Had it been for only this one invention Edison’s name would be gratefully remembered for all time. But to strengthen his claims on the gratitude of his countrymen and of posterity there has since come from his New Jersey laboratory a succession of inventions,--to name only a few, the phonograph, the kinetoscope, the mimeograph, the storage battery, and the “talking moving pictures,”--which have meant new openings for capital, new opportunities for labor, and an incalculable enlargement of the resources of the human race. Whitney, Fulton, Howe, Morse, Bell, Edison,--clearly it is only simple historic justice to rate these great inventors with the great statesmen, warriors, and pioneers who in days gone by have won undying fame as makers of the American republic. [Illustration: EDISON LISTENING TO THE PHONOGRAPH] _SUPPLEMENTARY READING_ [Illustration] Leading American Inventors _George Iles_ Inventors _P. G. Hubert, Jr._ Four American Inventors _F. M. Perry_ Edison--His Life and Inventions _F. L. Dyer and T. C. Martin_ Bell’s Electric Speaking Telephone _George B. Prescott_ Samuel Finley Breese Morse _J. Trowbridge_ Life of Robert Fulton _T. W. Knox_ Memoir of Eli Whitney _D. Olmstead_ [Illustration] _QUESTIONS ANSWERED_ Subscribers desiring further information concerning this subject can obtain it by writing to _The Mentor Association_ _381 Fourth Avenue, New York City_ [Illustration: ELI WHITNEY] _GREAT AMERICAN INVENTORS_ _Eli Whitney_ ONE A machine said to have paid off the debts of the South, greatly increased its capital, and trebled the value of its land, was the invention of Eli Whitney. This machine was the cotton gin. And, like many another inventor, Whitney was rewarded with ingratitude. He added hundreds of millions to the wealth of our country, and in return had to endure humiliation and vexation of body and spirit. Eli Whitney was born at Westborough, Massachusetts, on December 8, 1765. He early showed great mechanical ability, and by the time he was twenty-three years old had earned enough money to enable him to enter Yale. After graduating he went to Savannah, Georgia, with the hope of becoming a teacher there. He was disappointed in this; but made the acquaintance of Mrs. Nathanael Greene, widow of the Revolutionary general, and paid a visit to her plantation. When he was there some men who were also visiting Mrs. Greene happened one day to lament the fact that there was no machine for cleaning the staple cotton of its seeds. This work had to be done by hand and was very slow. Separating one pound of the clean staple from the seed was a day’s work for a negro woman.