How did the cotton gin help the economy?

Alfred H. Conrad and John R. Meyer in their classic 1958 study about the issue argued that slavery depended on its economic survival for the spread of the institution to ... “Slaves were a profitable investment before the cotton gin and an even more profitable investment after its invention,” he wrote in 2013. read more

So the greatest “help” the cotton gin was to the US economy was to spark the Civil War and thus inadvertently start the cascade of events that would eventually create the greatest military industrial machine in the world. read more

The cotton gin allowed cotton growers to produce many times more cotton in a shorter time. This allowed them to produce more cotton to keep up with the demand from America's and Britain's textile industry. read more