Description:

Whitney Eli



Eli Whitney's Co. Sells Cotton in Liverpool

 

This fascinating document testifies to the historical impact of Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin--some 40 years after it was first patented--and also to its effect on the international economy.

 

1p printed document with hand inscribed notes and an integral address leaf bearing red wax seal remnants. Expected paper folds, including isolated closed tears near creases, else near fine. 8.5" x 10.75".

 

This weekly sales statement dated February 26, 1836 was sent to two American businesses, Eli Whitney & Company and Abraham Bell & Company, from their agents in Liverpool, England. Entitled "Account of Sales, Imports, &c. of Cotton", the statement included tables listing current and historic cotton prices. Market prices were based on cotton type, quality, and origin. A quick scan of the column "Descriptions" shows that Liverpool agents traded cotton cultivated in the American South, the Caribbean, South America, northern Africa, the Philippines, and India.

 

The week's market synopsis reads in part: "The market opened again this week with a spirited demand, which continued until Wednesday; since which there has been much less inquiry, and Cotton has not been saleable at the full rates current in the early part of the week. The market, however, closes without change from last, either in American or Brazil. Speculators have taken 2850 American, 100 Pernam, 200 Egyptian, and 1400 Surat; and there are for Export 240 Surat, 856 Bengal, and 170 Manila." A personalized sales summary has been added by a clerical hand at bottom: "27th - Sales today 3000 Bales - a quiet steady market."

 

Eli Whitney, the founder of the eponymous company, had been dead for nine years, yet his cotton export and firearms manufacturing business still thrived. The Yale-educated inventor's cotton gin, first patented in 1794, had ushered in the Industrial Revolution and increased the antebellum economy's dependence on slavery. Whitney's cotton gin efficiently separated short fiber cotton from seeds, enabling cotton to be processed more quickly and in spectacularly larger quantities. The proliferation of the cotton gin, for instance, is directly linked to the American cotton export boom of the early nineteenth century, in which export increased from around 500,000 lbs in 1793 to 93 million lbs in 1810!

 

Eli Whitney Company business partner Alexander Bell (1778-1856), whose name also appears on this document, was a Quaker shipping merchant in New York City. Bell, who had contacts throughout the United States, London, Liverpool, Belfast, and Dublin, exported cotton, flaxseed, Indian corn, and cheese, and imported sheepskin and Irish immigrants, among other things. Another name appearing on the integral address leaf, Malcomson, almost certainly relates to the Malcomson cotton mill in Ireland.

 

An outstanding document relating to "King Cotton" and its impact on slavery and global markets!

 



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