When a great invention is made, everybody wants the benefit of it, and people seem to think that the inventor "has no rights which they are bound to respect." Whitney secured a patent upon his machine, but, unmindful of that, a great many persons began to make cotton gins. He was immediately involved in numerous legal contests. Before he secured a single verdict in his favor he had sixty lawsuits pending. After many delays he finally secured the payment of $50,000 which the Legislature of South Carolina had voted him. North Carolina allowed him a percentage on all cotton gins used in that State for five years. Tennessee promised to do the same, but did not keep her promise. Mr. Whitney struggled along, year after year, until he was convinced that he should never receive a just return for his invention. Seeing no way to gain a competence from the cotton gin he determined to continue the contest no longer, removed to New Haven and turned his attention to the making of firearms. Here he eventually gained a fortune. He made such improvements in the manufacture of firearms as to lay his country under permanent obligation to him for greatly increasing the means of national defense. Robert Fulton once said: "Arkwright, Watt, and Whitney were the three men that did the most for mankind of any of their contemporaries." Macaulay said: "What Peter the Great did to make Russia dominant, Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin has more than equaled in its relation to the power and progress of the United States." CHAPTER III. COTTON. Almost exactly in the center of England is the County of Derby. A few miles north of the city of Derby, on a small river called Derwent, a branch of the Trent, is the little town of Belper. This town was noted for its early manufacture of cotton and silk goods. Here, about the time of the American Revolution, Richard Arkwright and Jedediah Strutt were successfully engaged in cotton spinning. In this town, in 1763, was born Samuel Slater. As the lad grew up, his father, a well-to-do farmer, sent him to school where he received the advantages of a good English education. His school days, however, ended when he was fourteen years of age. He was greatly interested in machinery. The hum of the spinning frame was music to his ears. Therefore, he was apprenticed to Mr. Strutt to learn the business of cotton spinning, and gained a thorough mastery of the process of carding and spinning cotton, and even while an apprentice he made many improvements in machinery. At the close of the Revolutionary War, the Constitution of the United States was adopted and George Washington became President. We have already seen that England did not permit her American colonies to engage to any great extent in manufacturing. But now, the very first Congress under Washington passed an act to encourage manufactures, and one or two of the States offered bounties for the introduction of cotton machinery.