How the Civil War ruined the old South.

[Union8448]

'Find Mr. Calhoun's thesis if you please:

Combine that with the observations of David G. Surdam about the effect of the Civil War blockade and consider the long term affect. For three years very little cotton was exported from the Confederacy. Surdam's best estimate is that about 1/9th of the normal amount of cotton made it out of the blockade or was brought into US trading towns.
Mr. Calhoun's data at page 62 approximately and at 406 show that by the time the US Civil War ended, there was not a severe cotton shortage. International competition was supplying much of the cotton required in England and France. The price subsided consistently and those operations that got back into production did not reap a windfall in extremely high prices.
The cost advantage in the US gradually put the other producers out of business. But part of that cost advantage was new production in
Texas, as Calhoun explained. The Pennsylvania railroad man Tom Scott and the TCRR engineer Grenville Dodge went to Texas to build railroads. In the rest of the south the railroad building slowly crept forward. And that added even more competition for the older cotton growing regions.
During a 18 year period from 1862 to 1879, in what should have been the height of the cotton boom, the Confederate growers, and the US growers did not get the revenue their competitive advantage should have earned for them. With the US economy recovering and sewing machines reducing the cost of finished clothing and bedding, US demand alone would have paid good money for a share of US cotton production.
But by the time the dust had settled around 1890, cotton production had skyrocketed, but the price had fallen in both nominal and real terms.
Outside of Texas, there was no rush to invest in reopening the cotton acreage. Calhoun reported that many who tried it found the price the broker would pay for the cotton at harvest time didn't cover the costs. The pre planting arithmetic looked good, but the final accounting did not add up well.
There were few cities. Not an abundance of cash. And it was relatively easy for the Midwest railroads to buy their way south, gradually.
There are more reasons the southern areas of the US lagged behind after the US Civil War. But the decrease in cotton revenue made it hard to attract labor and capital. The money flowed to Missouri, Texas and the west in general.

 

[jgoodguy]

'Find Mr. Calhoun's thesis if you please:
View attachment 13888
Combine that with the observations of David G. Surdam about the effect of the Civil War blockade and consider the long term affect. For three years very little cotton was exported from the Confederacy. Surdam's best estimate is that about 1/9th of the normal amount of cotton made it out of the blockade or was brought into US trading towns.
Mr. Calhoun's data at page 62 approximately and at 406 show that by the time the US Civil War ended, there was not a severe cotton shortage. International competition was supplying much of the cotton required in England and France. The price subsided consistently and those operations that got back into production did not reap a windfall in extremely high prices.
The cost advantage in the US gradually put the other producers out of business. But part of that cost advantage was new production in
Texas, as Calhoun explained. The Pennsylvania railroad man Tom Scott and the TCRR engineer Grenville Dodge went to Texas to build railroads. In the rest of the south the railroad building slowly crept forward. And that added even more competition for the older cotton growing regions.
During a 18 year period from 1862 to 1879, in what should have been the height of the cotton boom, the Confederate growers, and the US growers did not get the revenue their competitive advantage should have earned for them. With the US economy recovering and sewing machines reducing the cost of finished clothing and bedding, US demand alone would have paid good money for a share of US cotton production.
But by the time the dust had settled around 1890, cotton production had skyrocketed, but the price had fallen in both nominal and real terms.
Outside of Texas, there was no rush to invest in reopening the cotton acreage. Calhoun reported that many who tried it found the price the broker would pay for the cotton at harvest time didn't cover the costs. The pre planting arithmetic looked good, but the final accounting did not add up well.
There were few cities. Not an abundance of cash. And it was relatively easy for the Midwest railroads to buy their way south, gradually.
There are more reasons the southern areas of the US lagged behind after the US Civil War. But the decrease in cotton revenue made it hard to attract labor and capital. The money flowed to Missouri, Texas and the west in general.

Another issue was that by the 1860 demand for cotton had stagnated, markets for cotton clothes had fallen from the new thing to replacement demand and population growth. Much like modern computers, first lots of demand and high prices because no one had one, then everyone had one or more and it became a commodity and prices plummeted.

 

[jgoodguy]

https://krex.k-state.edu/bitstream/handle/2097/14956/RickyDaleCalhoun2012.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

 

[jgoodguy]

Another point of comparison is oil. Countries with oil, tend to invest in oil and not diversify. Middle East countries and Russia. Norway, was heavily industrialized until it found oil and deindustrialized to some extent. Also rumored to have happened to Russia.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309571137_CRUDE_OIL_DEPENDENCE_DEINDUSTRIALIZATION_AND_ECONOMIC_GROWTH_IN_NIGERIA

 

[Union8448]

https://krex.k-state.edu/bitstream/handle/2097/14956/RickyDaleCalhoun2012.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

That is a better link then the one I use.

 

[Union8448]

The other change was that due to the disruption of the war, pork production in Kentucky and Tennessee was decimated. The center of the pork industry moved from Cincinnati to Chicago. IL, IA and so. WI became the new pork producers, as the railroad systems there good and undamaged.
And then it got worse for the south. The railroads became better at transporting live cattle, and in carrying dressed beef. Gradually beef became a big competitor with pork. Electric lights began to replace candles, at least in the homes of the wealthy.
But the main point is that in the two decades 1860-1880 when the US economy was taking off, immigration was picking up again and sewing machines were spreading out in industry and households, disruption of the war and the blockade, and the resulting international competitors robbed the south of any windfall that might have happened. British investors did not see the need to invest in the US south. And American investors who tried to set up a new cotton operation couldn't get the profits to add up.

