=114. The Cotton Gin Invented.= One of the visitors said that a machine ought to be invented which would clean the cotton. Mrs. Greene thought of Whitney. She had seen him make many wonderful things. She believed he could make such a machine, and asked him to try. He thought about it, and believed he could make iron fingers do the work that the fingers of the slaves had done. [Illustration: ELI WHITNEY WORKING ON HIS COTTON GIN] [Sidenote: =Whitney sets to work=] [Sidenote: =Invents cotton gin=] Whitney got a basketful of cotton and fixed up a shop. Then he went to work. He had a good deal of trouble, but he kept on. One day he called in Mrs. Greene and her overseer and proudly showed them his little machine, made of rollers and wires and brushes. Into this he poured the cotton just as it came from the field. When he turned a crank the soft, clean cotton came tumbling out of one side and the seeds out of another. This was the cotton gin, which in a few years was to change the entire life of the South. A few years before Whitney made the cotton gin a vessel came to Liverpool with cotton from the United States. The people in Liverpool were astonished. They did not know that cotton grew in America! As soon as Whitney began to sell his new machines, all the South became a great cotton field. In 1825, the year of Whitney's death, the South shipped abroad thirty-seven million dollars' worth of cotton, more than that of all other goods exported from this country! [Sidenote: =More slaves brought into the South=] Before this time many planters had thought that slavery was unnecessary. But when Whitney's gin made cotton growing so profitable, they had to have many more laborers to raise this new crop. Thousands of black slaves were sold to the cotton-growing parts of the South. The planters then believed they could not grow cotton without slaves, and it took a terrible war to settle the great question of slave labor. THOMAS JEFFERSON, WHO WROTE THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, FOUNDED THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY, AND PURCHASED THE LOUISIANA TERRITORY [Sidenote: =Jefferson born in Virginia=] [Sidenote: =A lover of books from boyhood=] =115. The Early Years of Jefferson.= The author of the Declaration of Independence was born in 1743, near Charlottesville, Virginia. Like most other Virginia boys, Thomas Jefferson lived on a large plantation, and spent much time in hunting, fishing, and horseback riding. While yet a boy, and throughout his long life, Jefferson loved books and studied hard every subject that came before his mind. [Illustration: WHERE JEFFERSON WENT TO SCHOOL BEFORE HE WENT TO WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE] [Sidenote: =Goes to William and Mary College=] When seventeen years old he rode away to Williamsburg to attend the College of William and Mary, the second oldest college in America. [Sidenote: =A wonderful old town=]