Page:LA2-NSRW-5-0089.jpg



WHITNEY

2081

WHITTIER

Eli Whitney had never examined a cotton-boll when he was asked to invent the gin, but he got the idea at once that only fingers of some sort could do the work. Mr. Miller, Mrs. Greene's overseer, agreed to furnish the money for the experiments, and a shop was fitted for Whitney in the basement of the plantation house. The gin consisted of a boxlike enclosure below an open hopper. Inside was a cylinder set with rows of sharp wire-teeth, the whole turning with a crank. A slotted steel-plate half enclosed the cylinder, the teeth slipping through the slots as the crank was turned. As the teeth extended beyond the slots, they caught the fibers and tore them from the seeds, the bolls dropping down from the hopper and the stripped seeds falling through a crevice below. It was a simple device of mechanics, and involved no such principles as lay behind the steam-engine. Its importance was measured by the immediate and tremendous effect the invention had on the south.

The inventor never profited by it financially. His machine was stolen and copied as soon as it was completed; his patent was infringed; his factory burned; his business injured by greed and malice; and lawsuits consumed his earnings and dragged through the courts until the patent's limit of 14 years had expired. His claim to the honor of the invention was finally established, and with that he had to content himself. At 40 he was penniless but not defeated. With fame, business ability, rare mechanical genius and a clean name as assets he started an armory, securing not only government orders, but an advance of public money. No firearms were made in the country so good as those of England. By 1807 it was practically certain that the United States would be compelled to fight another war with Great Britain for pro-protection of our mercantile marine. Eli Whitney could be trusted to make good, guns and honest guns. So he built his armory near New Haven, Ct., and Whitney ville grew up around it. He had to design all the parts of the improved gun, invent many; of the machines used, and train workmen into skilled artizans. His boyhood motto had been: "Whatever is worth doing is worth doing well." This he put into practice. In his factory he instituted the principle of the division and direction of labor that made Arkwright's cotton-mills in England so effective. The great inventor never bcame so rich as he might have been. Better than money he loved his family and friends, beautiful things and the society of refined and cultivated people. His sister was his dearest friend; his brother a partner in business; he was never too busy to play the devoted lover to his wife or to contrive ingenious toys for his children. His long, fruitless toil to

secure his rights in the cotton-gin and the dishonesty, envy and greed that had pursued him for a dozen years left no bitterness behind to poison his life. Prosperity, happiness and renown crowned his later years. He died on Jan. 8, 1825, and was buried in New Haven. Consult Frances M. Perry's Four American Inventors. See COTTON, SLAVERY and UNITED STATES (History}.

Whitney, William Collins, was born at Conway, Mass., July 15, 1841. He studied at Williston Academy, Easthampton, Mass., and graduated at Yale College in 1863. He next studied law, began to practice in New York in 1865, and soon had a large business. His father was a prominent Democrat, and Whitney also became interested in politics in New York City. In 1885 he became secretary of the navy in President Cleveland's cabinet. During his term of office new vessels were added to the navy, and Mr. Whitney is regarded as having been an especially able secretary. He died on February 2, 1904.

Whitney, William Dwight, American philologist, brother of J. D. Whitney the distinguished geologist, was born at Northampton, Mass., Feb. 9, 1827, and died at New Haven, Conn., June 7, 1894. In 1845 ne graduated from Williams College, and for several years was employed in a bank at Northampton, meanwhile studying Sanskrit and other languages there, at New Haven and later at Berlin. In 1853 ne was appointed professor of Sanskrit at Yale, and in 1870 had added to his chair that of comparative philology in the same institution. Professor Whitney gained a European as well as national fame as a philologist and an expositor of the science of language. His published works, besides a German Grammar and Reader and a Grammar of Sanskrit, include a work on the Life and Growth of Language. He also was editor-in-chief of The Century Dictionary of the English Language, completed in 1891. He was president of the American Oriental Society and first president of the American Philological Association.

Whit'tier, John Greenleaf, the Quaker poet, was born in a farmhouse near Haver-hill, Mass., Dec. 17, 1807. Here and at the neighboring town of Amesbury most of his life was spent. All the schooling he received was at the district school, with two years at Haver hill Academy. A copy of Burns awoke a desire to write, and he began to send verses to Garrison's Free Press and the local newspaper. For a short

JOHN  GREENLEAF WHITTIER