knowing the principle of the design, could make one. Even before
Whitney could obtain his patent, cotton gins based on his were
being manufactured and used.

Whitney received his patent in March, 1794, and entered on his
new work with enthusiasm. His partner, Phineas Miller, was a
cultivated New England gentleman, a graduate of Yale College,
who, like Whitney, had sought his fortune as a teacher in the
South. He had been a tutor in the Greene household and on General
Greene's death had taken over the management of his estates. He
afterwards married Mrs. Greene. The partners decided to
manufacture the machines in New Haven, Whitney to give his time
to the production, Miller to furnish the capital and attend to
the firm's interests in the South.

At the outset the partners blundered seriously in their plan for
commercializing the invention. They planned to buy seed cotton
and clean it themselves; also to clean cotton for the planters on
the familiar toll system, as in grinding grain, taking a toll of
one pound of cotton out of every three. "Whitney's plan in
Georgia," says a recent writer, "as shown by his letters and
other evidence, was to own all the gins and gin all the cotton
made in the country. It is but human nature that this sort of
monopoly should be odious to any community."* Miller appears to
have calculated that the planters could afford to pay for the use
of the new invention about one-half of all the profits they
derived from its use. An equal division, between the owners of
the invention on the one hand and the cotton growers on the
other, of all the super-added wealth arising from the invention,
seemed to him fair. Apparently the full meaning of such an