They augmented the output of spinning mills, and in cheapening cloth, increased the demand by bringing it within the reach of the poor.

The result was that a revolution was brought about not only in Europe, but also in the United States to which the world looked for this larger supply of cotton fiber.[1] This demand led to the extension of the plantation system on a larger scale.

It was unfortunate, however, that many of the planters thus enriched, believed that the slightest amount of education, merely teaching slaves to read, impaired their value because it instantly destroyed their contentedness.

Since they did not contemplate changing their condition, it was surely doing them an ill service to destroy their acquiescence in it.

This revolution then had brought it to pass that slaves who were, during the eighteenth century advertised as valuable on account of having been enlightened, were in the nineteenth century considered more dangerous than useful.
[Footnote 1: Turner, _The Rise of the New West_, pp.