The cotton gin was an invention that allowed the mass production of cotton. In the past, cotton was a very difficult crop to profit from, due to the long hours required to separate the cotton seeds from the actual cotton fibers. That all changed when Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793, a machine that sped up the process, thus making cotton growing a profitable industry for the Southern states. With vast areas of prime land ready for harvest, Southern states purchased and transported slaves in record numbers to work on their cotton plantations. Although no definitive statistics exist, approximately 1,000,000 slaves were moved west from the "old Southern states" to the new ones; that is, Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas to Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama. The new ease of ginning cotton, combined with the high demand for cotton in the textile industry, gave rise to the need for labor to pick cotton. Farmers turned to a readily available labor force that they didn't have to pay: slaves. Slaves transported to the South were usually torn from their families and the environment with which they were familiar and comfortable. These slaves then faced their new life on the plantation, an environment very different from what they were accustomed to. They faced tougher jobs, such as clearing trees and planting crops, than in the "old Southern states." The great demand for slaves on the plantations produced two very distinct types of slaves, rural and urban. Rural slaves, as you may have guessed, worked on plantations usually from dawn to dusk, guided by their overseer. Whereas urban slavery resulted from the lack of white workers in the mining and lumber industries, because so many whites defected to the......middle of paper......Works CitedBellis, Mary. "Cotton Gin and Eli Whitney." About.com:Inventors. About.com. Network. 08Nov. 2009. “Slavery in the United States.” Wikipedia. November 8, 2009. Web. November 9, 2009..Phillips, William. "The cotton gin." EH.Net Encyclopedia, edited by Robert Whaples. February 10, 2004. Network. November 9, 2009. .Giesen, James C. "Cotton." New Encyclopedia of Georgia. April 20, 2009. Web. November 9, 2009.."Slavery." Think Quest. Network. November 9, 2009..Dattle, Eugene R. "Cotton in a Global Economy: Mississippi (1800-1860)." Mississippi HistoryNow. October 2006. Web. 9 November. 2009. .