So one night some wicked men broke into the building.
They stole the cotton-gin.
You can well imagine how dreadful this was.
Mr. Whitney had no money.
So Mr. Miller agreed to be his partner.
Mr. Miller had come to Georgia from the North.
He, too, was a graduate of Yale College.
He afterward married Mrs. Greene.
He became Mr. Whitney's partner in May, 1773.
Perhaps you wonder why the machine was called a gin. It was a short
way of saying engine.
A gin is a machine that aids the work of a person.
The cotton-gin was made to work much the same as the hand of a
person.
It dragged the cotton away from the seed.
And now begins the sorrowful part of the story.
Before Mr. Whitney could get his patent, several other gins had been
made.
Each claimed to be the best.
The plans were all stolen from Mr. Whitney's.
[Illustration: ROLLER-GIN.]
One was the roller-gin.
This crushed the seed in the cotton.
Of course this injured the cotton.
Another was the saw-gin.
This was exactly like Mr. Whitney's, except that the saws were set
differently.
Many lawsuits were begun.
Mr. Whitney went to Connecticut.
There he had a shop for making the gins.
When the suits began he had to return to Georgia.
In this way two years went by.
By this time everyone knew the value of the gin.
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