greater capital than they had at their command. Infringing machines sprang up on every side, their most formidable rival being the saw gin of Hodgin Holmes, in which circular saws were used instead of a drum with inserted wires as in Whitney’s original gin. The idea of such teeth had occurred to Whitney, as he afterward proved; but not until 1807 did he completely establish his right over this machine.

Perplexities and discouragements dogged their steps from the start. In 1795 the shop which they had built in New Haven, together with all machines and papers, was consumed by fire. In the diary of President Stiles of Yale College is an entry: “March 12 (1795). Yesterday morning Mr. Whitney’s workshop consumed by fire. Loss 3000 Dol. about 10 finished machines for seeding cotton & 5 or 6 unfinished, & all the tools which no man can make but Mr. Whitney, the inventor, & which he has been 2 years in making.” They found great difficulty in raising money, even at rates from 12 to 25 per cent. With these misfortunes upon them, word was received from England that the manufacturers condemned the cotton cleaned by their machines on the ground that the staple was injured. They had thirty gins at work in eight different places in Georgia and many of these were brought to a standstill. It was nearly two years before this prejudice could be overcome. By that time, however, encroachments on their patent right had become so extensive as almost to annihilate its value. The first infringement suit was tried in 1797 and went against them. An appeal was denied on technicalities.[174] At a second trial, in 1798, a great number of witnesses had been collected from various parts of the country, some of them from one hundred miles away, when the judge failed to appear, and, of course, no court was held.[175] Mr. Miller writes in 1799 that “the prospect of making anything by ginning in this State, is at an end. Surreptitious gins are being erected in every part of the country; and the jurymen at Augusta have come to an understanding among themselves, that they will never give a verdict in our favor, let the merits of the case be as they may.”[176] The firm would now gladly have relinquished their plan of doing the ginning themselves and confined their operations to the sale of patent rights; but few people would buy a patent right which could be used with impunity without purchase.

In 1801 South Carolina voted the purchase of the patent rights on the cotton gin for that state for $50,000, $20,000 to be paid in hand and the remainder in three annual payments of $10,000 each. A year later Whitney sold the right for North Carolina. The legislature laid a tax on every saw, to be continued for five years. After deducting the expenses of collection, the proceeds were to be passed over to the patentee. Negotiations were also entered into with the state of Tennessee. The prospects of the firm were, therefore, growing more favorable, when the legislature of South Carolina suddenly annulled the contract, refused payment due, and sued for the refunding of what had already been paid. Doubts were raised as to the validity of the patent; the patentees were charged with nonfulfillment of a part of their contract relating to the submission of models; it was charged that somebody in Switzerland had conceived of the idea beforehand; and that Whitney had been antedated in the use of saws instead of wire teeth by Holmes. This action was the result of the political agitation against the patent, which was strong throughout the cotton-growing states. Tennessee followed the example of South Carolina, and the same attempt was made in North Carolina, but the legislative committee to whom it was referred reported in Whitney’s favor, declaring that such action was a breach of contract and of good faith. In 1803 Mr. Miller, who had represented the firm in the South, died disappointed and broken by the struggle.

In the following year South Carolina rescinded its action and carried out its contract, so that from North and South Carolina Whitney received a considerable sum. In all he received about $90,000; $50,000 from North Carolina; at least $30,000 from South Carolina and about $10,000 from Tennessee. A large portion of this amount was, however, balanced by the cost of the endless litigation in Georgia. More than sixty suits had been instituted in the latter state before the first decision was obtained on the merits of the claims.

This decision was rendered in the United States Court in December, 1807, by Judge Johnson. Whitney, as the survivor of the firm of Miller & Whitney, was suing a man named Arthur Fort for violation of the patent right and for a perpetual injunction restraining him from use of the gin. Judge Johnson’s decision is so clear a statement of the situation, and so splendid an example of justice in the face of popular agitation that we give it nearly in full:

This decision was confirmed by a series of subsequent ones, and from that time onward there was no serious questioning of the patent right.

