Factors That Contributed To The Growth Of Cotton

Between 1800-1860, cotton had an enormous increase in production, and the factors which influenced the increase were demand, technology, and resources. One important factor to the increase of cotton was demand. The demand of cotton was constantly growing which is why people invested their time into cotton production. Without the demand, cotton would not need to be produced as much. Although southerners sold other products, cotton was the district’s leading export. The country of Great Britain had a huge demand for cotton too. Nearly four million people of the population of Great Britain depended on cotton textile manufacturing (Dattel). Seventy-five percent of the cotton that supplied the cotton mills came from the Southern United States (Dattel). Due to the demand planters invested their money into land and slaves which the cotton industry depended on. After cotton growing became more profitable for planters, cotton increased in demand.
One technology that greatly helped cotton planters was the cotton gin, an invention invented by Eli Whitney in 1793 when he learned about the cotton planters not capable of keeping up with the growing demand of cotton. The gin was able to do the work of fifty people cleaning cotton by hand and allowed planters to grow more cotton with more profits (Davidson 387). Cotton planters could make more profit because cotton already grew easily and then after the cotton gin; it could be cleaned easily too, but when the workers had to do the tedious job of cleaning the cotton by hand, cotton was not much of a “cash crop”. The cotton gin also increased slave labor, since more slaves were needed to work on the cotton farms and keep up with the demand. And so, throughout 1800-1860 the demand and the production of cotton kept