 

[Union8448]

Another issue was that by the 1860 demand for cotton had stagnated, markets for cotton clothes had fallen from the new thing to replacement demand and population growth. Much like modern computers, first lots of demand and high prices because no one had one, then everyone had one or more and it became a commodity and prices plummeted.

It didn't help things in the US south that by 1867 the British textile industry was failing and the British banking system was exposed as having made numerous corrupt insider loans. But the panic in Britain helped the northern states as English, Irish and Canadian immigration picked up as people looked for work and democracy.

 

[5fish]

Here is a summary of cotton in the South. It was still the only cash corp in the South after the Civil War, until a bug arrive...

Cotton History

Farmers have been growing cotton since 4,000 B.C. in India. In the New World, cotton production goes back well before Columbus landed in the Bahamas in 1492. He took cotton back to Spain to prove he had circled the world and reached India. Until the 18th century, England was the center of the...

www.lsuagcenter.com

Farmers have been growing cotton since 4,000 B.C. in India. In the New World, cotton production goes back well before Columbus landed in the Bahamas in 1492. He took cotton back to Spain to prove he had circled the world and reached India. Until the 18th century, England was the center of the European wool clothing industry but, once introduced, cotton quickly became the preferred fiber because of its advantages over wool for summer clothing.

In the 18th century, the English wool industry successfully sponsored laws to ban cotton, eventually to no avail. Because cotton was a tropical crop that could not be grown in Europe, these countries used their colonial system to support the development of extensive cotton production in many temperate and tropical areas of the world.

Cultivation of cotton in Louisiana was reported as early as 1729. At that time, cotton fiber was used in home spinning and weaving. It was not until the invention of the cotton gin in 1793 by Eli Whitney that cotton was produced in Louisiana as a cash crop, primarily for export to Europe. By 1860, the United States was producing 75 percent of the world’s cotton. Between 1870 and 1920, cotton was grown on as many as 48 million acres and was the only major cash crop in the South.

This quickly changed with the arrival of the boll weevil from Mexico in the 1890s. The boll weevil became the most devastating insect in the history of agriculture, forcing thousands of farmers out of the cotton business and serving as the primary impetus for the diversification of Southern agriculture, the development of the chemical insecticide industry and the aerial pesticide application industry. When the cotton picker was invented in 1927, each picker could replace more than 100 hand laborers. The loss of these jobs began the process that would eventually lead to large permanent migrations of rural Southerners to the cities in search for jobs.

 

[Union8448]

The growers in the southern US had a huge quality and transportation advantage on the rest of the world. They should have been more conservative in protecting what they had. And the process of slowly industrializing could have started 90 years earlier.

 

[Union8448]

My recollection is that there were commentators in the south prior to the Civil War warning the growers they needed to diversify. But cotton was fungible. And that drove out other forms of activity.

 

[jgoodguy]

My recollection is that there were commentators in the south prior to the Civil War warning the growers they needed to diversify. But cotton was fungible. And that drove out other forms of activity.

The growers in the southern US had a huge quality and transportation advantage on the rest of the world. They should have been more conservative in protecting what they had. And the process of slowly industrializing could have started 90 years earlier.

These are related. Why start something new, when cotton makes money hand over fist.

 

[rittmeister]

These are related. Why start something new, when cotton makes money hand over fist.

because you just started a war an can't feed your troops?

 

[jgoodguy]

because you just started a war an can't feed your troops?

The Confederacy did not have a problem with food in and of itself, but getting it to the troops was a biggie.

 

[rittmeister]

The Confederacy did not have a problem with food in and of itself, but getting it to the troops was a biggie.

which takes manpower that could only come from the plantations (i'm not talking who's to be paid for that manpower)

 

[jgoodguy]

which takes manpower that could only come from the plantations (i'm not talking who's to be paid for that manpower)

IMHO the incident at Amelia court House during the retreat from Richmond where Lee expected to find a train loaded with rations but it had ammo instead illustrates a persistent issue with the CSA, they never ran out of ammo, but never had enough food.

 

[diane]

IMHO the incident at Amelia court House during the retreat from Richmond where Lee expected to find a train loaded with rations but it had ammo instead illustrates a persistent issue with the CSA, they never ran out of ammo, but never had enough food.

That's where Napoleon's maxim came in as true: An army fights on its stomach. Amelia Court House is where the war ended.

 

[Union8448]

because you just started a war an can't feed your troops?

War was sold as an easy solution to a complex problem. Building textile mills and setting out lines of textiles to compete locally and then nationally is difficult. Businesses fail regularly. But usually no one is killed and the assets are bought by other businesses.

 

[rittmeister]

War was sold as an easy solution to a complex problem. Building textile mills and setting out lines of textiles to compete locally and then nationally is difficult. Businesses fail regularly. But usually no one is killed and the assets are bought by other businesses.

war is and should be considered as a serious business and nobody should start one unprepared

 

[Union8448]

which takes manpower that could only come from the plantations (i'm not talking who's to be paid for that manpower)

I think it was Surdam who wrote than when the US began blockading New Orleans, and down river traffic was blocked at Columbus, MO, the Confederate southwest states were already in trouble with respect to food. I suspect that by the time the US occupied Norfolk, Alexandria, Kenawah and Wheeling, the Confederacy realized that Virginia had not completely seceded. I think the farmers knew from the beginning that the market for wheat and flour was in the big cities of the border and Mid-Atlantic states.

 

[Union8448]

war is and shoul be considered as a serious business and nobody should start one unprepared

They were on a winning streak. They forgot that the rest of US was helping them in those wars, and helping them buyout Spanish and French rights, and push out the Five Civilized Tribes. The real too many novels by Sir Walter Scott and forgot about cannons and the potential for gunboats.