Why Eli Whitney didn't profit from the cotton gin

"At Home," by Bill Bryson, p. 396:

"[Eli] Whitney and Miller formed a partnership with every expectation of getting rich, but they were disastrous businessmen. For the use of their machines, they demanded a one-third share of every harvest--a proportion that plantation owners and southern legislators alike saw as frankly rapacious. They stubbornly refused to modify their demands, convinced that southern growers could not hold out in the face of such a transforming piece of technology. They were right about the irresistibility, but they failed to note that the gin was also easily pirated. Any halfway decent carpenter could knock one out in a couple of hours."

Like a Rorschach test, people will read their own meanings into this. And it's hardly a unique story; but I thought it was interesting. A terrific book, by the way. There are not that many nonfiction books where I feel sorry and at a loss when I get to the end; this was one of them.


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