The passage tells how the mechanization of cloth-making in England led to changes in America. Explain how the interactions between people, events, and ideas gave rise to a new industry in the South. Support your answer with at least two details from the text. Eli Whitney and the Cotton Gin by Timothy Morris 1 In the late 1700s, England was hungry for cotton. Until this time, women and girls of the family generally did the spinning and weaving. Then improvements were made to the spinning wheel and loom, making them faster and more efficient. As a result, the process became mechanized, and new textile mills opened to meet the growing demand for cotton cloth. 2 In America in 1792, Eli Whitney recognized that the mechanization of the cloth-making process meant a greater demand for cotton. Cotton grew easily in the Southern states, but the cotton bolls contained numerous small seeds that were difficult and time-consuming to remove by hand. Unless a more efficient way could be found to separate the seeds from the bolls, there was little money to be made in growing cotton. 3 As a young man, Eli Whitney liked figuring out things. He studied machines and often found ways to improve them. Whitney began to think about the problem of removing seeds from cotton and decided that a machine could be built to do the job efficiently. 4 The machine Whitney designed was simple, but it worked like a charm. Cotton was fed into a machine with short wire teeth on a revolving cylinder. The thin cotton fibers were pulled through, leaving the seeds behind. Now, a single machine was capable of cleaning and processing up to fifty pounds of raw cotton daily. 5 The invention of the cotton gin brought about many changes. The most significant effect was that, at long last, growing cotton could be profitable. Cotton plantations sprang up in the South where once empty fields stood, and textile mills opened to make cloth. Thanks to Whitney’s invention, the world was never the same again. Just as mechanization revolutionized life in England, the cotton gin gave the American South a new industry to call its own. Why couldn’t Southern states make money by growing cotton in 1792? Underline the sentence explaining the problem Whitney hoped to solve. Close Reading Underline clues in the text that show how Whitney’s invention changed life in the South.