In 1812 Mr. Whitney made application to Congress for the renewal of his patent. In his memorial he points out that his patent had nearly expired before it was sustained; that his invention had been a source of wealth to thousands of citizens of the United States; that the expense to which he had gone in defense of the patent had left him little or no return on the invention; that the men who had grown rich by the use of his machine had combined to prevent the patentee from deriving reward from his invention; that in the state where he had first introduced the machines he had received nothing; that from no state had he received all told an amount equal to ¹⁄₂ cent per pound on the cotton cleaned by his machine in one year; that the whole amount received by him for his invention had not been equal to the labor saved in one hour by the cotton gins then in use in the United States; that the invention had already trebled the value of land throughout a great extent of territory; that the degree to which the cultivation of cotton would still be augmented was incalculable; and that the species of cotton grown had from time immemorial never been known as an article of commerce until his method of cleaning it had been invented. He closed with an argument for the policy of providing adequate reward for the encouragement of invention.[178] Notwithstanding these arguments and a favorable committee report, the application was rejected. With the exception of a few liberal-minded men, nearly all the members from the cotton-growing states opposed the application strongly.

Whitney combined in a singular degree high inventive capacity with clear judgment and steady determination. By 1798 he saw that his hopes for any large return from the cotton gin were uncertain. He turned to the manufacture of firearms and by steady, sure steps built up another business and died a well-to-do man. In this second enterprise he developed the interchangeable system of manufacture and thereby influenced modern society almost as greatly as he had in the invention of the cotton gin, although this is little realized by the general public.

In the chapter on “The Rise of Interchangeable Manufacture” we traced Whitney’s work as a gun manufacturer from 1798, when he first applied for his contract for ten thousand muskets. His undertaking of this contract required courage and self-confidence. Although he was not a trained gun maker, he proposed “from the start” to manufacture guns by a new method, which was ridiculed by those familiar with the manufacture of firearms at that time. He had to build a plant, design and equip it with new and untried types of tools; and to educate workmen to his methods. Furthermore, he did this work, involving $134,000, under bond for satisfactory performance. The high estimation in which Whitney was held by those who knew him is evidenced by the fact that, although he was already embarrassed and embarking on an entirely new kind of enterprise, ten of the foremost men of New Haven signed his bond for the faithful performance of his contract.

A contemporary, intimately acquainted with his work, has outlined his method of manufacture in words which describe the interchangeable system, as it exists today, so accurately that we give it in full:

It took him a much longer time to fulfill the contract than he had anticipated; two years elapsed before his plant was ready. Only 500 guns were delivered the first year instead of 4000, and the entire contract required eight years instead of two from the time when he began actual manufacture. In spite of this delay he kept the confidence of the government officials, who were very liberal in their treatment of him; so much had been advanced to him to help him develop his machinery that when the contract was completed only $2450 out of the total of $134,000 remained to be paid. The work was highly satisfactory, and in 1812 he was awarded another contract for 15,000 muskets from the United States Government and one for a similar number from the State of New York. What is known of his methods and machinery is given in the chapter referred to, which shows also how they spread to other armories throughout the country.

The business which Mr. Whitney started was carried on for ninety years. After his death in 1825 the armory was managed for ten years by Eli Whitney Blake, later inventor of the Blake stone crusher, and Philos Blake, his nephews. From 1835 to 1842 it was managed by ex-Governor Edwards, a trustee of Mr. Whitney’s estate. His son, Eli Whitney, Jr., then became of age and assumed the management, and that same year obtained a contract for making the “Harper’s Ferry” rifle,—the first percussion lock rifle, all guns before that date having had flint locks.

