It is beyond dispute that cotton production took off in the 1790s in the American South, and that the Whitney gin played a not inconsiderable role. By one estimate, prime land used to grow cotton quickly tripled in value after its adoption. What else, then, is missing from this story? Processing technology was not the only bottleneck restricting cotton production in this era, nor was it even the most important one. As we have seen, cotton output grew massively over the next decade or so, reaching 36 million pounds by the turn of the nineteenth century. More than the new gin, to which most of
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