There is not another instance in the history of invention of the letting loose of such tremendous industrial forces so suddenly. The inventions of Arkwright, Watt, Fulton and Stephenson have affected society quite as profoundly as did that of the cotton gin, some of them more so, but in none of these cases were the results so immediate. In 1784, only eight years before Whitney’s invention, eight bales of cotton from the United States which were landed at Liverpool were seized on the ground that they _could not have been produced_ in the United States.[171] In 1791 the total production of cotton in the world was estimated at 490,000,000 pounds, of which the United States produced 2,000,000 pounds, or only ¹⁄₂₄₅, of which 189,316 pounds were exported. In 1792 they exported 138,328 pounds, an actual decrease of 51,000 pounds from the previous year. In 1793, the year after the gin was invented, there was an exportation of 487,000 pounds; in 1794 of 1,601,000 pounds; in 1795 of 6,276,000 pounds. By 1800 the total production had risen to 35,000,000 pounds, of which 17,790,000 pounds were exported. In 1845 the total estimated output of the world was 1,169,600,000 pounds, of which the United States produced nearly seven-eighths.[172] At the present time the output of the United States is about 15,000,000 bales, or 7,000,000,000 pounds. Less than 1 per cent of this is “Sea Island” or long staple cotton. All the rest is upland or green seed cotton, cleaned on the Whitney type of gin, and made commercially available by his method of cleaning. [171] Olmstead: “Memoir of Eli Whitney, Esqr.” p. 63. Also, Encyclopedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, Vol. VII, p. 264. [172] Olmstead: “Memoir.” Also _Merchant’s Magazine_, Vol. VI, Article on “History of the American Cotton Trade,” by James H. Lanman. The intensity of the demand for the use of this machine made it practically impossible to defend a patent right upon it. The patent laws of the country, as has been stated, were crude at that time, and the infringement suits were tried before juries composed of the very men who were interested in breaking the patent. Nearly all of the great inventions have been developments to which a number of inventors have contributed, as in the case of the steam engine, the locomotive, and the steamboat; but the fundamental invention of the cotton gin was due to Whitney and to Whitney alone. And yet in a letter written to Robert Fulton, at a later date, he says: