Claim: The economies of the North and South differed in their reliance on different modes of production - industrial factories in the North and plantation-based agriculture in the South. This difference in economic structures contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War.
Evidence: The North was characterized by a growing industrial economy, with factories producing goods on a large scale using machines and division of labor. This led to increased productivity, higher wages, and a focus on individual labor rather than slave labor. In contrast, the South relied heavily on plantation-based agriculture, particularly in the cultivation of cotton, which was labor-intensive and relied on a large enslaved workforce.
Reasoning: The economic differences between the North and South created conflicting interests and values, particularly in the debate over slavery. The North's industrial economy and emphasis on free labor clashed with the South's reliance on enslaved labor for its agricultural production. This economic divide exacerbated existing tensions between the regions and ultimately led to the outbreak of the Civil War.
Counterclaim: Some may argue that economic differences alone were not the sole cause of the Civil War, as political, social, and cultural factors also played a role in the conflict. Additionally, individuals in both regions held varying opinions on slavery and its role in society, further complicating the relationship between the North and South.
Evaluation of Counterclaim: While it is true that economic factors were not the only cause of the Civil War, the stark differences in economic structures between the North and South undoubtedly contributed to the tensions that ultimately led to the conflict. The debate over slavery was inherently tied to the economic interests of each region, making it a central issue in the lead up to the Civil War.
Factories are places that rely on the division of labor to mass-produce items for a profit. They often rely on machines (as well as people) to produce items more cheaply than would be possible if the goods were produced by a craftsman. Factories didn't come into existence automatically, as if there were no other possible ways to organize production, and that is particularly true for clothmaking.
In England, for example, cloth merchants often "put out" raw materials to artisans who worked at home or in shops where several people would labor together. Some things--straw hats and shoes, for instance--were made that way in America, too. But most early textile factories in this country tended to emerge from two lines of development. In one case, they grew out of existing water-powered milling operations. So, for instance, a miller added a carding machine to the equipment of a grist mill or saw mill, drawing upon the water power already in use at the site. That experiment then often led an owner to introduce some of the new spinning machines and power looms, in many cases taking out the older grist or saw mill machinery, and by such a process a textile mill was created. These kinds of factories were often small and oriented to local markets. By 1815 there were lots of them, especially in southern New England.
Advantages
From an investor's or a manager's point of view, the advantages of combining raw materials, workers, machines, and power--all under one roof--were obvious. One of the first benefits was better supervision of workers and work processes. Someone working at home without the pressure of immediate supervision might not work as hard or as regularly. Working and drinking (not an uncommon practice in some early industries) could also result in less than perfect yarn or cloth. With workers in a single place for 11-to-13 hours a day, almost all these problems could be minimized, giving managers a more predictable output-per-week at a lower cost-per-yard.
Employing the new textile machinery in a water-powered factory setting provided huge gains in productivity and that was another important benefit for mill owners. Single spinning machines and power looms spun and wove much faster than individuals could; assembling a great many of these machines, with each worker tending several at once, multiplied the possibilities for profits. Here is an important difference from plantations, where gains in productivity came only by adding more workers.
Disadvantages
But like plantation owners, factory managers also had to be concerned with discipline, to insure control over production. Small factories employed families, relying primarily on the labor of children (usually between the ages of 10 and 20) to produce cloth. The large factories of places like Lowell employed young women (usually between the ages of 13 and 25) to produce their cloth. In both cases, factory managers argued that these groups of people needed close supervision because they could not be trusted to take care of themselves. Some owners argued that poor families who did not work in factories would only become idle, immoral, and even criminal. Those who employed young women in places such as Lowell did not feel that these young women were likely to become immoral, but they did feel that the women needed to live in boarding houses with strict rules of behavior, and they certainly never expected these young women to move up the factory ladder to become overseers, much less owners. Although factory workers were given more independence than slaves, factory owners still looked down upon them.
However, in the North, factory owners paid wages to their workers (or the parents of their workers where family labor was used). They expected their workers to provide their own food and clothing and they expected their workers to depend on family members for support in a time of crisis. In this way, northern workers were treated differently from slaves. Factory owners only claimed to own the labor of their employees, not their whole person.
Slaves in the South
In 1805 there were just over one million slaves worth about $300 million; fifty-five years later there were four million slaves worth close to $3 billion. In the 11 states that eventually formed the Confederacy, four out of ten people were slaves in 1860, and these people accounted for more than half the agricultural labor in those states.
In the cotton regions the importance of slave labor was even greater. The value of capital invested in slaves roughly equaled the total value of all farmland and farm buildings in the South. Though the value of slaves fluctuated from year to year, there was no prolonged period during which the value of the slaves owned in the United States did not increase markedly.
Constructed Response Question
Using the sources construct a claim, cite evidence, produce reasoning, and evaluate a counterclaim that answers: Critique how the economies of the North and South differed. How might this have contributed to the Civil War?
1 answer