Page 297 - American Stories, A History of the United States

11.1

11.2

11.3

kING COTTON Steamboats in New Orleans await bales of cotton for shipment. by 1860, production of
“King Cotton” in the South peaked at 4.8 million bales.

the 1850s, planters could normally expect an annual return of 8 to 10 percent on capital
invested. This was roughly equivalent to what could be obtained from the most lucra-
tive sectors of northern industry and commerce.
Yet just because the system made slaveholders wealthy does not mean that the
benefits trickled down to the rest of the population—to the majority of whites who
owned no slaves and to the slaves themselves—nor that it promoted efficiency and
progressive change. Large plantation owners were the only segment of the population
to enjoy the full benefits of the slave economy. Small slaveholders and non-slaveholders
shared only to a limited extent in the bonanza profits of the cotton economy. The
South’s economic development was skewed in favor of a single route to wealth, open
only to the minority with white skin and access to capital. Concentrating capital and
Quick Check business energies on cotton production foreclosed the diversified industrial and com-
Why was the cotton gin so useful, mercial growth that would have provided wider opportunities. Thus, compared to the
and what effect did it have on industrializing North, the South was an underdeveloped region in which much of the
southern agriculture?
population had little incentive to work hard.

264