appened to hear
General Greene, the brave and noble man who had been a match for Lord
Cornwallis, wish that there was a machine for cleaning cotton. He
thought the matter over, went to work, and in a short time had a machine
which, with some improvements, now does the work of a thousand negroes.
He built it in secret, but the planters, getting wind of it, broke open
his room, stole his invention, built machines of their own, and cheated
him out of his property.

About this time there was a poor cotton-spinner in England who thought
he could invent a machine for spinning. He sat up late nights, and
thought how to have the wheels, cranks, and belts arranged. At times
he was almost discouraged, but his patient, cheerful, loving wife
encouraged him, and he succeeded at last in making a machine which would
do the work of a thousand spinners. He named it Jenny, for his wife, who
had been so patient and cheerful, though she and the children, some of
the time while he was studying upon the invention, had little to eat.

The gin and the jenny made cotton cloth much cheaper than it had been.
Many manufactories were built in England and in the New England States.
More acres of cotton were planted in the South, and more negroes stolen
from Africa. In the North, along the mill-streams, there was the click
and clatter of machinery. A great many ships were needed to transport
the cotton from the agricultural South to the manufactories of the
commercial, industrious, trading North. The cotton crop of the South in
1784 was worth only a few hundred dollars, but the crop of 1860 was
worth hundreds of millions, so great had been the increase.

This great demand for cotton affected trade and commerce the world over.
The planters had princely incomes from the labor of their slaves. Some
of them received $50,000 to $100,000 a year. They said that cotton was
king, and ruled the world. They thought that the whole human race was
dependent upon them, and that by withholding their cotton a single year
they could compel the whole world to acknowledge their power. They were
few in number,--about three hundred thousand in thirty millions of
people. They used every means possible to extend and perpetuate their
power. They saw that the Northern States were beehives of industry, and
that the boys swarming from the Northern school-houses were becoming
mechanics, farmers, teachers, engaging in all employments, and that
knowledge as a power was getting t