Eli Whitney, Jr., continued to develop the art of gun making. He introduced improvements in barrel drilling and was the first to use steel for gun barrels. In 1847, during the Mexican War, Jefferson Davis, then a colonel in a Mississippi regiment, wrote to the Ordnance Department at Washington, that it was his opinion that the steel-barreled muskets from the Whitney armory were “the best rifles which had ever been issued to any regiment in the world.” The Whitney Arms Company supplied the Government with more than 30,000 rifles of this model. The company continued in existence until 1888, when the plant was sold to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. It was operated by them for a number of years in the manufacture of 22-calibre rifles. This work was subsequently removed to their main works and the plant was sold to the Acme Wire Company, and later to the Sentinel Gas Appliance Company, its present owner. Some of the original buildings are still standing. It may be of interest to note that at the time the works were first built, a row of substantial stone houses was built by Whitney for his workmen, which are said to have been the first workmen’s houses erected by an employer in the United States.

In person Mr. Whitney was tall and dignified. He had a cultivated mind and a manner at once refined, frank and agreeable. He was familiar with the best society of his day and was a friend of every president of the United States from George Washington to John Quincy Adams. He had a commanding influence among all who knew him. Seldom has a great inventor been more sane, for his powers of invention were under perfect control and never ran wild. Unlike those who devise many things but complete few, he left nothing half executed. Robert Fulton said that Arkwright, Watt and Whitney were the three of his contemporaries who had done the most for mankind.[180] Lord Macaulay is quoted as saying, “What Peter the Great did to make Russia dominant, Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin has more than equaled in its relation to the progress and power of the United States.”[181] He contributed immeasureably to the agriculture and the manufacturing methods of the whole world and few mechanics have had a greater influence.

Simeon North was born at Berlin, Conn., the same year as Whitney, and like him, started life as a farmer. In 1795 he began making scythes in an old mill adjoining his farm. Just when he began making pistols is not clear. It is said that he made some for private sale as early as the time of the Revolution, and it is probable that he had begun their manufacture in a small way prior to receiving his first government contract. He may have learned the rudiments of the trade from Elias Beckley, who had a gun shop about a mile from North’s birthplace.[182]

In March of 1799, about a year after Whitney received his first contract for muskets, North received his first contract for horse-pistols, 500, which were to be delivered in one year. This was followed by others for 1500 in 1800; 2000 in 1802; 2000 in 1808; 1000 in 1810, and others not known. By 1813 he had made at least 10,000 and was employing forty or fifty men. In none of these contracts was there any mention made of interchangeability, but some time during these years North began to use interchangeable methods. The correspondence quoted in the previous chapter and the quotations already given show that Whitney was working on the same basis from the start. It is a great pity that Colonel North’s papers were destroyed after his death, as they might have thrown some light on the question as to how and when he began to use interchangeable methods. It is impossible now to say how much Whitney and North influenced each other if they did at all. In 1812 the Secretary of War visited North’s shop at Berlin, Conn., and urged him to increase his plant. On receiving the contract of 1813, North purchased land in Middletown, Conn., and built a dam and a three-story brick armory, 86 x 36 feet, on the best lines known at that time, involving in all an expenditure of $100,000. The old factory was run in conjunction with the new one until 1843, when it was closed.

North began making barrels of steel in 1848, only a year or two after Eli Whitney, Jr., and contributed many improvements in the design of the pistols and guns which he built. The Remington Arms Company, the Savage Fire Arms Company, the Maynard Rifle Company and the Massachusetts Arms Company, all trace back in some way to him, and, like Whitney, he deeply influenced the practice of the United States Government in its armories at Springfield and Harper’s Ferry.

Colonel North’s first contract with the Government was made in 1799; his last was finished in 1853, a year after his death, covering in all about 50,000 pistols and 33,000 rifles. He worked under sixteen administrations, representing all parties, and in all the fifty-three years he never received a reproof or a criticism of his work.

He had an old-fashioned sense of honor. In 1826 he was called on to pay a note for $68,000 which he had indorsed. Although advised that he could not be held legally, he said that his name was there and he would stand by it. He placed a mortgage on his property, and it was twenty-two years before he had made good the loss, which, principal and interest, amounted to over $100,000. But for this endorsement he would have died, for that time, a wealthy man. Colonel North was a country-bred man, strong, quiet and almost painfully modest. He lacked Whitney’s education and influence, but like him he represented the best which American mechanical and business life has produced.