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Mrs. Greene, too eager to realize and enjoy her friend's triumph, in view of the existing stagnation of Georgian industry, invited an assemblage at her house of leading gentlemen from various parts of the State, and, on the first day after their meeting, conducted them to a temporary building, erected for the machine, in which they saw, with astonishment and delight, that one man with Whitney's invention could separate more cotton from the seed in a single day than he could without it by the labor of months.

Mr. Phineas Miller, a native of Connecticut and a graduate of Yale, who had come to Georgia as the teacher of General Greene's children, and who, about this time, became the husband of his widow, now proposed a partnership with Mr. Whitney, by which he engaged to furnish funds to perfect the invention, secure the requisite patents, and manufacture the needed machines; the partners to share equally all profits and emoluments thence resulting. Their contract bears date May 27, 1793; and the firm of Miller & Whitney immediately commenced what they had good reason to expect would prove a most extensive and highly lucrative business. Mr. Whitney thereupon repaired to Connecticut, there to perfect his invention, secure his patent, and manufacture machines for the Southern market.

But his just and sanguine hopes were destined to signal and bitter disappointment. His invention was too valuable to be peacefully enjoyed; or, rather, it was the seeming and urgent interest of too many to rob

ment. He ought not to have expected that those who lived idly and luxuriously by stealing the wife from her husband, and the child from its mother, would hesitate to steal, also, the fruit of his brain-work, in order to render thereby the original theft ten-fold more advantageous than it otherwise could be. Reports of the nature and value of his invention were widely and rapidly circulated, creating intense excitement. Multitudes hastened from all quarters to see his original machine; but, no patent having yet been secured, it was deemed unsafe to gratify their curiosity; so they broke open the building by night, and carried off the wonderful prize. Before he could complete his model and secure his patent, a number of imitations had been made and set to work, deviating in some respects from the original, in the hope of thus evading all penalty. Before Whitney had been three days. on his northward trip, a letter from his partner followed on his track, which said:

"It will be necessary to have a considerable number of gins made, to be in readiness to send out as soon as the patent is obtained, and make people's heads easy on the subject; in order to satisfy the absolute demands, for I am informed of two other claimants for the honor of the invention of the cotton gins, in addition to those we knew before.”

Messrs. Miller and Whitney's plan of operations was essentially vicious. They proposed to construct and retain the ownership of all the machines that might be needed, setting one up in each cotton-growing neighborhood, and ginning all the staple for every third pound of the product. Even at this rate, the invention would have been one of

enormous benefit to the planterscotton being then worth from twentyfive to thirty-three cents per pound. But no single manufactory could turn out the gins so fast as wanted, and planters who might readily have consented to the terms of the patentees, had the machines been furnished so fast as required, could hardly be expected to acquiesce so readily in the necessity of doing without machines altogether because the patentees could not, though others could, supply them. And then the manufacture of machines, to be constructed and worked by the patentees alone, involved a very large outlay of money, which must mainly be obtained by borrowing. Miller's means being soon exhausted, their first loan of two thousand dollars was made on the comparatively favorable condition of five per cent. premium, in addition to lawful interest. But they were soon borrowing at twenty per cent. per month. Then there was sickness; Mr. Whitney having a severe and tedious attack in 1794; after which the scarlet fever raged in New Haven, disabling many of his workmen ; and soon the lawsuits, into which they were driven in defense of their patent, began to devour all the money they could make or borrow. In 1795, Whitney had another attack of sickness; and, on his return to New Haven, from three weeks of suffering in New York, learned that his manufactory, with all his machines and papers, had just been consumed by fire, whereby he found himself suddenly reduced to utter bankruptcy. Next came a report from England that the British manufacturers condemned and rejected the cotton cleaned by his machines, on the ground that the staple

was greatly injured by the ginning process! And now no touch the ginned cotton; and blockheads were found to insist that the roller-gin-a preposterous rival to Whitney's, whereby the seed was crushed in the fibre, instead of being separated from it was actually a better machine than Whitney's! In the depths of their distress and insolvency, Miller wrote (April 27, 1796) from Georgia to Whitney, urging him to hasten to London, there to counteract the stupid prejudice which had been excited against ginned cotton; adding:

"Our fortune, our fate, depends on it. The process of patent ginning is now quite at a stand. I hear nothing of it except the

condolence of a few real friends, who express their regret that so promising an invention has entirely failed."

Whitney endeavored to obey this injunction, but could nowhere obtain the necessary funds; though he had several times fixed the day of his departure, and on one occasion had actually engaged his passage, and taken leave of some of his friends. October 7, 1797, Mr. Whitney wrote to an intimate friend a letter, wherefrom the following is an extract:

"The extreme embarrassments which have been for a long time accumulating upon me are now become so great that it will be impossible for me to struggle against them many days longer. It has required my utmost exertions to exist, without mahave labored hard against the strong current king the least progress in our business. I of disappointment, which has been threatening to carry us down the cataract; but I struggled in vain, unless some speedy relief have labored with a shattered oar, and is obtained. I am now quite far enough advanced in life to think seriously of marrying. I have ever looked forward with pleasure to an alliance with an amiable and virtuous companion, as a source from whence I have expected one day to derive the greatest happiness. But the accomplishment of my tour to Europe, and the acquisition of

something which I can call my own, appear to be absolutely necessary, before it will be

admissible for me even to think of family engagements. Probably a year and a half, at least, will be required to perform that tour, after it is entered upon. Life is but short, at best, and six or seven years out of the midst of it is, to him who makes it, an immense sacrifice. My most unremitted at

tention has been devoted to our business. I have sacrificed to it other objects, from which, before this time, I might certainly have gained twenty or thirty thousand dollars. My whole prospects have been embarked in it, with the expectation that I should, before this time, have realized something from it.”

