Uh, not everyone benefited from the cotton gin, to put it mildly. Though I suppose it depends how tightly or loosely you define "we." It probably wasn't even a

Uh, not everyone benefited from the cotton gin, to put it mildly. Though I suppose it depends how tightly or loosely you define "we." It probably wasn't even a net good for the South, being blamed for locking it into an agrarian plantation economy and stunting manufacturing in the states that depended on cotton.