“With regard to the utility of this discovery ... the whole interior of the Southern States was languishing, and its inhabitants emigrating for want of some object to engage their attention and employ their industry, when the invention of this machine at once opened views to them which set the whole country in active motion.  From childhood to age it has presented to us a lucrative employment.  Individuals who were depressed with poverty, and sunk in idleness, have suddenly risen to wealth and respectability.  Our debts have been paid off, our capitals have increased, and our lands have trebled themselves in value.  We can not express the weight of the obligation which the country owes to this invention.  The extent of it can not now be seen.”

Surely, the reader will exclaim, if such was the profit of this invention to the country at large, what a vast fortune must it have been to its inventor!  Let us see.  In May, 1793, Whitney and Miller went to Connecticut and established a factory for the construction of cotton gins.  They were in possession of a patent which was supposed to pledge to them the protection of the United States.  The demand for the machine was increasing every day, and it seemed that they would reap a golden harvest from it.  They were disappointed.  The machine was so simple that any competent mechanic could easily manufacture one after examining the model, and this temptation to dishonesty proved too strong for the morality of the cotton-growing community.  In a short time there were hundreds of fraudulent machines at work in the South, made and sold in direct and open violation of Whitney’s rights.  In vain the inventor brought suit against those who infringed his patent.  It was rare that a jury in a cotton State gave a verdict in his favor.  In Georgia it was boldly asserted that Whitney was not the inventor of the cotton gin, but that some persons in Switzerland had invented something similar to it, and the substitution of teeth, cut in an iron plate, instead of wire, was claimed as superseding his invention.  The Legislature of South Carolina granted him the beggarly sum of $50,000 for the use of his invention by the planters of that State; but it was only by going to law, and after several tedious and vexatious suits, that he was able to secure this sum.  Tennessee agreed to allow him a percentage for the use of each saw for a certain period, but afterward repudiated her contract.  The action of North Carolina forms the only bright page in this history of fraud and wrong.  That State allowed him a percentage for the use of each saw for the term of five years, and promptly collected the money and paid it over to the patentee.  For fourteen years Whitney continued to manufacture his machines, reaping absolutely no profit from his investments, and earning merely a bare support.  During all this time his rights were systematically violated, suits were wrongfully decided against him by various Southern courts, and