Above: In 1819, the Savan-nah was the first steamshipto cross the Atlantic Ocean,sailing from Savannah,Georgia, to Liverpool, England.

Section3Section3Economic Growth inGeorgia

As it had elsewhere in the new nation, the Revolutionary War broughtfinancial chaos to Georgia. The state had no money to pay its huge war debts,and few citizens had money to pay taxes. When the British left Savannahtoward the end of the war, one thousand Tories went with them. They tookwith them the equivalent of thousands of dollars, plus four to six thousandslaves and indentured servants.

But the period following the war also brought developments that madethe future a little brighter for both Georgia and the rest of the nation. Thedevelopment of mechanized farming tools, steamboats, and railroad enginesand the many advances in industry, business, and commerce were all part ofthe Industrial Revolution in America.

FarmingMany of Georgia’s rice and indigo plantations were in ruins after the war.

There were also questions about who owned land. Tories, who had remainedloyal to Great Britain, had their lands taken during the pre-Revolutionary

Section 3: Economic Growth in Georgia 179

As you read, look for:• the impact of the cotton ginand mechanical reaper onagriculture,• improvements in transporta-tion, and• vocabulary terms: depres-sion and turnpike.

Section PreviewSection Preview

Top: Eli Whitney establishedthe factory that was the firstknown example of massproduction in America. Above:The cotton gin was cheap andeasy to make and revolution-ized the farming of cotton.

period. When the British were in chargeof the state during the war, they returnedthe land to the Tories. After the war, landswere again taken from the Tories andgiven to former soldiers. In some cases,two or three families claimed the samepiece of land. It took time to decidewhich family would keep the land.

Georgia at least had land and enoughpeople to work it. It also had two agri-cultural crops that were soon in great de-mand: cotton and tobacco. Over thenext thirty years, cotton became “king”in the South. This development greatlychanged the lives of all Georgians, whiteand black.

A Man Named EliIn 1793, Eli Whitney visited the home

of Mrs. Catherine Greene Miller at Mul-berry Grove Plantation near Savannah.Whitney, a friend of the family, was aschoolteacher and an inventor fromWestborough, Massachusetts.

As the story goes, Mrs. Miller askedWhitney to repair a broken watch, whichhe agreed to do. Not long afterward, avisitor to the Miller home wished aloudfor a machine to separate cotton fiberfrom its seed. Mrs. Miller, rememberingthe watch repair, asked Whitney if he

could make a machine that would speed up the work done so slowly by hand.After working several weeks, Whitney had developed a model for a cotton

machine. He made the machine withwire teeth on a turning cylinder. It didseparate the cotton from the seeds,but the lint got caught in the wireteeth and stopped up the machine.Several legends say that Mrs. Millersaw the machine’s problem, took aclothes brush, and brushed the lintoff the teeth. No one knows howmuch help Mrs. Miller really gaveWhitney. In any event, before long,he built a factory near Augusta andhad a working cotton engine, latershortened to just “gin.”

Did You Know?Did You Know?

180 Chapter 6: An Age of Expansion

?Eli Whitney earned virtuallynothing from his invention.Because so much cottonwas planted, the planters“pirated” the gin before

Whitney could register hispatent. He had to appeal toCongress to save him from

financial ruin.

Top: Cyrus McCormick wasonly 22 when he invented themechanical reaper. Above:In 1851, McCormick’s reaperwon the highest award ofthe day, the Gold Medal,at London’s Crystal PalaceExhibition.

Cotton growers welcomed Whitney’s gin. Before its invention, a workermight have been able to separate six or seven pounds of cotton seed a dayby hand. After the cotton gin’s introduction, workers were able to separateabout fifty pounds a day.

The Mechanical ReaperAnother agricultural invention, the mechanical reaper, further revolution-

ized the way work was done on a farm. The reaper, invented by Cyrus Mc-Cormick, had wooden paddles fastened to the harness of a horse. As a farmerguided the horse through his fields, the paddles turned and cut the grain. Usingit, a farmer could cut six times more grain in a day than he could with a hand-held scythe.

Time- and labor-saving devices such as the cotton gin and grain reaperenabled Georgians to work larger and more profitable farms.

The Panic of 1837Improved ways of farming helped

Georgia’s economy become strong af-ter the Revolution. However, theboom period suddenly ended, caus-ing the Panic of 1837. This was fol-lowed by a depression (a sharpeconomic downturn) that lasted intothe early 1840s. During the depres-sion years, many businesses failed,and many farmers and planters losttheir land. Most banks did not haveenough cash to pay out money thathad been deposited with them. Thesebanks failed, some closing for good.At the height of the depression, onlyeleven banks were open in Georgia.

TransportationA major economic development during the early 1800s was the build-

ing of railroads. Before the railroads were built, people traveled on horses,boats, or stagecoaches. Freight was sent to market by riverboats, ferries, orwagon trains.

Many of Georgia’s roads were stagecoach trails cut where Indian footpathshad been. Most of the roads ran from east to west. Stagecoaches ran regu-larly from Savannah to Athens in the north and Brunswick in the south.Augusta was the main east-west gateway into the state. A main stagecoachline connected Augusta and Columbus by way of Macon, but the stage-coaches could only cover thirty to forty miles a day.

