Originally Posted by Benzadmiral

Cyrus McCormick and his mechanical reaper, right?

I agree, the premature death of Eli Whitney wouldn't have ended the trend toward industrialization. It would just have been slowed in the United States -- and without the cotton gin, the South would have had to find another crop to exploit, since it was not economically feasible (even with slaves) to pick the seeds out of the cotton by hand.
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Originally Posted by TwitchKitty

I confused issues between Eli Whitney and Cyrus McCormick so here is some clarification:

• Eli Whitney (December 8, 1765 - January 8, 1825). He was an American inventor and manufacturer who is credited with creating the first cotton gin in 1793. The cotton gin was a mechanical device, which removed the seeds from cotton, a process that was until that time extremely labor-intensive. For more information, go to http://www.eliwhitney.org/cotton.htm or http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/cotton-gin-patent/.
  
• Cyrus McCormick of Virginia was responsible for liberating farm workers from hours of backbreaking labor by introducing his newly invented mechanical reaper in July 1831. By 1847, Cyrus McCormick began the mass manufacture of his reaper in a Chicago factory. The invention of two successful reaping machines - independently by Obed Hussey in Ohio, who obtained the first patent in 1834, and by Cyrus Hall McCormick in Virginia - brought about an end to tedious handiwork and encouraged the invention and manufacture of other labor-saving farm implements and machinery. The first reapers cut the standing grain and, with a revolving reel, swept it onto a platform from which a man walking alongside raked it off into piles. It could harvest more grain than five men using the earlier cradles. The reaper was eventually replaced by the self-propelled combine, operated by one man, which cuts, gathers, threshes, and sacks the grain mechanically. The reaper was the first step in a transition from hand labor to the mechanized farming of today. It brought about an industrial revolution, as well as a vast change in agriculture. Instead of 90 percent of the population farming to meet the nation's needs, as was the case in 1831, today fewer than 2 percent of the US population are directly involved in farming. For more information, go to http://www.vaes.vt.edu/steeles/mccormick/bio.html.

From:http://ushistory.pwnet.org/resources/I.8.c.php