Industrial Revolution

[ole]

Pretty much nails it.

In one of the links I came across while examining this months ago it was noted that it was easier to get grain from the Midwest to the Southern ports than from the interior of Texas for example. The planters already had a transportation method for getting cotton to ports...so backshipping imports of grain, etc. makes a lot of sense.

In a similar vein there was the issue of all the stranded cattle in Texas--an issue not solved until after the war when Kansas supplied a rail link. Same thing was happening in Florida. Resistance to investing in infrastructure to the interior non-cotton regions during the war.

At any rate, Rebel from Finland seems to have been under the impression that the South was "more self-sufficient in food production". The opposite was true.

Texas was almost a non-player from the get go. She could ship from Galveston, but crossing the Mississippi was a choke point.

 

[ForeverFree]

What about there, across the Atlantic? What do You feel about the IR? How was it taught to You in school, only as a good thing..? I would think that there is some sectional difference, like that people from Maine think it more as a good thing, and maybe Louisiana not so good..? One reason being that southern folks were much more self-sufficient with food production, maybe able to harvest two crops over the season, or even farm something to eat year around, and those from northern states depended more on import, because of shorter growing season and thus much more vulnerable for loss of crop..

D@mn its hard to explain this the way I want it, but I hope You got my point and hopefully some discussion will be born..

The IR was not a subject that I recall was explored in great detail in my history classes in school or university. But then, there is so much to history, it's hard to address it all in one or two history classes. Having said that, it seems to me that the Gilded Age - the period when American industrialists gained political and economic hegemony over the US economy and polity - was one of the least/worst studied part of our curriculum. The American Revolution (1770s-early 1780s), the Antebellum Era (1820-1860), the Civil War and Reconstruction (1860-1877), WWI (1910s), the Great Depression (late 1820s-1830s) and WWII (1940s) pretty much took up most of my history classes.

I do recall that we discussed that the North was more industrialized than the South, but it was not a really detailed discussion.

One thing I do recall is that America had a longtime "frontier culture," with the frontier extending from the western parts of the original colonies to the Northwest and Southwest Territories, on the Plains, the Southwest, and the west Coast. Many of the people living on these changing/movinh frontiers were self-sufficient, and that was a sign of Americans' personal independence and resiliance. It was only after school and college, and more personal research, that many of these frontiers people lived hardscrabble lives, and that many farmers engaged in subsistence farming.

In any event, I grew up in New York City, so I think I was predisposed to looking at industrialism in a positive light. By the 1960s-70s, NYC was becoming a post-industrial city - factories were starting to leave the city, and management and financial skills were key for the area (at that time, many more businesses had their national headquarters in Manhattan than is true today). And New Yorkers had something of anti-rural bias. So I guess I've always seen the IR, such as I understood it, as a good thing. But it was not a subject that I really delved into.

- Alan

 

[Rebel from Finland]

Thank You all for interest in this thread, and sorry that I have not answered here until now, I´ve been very busy last week or so. Very interesting posts, and as usual the question is much more complicated than it seemed when first thought of it.

 

[Rebel from Finland]

At any rate, Rebel from Finland seems to have been under the impression that the South was "more self-sufficient in food production". The opposite was true.

Thats true, I was under that impression. Looking from near arctic circle it seems that more south you go, the better it gets, especially when it comes to farming! Thanks for clearing this issue!

 

[dvrmte]

Rebel from Finland, I started a thread on Southern self-sufficiency. You might want to visit it and see how it plays out.

 

[John Hartwell]

One of the side effects of industry is the resulting concentrated population that requires food from outside the area.

An important response to this problem was the development of market gardening in the northeast. With careful management and modern "scientific farming" (championed by a very active Grange), even New England, with its thin, rocky soil, managed to be self sufficient as far as dairy produce, vegetables and corn (maize) was concerned. Other grains and most meat (other than chicken) had to be imported from the kinder, "fatter" lands to the west.

jno

 

[dvrmte]

An important response to this problem was the development of market gardening in the northeast. With careful management and modern "scientific farming" (championed by a very active Grange), even New England, with its thin, rocky soil, managed to be self sufficient as far as dairy produce, vegetables and corn (maize) was concerned. Other grains and most meat (other than chicken) had to be imported from the kinder, "fatter" lands to the west.

jno

My grandparents on both sides worked in NC and SC textile mills and lived in the mill villages. The mills here didn't concentrate too heavily in one area though. They were spread up and down the rivers above the Fall Line. Most everyone in the mill villages raised their own chickens and usually had a small vegetable garden. Some even kept a few hogs and a milk cow. My grandfather in NC had a smokehouse on his half acre mill village lot.

