At the close of this year (1793) Mr. Whitney was to return to Georgia
with his cotton-gins, and Mr. Miller had made arrangements for
commencing business immediately after his arrival. The plan was to erect
machines in every part of the cotton district and engross the entire
business themselves. This was evidently an unfortunate scheme. It
rendered the business very extensive and complicated, and, as it did not
at once supply the demands of the cotton-growers, it multiplied the
inducements to make the machines in violation of the patent. Had the
proprietors confined their views to the manufacture of the machines and
to the sale of patent-rights, it is probable they would have avoided
some of the difficulties with which they afterward had to contend. The
prospect of making suddenly an immense fortune by the business of
ginning, where every third pound of cotton (worth at that time from
twenty-five to thirty-three cents) was their own, presented great and
peculiar attractions. Mr. Whitney's return to Georgia was delayed until
the following April. The importunity of Mr. Miller's letters, written
during the preceding period, urging him to come on, evinces how eager
the Georgia planters were to enter the new field of enterprise which the
genius of Whitney had laid open to them. Nor did they at first, _in
general_, contemplate availing themselves of the invention unlawfully.
But the minds of the more honorable class of planters were afterward
deluded by various artifices, set on foot by designing men, with the
view of robbing Mr. Whitney of his just right.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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