Volume 30, No. 12                                             
March 20, 2005

A Cotton-Pickin’ Shame

   This is a cotton yarn — with a thread of truth that just might make a difference in your life, if you’re cut from the same cloth as Eli Whitney.

   At the end of the 1700s, processing cotton was so time-consuming that few growers could make any money.  That’s because fuzzy seeds clung to the cotton fibres so stubbornly that a worker could only clean a pound of cotton every day.

   But in 1792, a 27-year-old Yale graduate named Eli Whitney invented the gin, a machine that removed the seeds by using a wooden roller with wire teeth to pull the cotton through an iron screen.  When larger versions of the gin were powered by horses or water. they could process as much cotton in one day as labourers would’ve cleaned in seven weeks.  The invention transformed the South.   

   When the gin was combined with the use of steam power in the textile industry, cotton went from being among the world’s most expensive fabrics to one of the cheapest.  “As a result,” says historian Paul Johnson, “hundreds of millions of people all over the world were able to dress comfortably and cleanly at last.”  But new demand for cotton also led to a rise in slavery, just when it seemed to be dying out.  Thanks to the cotton gin, slavery meant prosperity for southern landowners, which made the Civil War inevitable.

   But the problems didn’t end there.  When Whitney and his partner got greedy and tried to set up a network of giant cotton gins in return for a whopping 40% of all the cotton they ginned, growers flocked to copycat machines.  Despite lengthy lawsuits, the inventor who clothed the world lost his shirt.  It was time to pull out the big guns, literally.

   In March of 1798, it looked like the U.S. might go to war with France, creating a need for 50,000 muskets.  So Whitney decided to replace the highly-skilled craftsmen who made entire rifles by hand, mostly because parts from one musket wouldn’t fit another and, when a weapon broke, only an expert could fix it.  Using what he called “the American system”, Whitney arranged things so that several workers of average skill were each taught how to make one part of the gun.  Those parts, made on high-precision machine tools designed by Whitney, were virtually identical, and interchangeable.  Not only would all parts fit any gun, they made it possible for every soldier to fix his own weapon.

   War with France never came, but Whitney’s system changed the world — again.  In the northern U.S., machine tools and mass production were applied to the making of virtually everything.  By the start of the Civil War, Northern factories were producing goods ten times faster and generating three times the wealth.  Ironically, Whitney gave the North the military and economic strength it used to destroy the South the cotton gin had built, including slavery.

   Be heartened by Whitney’s story.  You may never alter the course of history even once, let alone twice, but what we you do in this life will result in both good and evil, either through your own actions, or what others do as a result of them.  Like the intrepid inventor, you must resist the temptation to greet failure or discouragement with bitter resignation and sulky, self-centred surrender.  God is greater than your biggest fear.  God is bigger than your greatest frustration.  And God is  infinitely more gracious than your grandest failure.

   Writing to the Philippians, Paul said he wanted “to really know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead.” (3:10)  Sometimes that happens best amid our failures, when we have no power of our own to rely on.  Sin and setback can be the springboard for repentance and renewal that leads to ultimate victory.  “I keep working towards that day,” says Paul, “when I’ll finally be all that Christ Jesus saved me for and wants me to be... Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I strain to... receive the prize for which God’s calling us up to heaven.” (3:12-14)

   Ours is a God of many chances.  Sometimes the early damage we do can be undone.  But even when it can’t, He can help us learn from it and increase our spiritual productivity to bless others.  Just don’t give up.  That’s one thing God doesn’t cotton to.

By Rick Gamble, published in Cross Current, the weekly newsletter of the Followers of Christ church family in Brantford, Ontario, Canada.  Reprint at will in not-for-profit publications.  To receive these free weekly articles via email, send a note to sgamble@bfree.on.ca