At length the ridiculous prejudice against cotton cleaned by Whitney's gin gradually and slowly gave way, and the value of the invention began to be perceived and acknowledged. But Miller & Whitney's first suit against infringers now came to trial, before a Georgia jury; and, in spite of the judge's charge directly in the plaintiffs' favor, a verdict was given for the defendant-a verdict from which there was no appeal. When the second suit was ready for trial at Savannah, no judge appeared, and, of

course, no court was held. Meantime, the South fairly swarmed with pirates on the invention, of all kinds and degrees. In April, 1799, Miller writes to Whitney as follows:

"The prospect of making anything by ginning in this State is at an end. Surreptitious gins are 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 cause in our favor, let the merits of the case be as they

may.

It would not be surprising if the firm would now have gladly relinquished the working of their machines, and confined themselves to the sale of patent rights. But few would buy what they could safely steal, and those few gave notes which

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they generally took care not to pay. If sued, juries would often return a verdict of no consideration, or a trial would be staved off until collection was barred by the statute of limitation, which outlawed a debt that had existed through a period of four years.

on

On one occasion, the agent of the patentees, who was dispatched a collecting tour through the State of Georgia, was unable to obtain money enough to pay his expenses, and was compelled to draw on his employers for nearly the full amount.

Finally, in 1801, this agent wrote to his principals that, though the planters of South Carolina would not pay their notes, many of them suggested a purchase of the right of the patentees for that State by its Legislature; and he urged Mr. Whitney to come to Columbia, and try to make an arrangement on this basis. Whitney did so, taking some letters and testimonials from the new President, Jefferson, and his Secretary of State, Madison, which were doubtless of service to him in his negotiations. His memorial having been duly submitted to the Legislature, proposing to sell the patent right for South Carolina for one hundred thousand dollars, the Legislature debated it, and finally offered for it fifty thousand twenty thousand down, and ten thousand per annum for three years. Whitney, in a letter written the day after the passage

the act, says:

of

"The use of the machine here is amazingly extensive, and the value of it beyond all calculation. It may, without exaggeration, be said to have raised the value of seven-eighths of all the three Southern

States from fifty to one hundred per cent. We get but a song for it in comparison with

the worth of the thing; but it is securing something. It will enable Miller & Whitney to pay all their debts, and divide something between them. It establishes a precedent which will be valuable as it respects our collections in other States, and I think there is now a fair prospect that I shall in the event realize property enough to render me comfortable, and, in some measure, independent."

He was mistaken. The next Legislature of South Carolina nullified the contract, suspended payment on the thirty thousand still due, and instituted a suit for the recovery of the twenty thousand that had been already paid! The pretenses on which this remarkable course was taken are more fully set forth in the action of the Legislature of Georgia in 1803, based on a Message from the governor, urging the inexpediency of granting any thing to Miller & Whitney. The Committee to whom this matter was referred, made a report, in which they

"cordially agreed with the governor in his observations, that monopolies are at all times odious, particularly in free governments, and that some remedy ought to be applied to the wound which the Cotton-Gin

monopoly has given, and will otherwise continue to give, to the culture and cleaning of that precious and increasing staple. They have examined the Rev. James Hutchinson, who declares that Edward Lyon, at

least twelve months before Miller & Whit

ney's machine was brought into view, had in possession a saw or cotton-gin, in miniature, of the same construction; and it fut ther appears to them, from the information of Doctor Cortes Pedro Dampiere, an old and respectable citizen of Columbia county,

that a machine of a construction similar to

that of Miller & Whitney, was used in Switzerland at least forty years ago, for the purpose of picking rags to make lint and paper."

This astonishing Committee closed their report with the following resolution:

"Resolved, That the Senators and Representatives of this State in Congress be, and they hereby are, instructed to use their utmost endeavors to obtain a modification

of the act, entitled, 'An act to extend the privileges of obtaining Patents for useful discoveries and inventions, to certain persons therein mentioned, and to enlarge and define the penalties for violating the rights of patentees,' so as to prevent the operation of it to the injury of that most valuable staple, cotton, and the cramping of genius in improvements on Miller & Whitney's patent Gin, as well as to limit the price of obtaining a right of using it, the price at present being unbounded, and the planter and poor artificer altogether at the mercy of the patentees, who may raise the price to any sum they please.

And, in case the said Senators and Representatives of this State shall find such modification impracticable, that they do then use their best endeavors to induce Congress, from the example of other nations, to make compensation to Miller & Whitney for their discovery, take up the patent right, and release the Southern States from so burthensome a grievance."

North Carolina, to her honor be it recorded, in December, 1802, negotiated an arrangement with Mr. Whitney, whereby the legislature laid a tax of two shillings and sixpence upon every saw employed in ginning cotton, to be continued for five years, which sum was to be collected by the sheriffs in the same manner as the public taxes; and, after deducting the expenses of collection, the avails were faithfully paid over to the patentee. The old North State was not extensively engaged in cotton-growing, and the pecuniary avails of this action were probably not large; but the arrangement seems to have been a fair one, and it was never repudiated. South Carolina, it should in justice be said, through her legislature of 1804, receded from her repudiation, and fulfilled her original contract.

Mr. Miller, the partner of Whitney, died, poor and embarrassed, on the 7th of December, 1803. At the term of the United States District Court for Georgia, held at Savannah