Roads in wet, swampy places had logs across them and were known asplank roads. The federal government built some major highways in the early1800s. These roads were called turnpikes because they had “pikes” or gates.

Section 3: Economic Growth in Georgia 181

Travelers had to pay a fee at each piketo remain on the road, much likepresent-day toll roads. Among theseturnpikes was the Old Federal Road,built in 1815 to run from Athens norththrough Cherokee territory into Ten-nessee. However, even the “good”roads were poor until the late 1800s.

Ferries were an important mode oftransportation. These unique horse-drawn log rafts carried travelers acrossthe rivers at their shallowest points, especially along the Flint River. In deeperriver waters, the ferries used a pulley and cable system. That required a strongback and arm as the ferry operator pulled the raft across the river.

At first, rail travel was, perhaps, the least favored means of transportation.In 1830, there were only 13 miles of laid track in the United States, and thosebelonged to the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. But just ten years later, therewere 3,300 miles of track. Most of thetrack in Georgia belonged to theWestern and Atlantic Railroad, whichwas chartered in 1836. The Westernand Atlantic ran from a point nearpresent-day Chattanooga, Tennessee,to a point on the southeastern bankof the Chattahoochee River. Thatpoint was called Terminus, which lit-erally means the end of a railroadline. Today it is known as Atlanta.The railroads dramatically shortenedtravel time for both passengers andfreight, reducing to hours trips thathad previously taken days.

Map 28Early GeorgiaRailroads

Map Skill: Was it possible togo from Savannah to Atlantaby railroad?

Atlanta

Augusta

Macon

Savannah

It’s Your TurnIt’s Your Turn

t1. What two crops produced

in Georgia were in greatdemand?

2. What was Eli Whitney’sinvention? How did itaffect the growing ofcotton?

3. Who demonstrated thefirst mechanical grainreaper?

182 Chapter 6: An Age of Expansion

Athens

Augusta

MaconColumbus

Savannah

Brunswick

?In 1842, Terminus wasrenamed Marthasville,

in honor of the daughter offormer governor Wilson

Lumpkin.

Did You Know?Did You Know?

Map 27Early GeorgiaRoads

Map Skill: Why do you thinkmost of the early roads raneast-west?

Above right: Stagecoach tripswere long, slow, and bumpy.

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¢Spotlight on the EconomySpotlight on the Economy

Two major changes took place in America’s economy dur-ing this period—a change to commercial farming and thegrowth of factories. Both had a long-reaching impact onAmerica’s economy.

Farmers in America’s early days grew just enough cropsto feed their families. This practice was called subsistenceagriculture. Later, farmers beganto grow crops like wheat or cottonto sell at marketplaces. Thesecrops were called cash crops andrepresented a different type of ag-riculture, commercial agriculture.Beginning in the early 1800s, farm-ers began to devote more of theirtime and land to commercial agri-culture. Their cash crops were soldin local or distant markets. Thischange led to a market economyin the United States.

But there were great perils forfarmers in a market economy. Themovement into a market economyled farmers into debt and changed the agricultural practicesof the young nation. Farmers often had to borrow money tosurvive and to resupply the farms until their crops were sold.Because crop prices rise and fall during the season, farm-ers had to hope that prices were high when it was time totake the crops to market. Farmers also bought more landto produce more crops for the marketplace, usually borrow-ing the money.

Also during the late 1700s and early 1800s, transpor-tation improved with the use of canals, railroads, steam-boats, and federal roads. As transportation became moreavailable, trade among the states also increased.

New inventions, such as Whitney’s cotton gin, Mc-Cormick’s reaper, and water-powered cotton spinning ma-chines, led to changes in manufacturing. During America’s

colonial period, most products were made by skilled arti-sans in homes or small shops. After 1800, modern manu-facturing arrived.

In 1790, Samuel Slater, an English textile manufacturer,came to the United States and opened a mill to spin cot-ton into yarn. He contracted the weaving to women who

worked in their homes to pre-pare clothing. More mills werebuilt in New England, and youngwomen were hired to workin these textile mills. As themachinery became more ad-vanced, water was used to op-erate the spinning machines.Factories grew up around thewater sources, and cities grewup around the factories.

The Industrial Revolutionand the new market economyled to the use of many unskilledor semiskilled workers. As fac-tories grew and equipment im-

proved, there was an emphasis on making products quickerand cheaper to take advantage of prices at the marketplaceand provide higher profits to investors and owners. The work-ers—women and children—did not fare as well.

These cheap workers often worked 12 to 15 hours a day,six days a week. Early efforts to organize workers met withlittle success because the factory owners had a large la-bor supply and could simply fire those who protested work-ing conditions or wages.

America moved into the Industrial Age riding on thebacks of innovators who developed new farming and manu-facturing equipment, investors who expanded factories andproduction processes, and abundant power and labor sup-plies. However, the plight of workers and small farmerswould lead to economic upheavals in America’s future.

A Changing EconomyA Changing Economy

Above: Many young women found work inthe textile mills.

Section 3: Economic Growth in Georgia 183