To tie this in with the ACW, the Confederates recognized the dependency of the northeastern cities on the Northwest for much of its food supply and realized breaking the east-west rail connections and canals for only a short period would create a severe food shortage. See Lee's invasion of Pennsylvania and its progress towards Harrisburg. Stonewall Jackson, ordered his mapmaker Jedediah Hotchkiss to make a map extending to Harrisburg prior to the Chancellorsville battle.

 

[Red Harvest]

The U.S. exported about 30 million bushels of wheat more each year of the war than it had before (previous numbers were under 10 million bushels/year.) Prior to that, those 30 million bushels were consumed in the South. That's a lot of wheat, something like a billion loaves of bread. Do the math for a population of 9 million in the South. (The border states appear to be about in balance by comparison.)

The elimination of salt pork sales to the South in 1861 also made the South more reliant on beef from Texas and Florida. However, the southern states lacked the transport (self-sufficiency) required to move them to where they were needed and the problem was never adequately solved. The CSA also was deficient in salt, making meat packing problematic.

 

[Freddy]

John Deere was making 10,000 steel plows per year in 1855. Those plows opened millions of acres for farming.

 

[dvrmte]

The U.S. exported about 30 million bushels of wheat more each year of the war than it had before (previous numbers were under 10 million bushels/year.) Prior to that, those 30 million bushels were consumed in the South. That's a lot of wheat, something like a billion loaves of bread. Do the math for a population of 9 million in the South. (The border states appear to be about in balance by comparison.)

The elimination of salt pork sales to the South in 1861 also made the South more reliant on beef from Texas and Florida. However, the southern states lacked the transport (self-sufficiency) required to move them to where they were needed and the problem was never adequately solved. The CSA also was deficient in salt, making meat packing problematic.

What your figures demonstrate regarding wheat exports was a rise in wheat production, not lost sales to the South, having to be exported.

Minnesota wheat exports were 369,625 bushels in 1859, they skyrocketed to 1,576,666 bushels in 1860. Does that mean Southerners had a sudden distaste for Minnesota wheat that year?

 

[ole]

It could be that there were four times as many farmers in that time span, or it could mean that many more acres were cleared.

GGfather put his grain on boats. They sure weren't going to Iowa or Illinois. No telling where it ended up, but I suspect it didn't get to New Orleans.

 

[dvrmte]

It could be that there were four times as many farmers in that time span, or it could mean that many more acres were cleared.

GGfather put his grain on boats. They sure weren't going to Iowa or Illinois. No telling where it ended up, but I suspect it didn't get to New Orleans.

It was the harvesting ability of the reaper, improved marketing and transportation, and a record 1860 crop.

This is where I got my info from:
http://books.google.com/books?id=G-...=onepage&q=wheat exports by year 1860&f=false start about page 77

According to that source, your GGfather's grain likely wound up at the major market centers of Milwaukee, Chicago or St. Louis. From there, who knows?

 

[Red Harvest]

What your figures demonstrate regarding wheat exports was a rise in wheat production, not lost sales to the South, having to be exported.

Minnesota wheat exports were 369,625 bushels in 1859, they skyrocketed to 1,576,666 bushels in 1860. Does that mean Southerners had a sudden distaste for Minnesota wheat that year?

Your attempted explanations miss by a country mile for several obvious reasons:
1. The exports in 1860 were still low despite that huge boost in MN production you noted. If 1860 was so great, why was its export so much lower than 1861? In 1861 they shot through the roof rising from 4 million to 31 million bushels for the nation. (1858 and 1859 were 9 and 4 million bushels respectively.)
2. One state doesn't account for it--in this case it would only account for a small fraction of the total anyway.
3. The exports stayed at similar elevated levels (37, 36, 24) until 1865 and 1866 when they returned back toward prewar levels (10 and 6 respectively.) If things are as you believe, this drop should not have happened. Or are you suggesting men returning home from war produce less...and stop using reapers...and suffer from worse transportation?
4. The drop in '64 might even be consistent with reopening of the Mississippi and various territorial gains. And in 1865 the market to the South would be open again as well.

 

[lakertaker]

It could be that there were four times as many farmers in that time span, or it could mean that many more acres were cleared.

GGfather put his grain on boats. They sure weren't going to Iowa or Illinois. No telling where it ended up, but I suspect it didn't get to New Orleans.

