Manufacturing In The Antebellum South example essay topic

The United States economy has always varied by region. Most notably, during the period leading up to the Civil War, the markets of the North and the South grew at markedly different rates and in considerably different directions. Different occupations combined with local market practices produced varying growth rates of the economy in the two regions. In the early 1800's the South had more manufacturing than the Northeast.

But after the War of 1812 cotton agricultural production displaced everything in the south, while the north experienced tremendous growth in industrialization and technology. There was some manufacturing in the antebellum south. Cotton and waterpower made textile manufacturing profitable. But Southern manufacturing was small in scale compared to the north; only 15 percent of the nation's manufactured goods came from the south in 1860. Southerners were not industrial capitalists.

In fact white society in the south was generally stagnant, with no innovation of ideas and practically no immigration. Industry grew rapidly in the north. Steam power was critical to the expansion of the factory system and the industry was remarkably receptive to technological change. In the North, individual freedom encouraged resourcefulness and experimentation, business growth encouraged new techniques, and a labor shortage encouraged the substitution of machinery. Industrial expansion created jobs that attracted thousands of immigrants to northern cities, thus spawning new ideas and methods. The development of faster and easier means of transportation seriously impacted the lack of southern development.

Most of the canal building took place in the east and mid-west. Railroads had a profound affect on the farmers. The location of the lines helped determine what land could be profitably cultivated. Railroads also affected cities; Chicago became the railroad center of the mid-west. Railroads also stimulated other kinds of activity, and stimulated the growth of investment banking. Railroads also revolutionized business organization and management, and they sharply reduced freight and passenger rates.

Finally railroads revolutionized western agriculture: the center of the wheat production moved westward. Prior to the Civil War there was no real national network of railroad lines. However the east-west railroad corridor dramatically changed interstate commerce. The south had only short distance lines with practically no developed rail system. The telegraph also became an important economic contributor. Railroads needed it but business also demanded use.

By 1860 Western Union Telegraph Corporation had strung nearly 50,000 miles of wire. Unfortunately for the south, most of this was east to west. As a result the north became the south's middleman, extracting large profits from southern goods. Also the southern style of agriculture depleted the soil, and southern capital was tied up in land and slaves, and therefore barred any investment in improvements in cultivation, diversification, or new technologies. The surge for yet new and untapped land in the deep south, the so called "black belt" states of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, along with the demand for even greater numbers of slave laborers, turned the older planter states like Virginia into "slave breeders".

By the mid 1850's slaves were Virginia's primary export, and the supply of such slave laborers for the deep south plantations became the major economic activity of the old south. Planters ambitious to augment their wealth, together with their black slaves, were an important driving force in the economic and political development of new territories and states in the southwest. Cotton according to historian, Mary Beth Norton in her book A People and a Nation, became the primary Southern export. As the largest widespread crop, according to Norton, the south exported raw cotton to many foreign countries. The incoming money however did not spread throughout the economy.

Only the top one percent (1%) of the wealthy Southern planters controlled over twenty five percent (25%) of the wealth in the south. Normally, an economy benefits when the manufacturing or producing sector exports many goods. But in this case, the South, where relative to the size of the population few people owned large plantations, most of the money coming into the economy stayed in the hands of a select few, limiting available capital for other productive investments in a more diverse economy. Farmers sold most of their products abroad, as opposed to selling them to a local merchant, thus decreasing the potential amount of money that could have been generated within the southern economy. Whereas the northern economy encouraged trade that was both more diverse and more regional in nature. The free trade with foreign nations put money in the hands of a small wealthy class but hindered the circulation of money in the economy, limiting the entrepreneurial opportunities for the rest of southern society.

Slavery was profitable, but it kept southern capital from being invested in trade and manufacturing. Thus, northern business firms handled the marketing of the southern cotton crop. Thus economically, the south had been turned into a nightmare of backwardness and underdevelopment, in which only a very small class of the planter aristocracy derived any benefit. During the antebellum period the south experienced tremendous geographical growth. Expansion into the lower south and south west replaced land that had been worn out by over planting and excessive use. There had been few experiments with fertilizers, crop rotation or other recent technologies.

The south and "king cotton" mentality became a one dimensional society and economy. Even the invention of the cotton gin, which injected new impetus into a struggling economy, actually further polarized their way of life. For with this invention, cotton and slavery became more profitable. The demand and investment in slaves increased, further limiting any thought of diversification. Without change the society as a whole stagnated and never developed as did their northern counterparts.

In reality the south had become a backward society. Due to a lack of societal, economical and technological development the south of the antebellum period could be looked upon as an underdeveloped country.