Correct. There were grain shipments by wagon and boat that ended up in Chicago and Milwaukee - from there, I can't say whether they were shipped or milled (suspect milled). In general, prior to War years, Minnesota barely could feed itself (fur trapping was number one until 1859). My ggrandfather came in 1860 to southeast Minnesota prairie. Agriculture really ramped up due to demand from Civil War, and railroads. Succession of southern states allowed land grant bills to pass, thus many more farmers and acres tilled. http://www.dot.state.mn.us/culturalresources/pdf_files/crunit/devperiods.pdf

 

[dvrmte]

Your attempted explanations miss by a country mile for several obvious reasons:
1. The exports in 1860 were still low despite that huge boost in MN production you noted. If 1860 was so great, why was its export so much lower than 1861? In 1861 they shot through the roof rising from 4 million to 31 million bushels for the nation. (1858 and 1859 were 9 and 4 million bushels respectively.)
2. One state doesn't account for it--in this case it would only account for a small fraction of the total anyway.
3. The exports stayed at similar elevated levels (37, 36, 24) until 1865 and 1866 when they returned back toward prewar levels (10 and 6 respectively.) If things are as you believe, this drop should not have happened. Or are you suggesting men returning home from war produce less...and stop using reapers...and suffer from worse transportation?
4. The drop in '64 might even be consistent with reopening of the Mississippi and various territorial gains. And in 1865 the market to the South would be open again as well.

What I gave was a gentle nudge, in hopes that you would realize your failed logic. Evidently you wish to cling to it. One thing I wish to make clear, I'm not saying the South wasn't a market for northern wheat, it was, just as northern cities were markets for southern wheat. The Shenandoah Valley alone shipped around 1.5 million bushels a year northward.

1) Wheat exports were relatively small scale until 1860. The Crimean War and several years of poor harvests in Europe increased the demand for US grain. Fully one fourth of Great Britain's imports were from the US during several of the War years. Due to the introduction of new varieties of wheat in the 1850's, wheat production spread into new areas. Wheat production increased from 100 million bushels in 1850 to 173 million bushels in 1860. Prices were high as well; not to venture to that level again until 1919 and 1947.

Edit: wheat production quantities corrected.

2) My use of Minnesota was only to illustrate my point. My point is that the loss of the Southern market doesn't accurately account for the increased ability to export.

3&4) This is a good example of where you failed to see all the factors involved. Now I'll not say the fellows returning home from the War were the cause but the 1866 yield was one of the lowest yields on record at 11 bushels per acre. So decreased yields and regaining the southern market would result in less exports. From 1865 onward, due to multiple reasons, southern dependency on northern grain would steadily increase as the South assumed the role of a colonial appendage, encouraged to become consumers of northern productions and suppliers of their raw materials and mostly unfinished, extractive only manufactures.

 

[Georgia Sixth]

In a similar vein there was the issue of all the stranded cattle in Texas--an issue not solved until after the war when Kansas supplied a rail link. Same thing was happening in Florida. Resistance to investing in infrastructure to the interior non-cotton regions during the war.

Yes, the greatest issue the south faced was transportation and distribution. There were lots of foodstuffs grown in VA, NC, GA and elsewhere. But as waterways were lost and railroads degraded -- rapidly on both counts -- it became harder to get the food out of the local market.

And as for the issue with beef in Texas....I recall an article I read many years ago in which it was argued that the importance attached to Vicksburg was greatly overrated. The importance is often stated as: Confederacy cut in two, Trans-Mississippi cut off from the rest of the CSA. The author argued that very little could get out of Texas to the other states anyway. With or without Vicksburg, there weren't enough miles of railroads. It was an interesting argument.

 

[Red Harvest]

What I gave was a gentle nudge, in hopes that you would realize your failed logic. Evidently you wish to cling to it.

I find it more logical to consider the data rather than your nudges. The shear magnitude of the changes don't jibe with what you suggest.

In the years before the war there was a small wheat export, in the 4 years of the war, there was six times as much wheat exported...and that average includes the relatively lower value of 1865 where considerable portions of the harvest would again be available to the Southern market. In 1866 wheat exports fell back to a level in line with pre-war. The correlation appears to be almost perfect each year.

The Deep South in particular appears to have been a large consumer of this excess that was exported when they were out of the market. Since the areas that produced cotton had access to transport, backshipping wheat/flour makes a lot of economic sense. At 60 lb/bushel this matches up closely with the cotton production values. Cotton had a much higher value per pound than food commodities like wheat.

Perhaps it is all some sort of strange coincidence as you suggest, but when a decade of data points in the same direction and fits well with basic theory and many other observations, I tend to give more weight to that.

If you can present data for the yield and total production in the northern states from around 1858 through 1866 then please do. The US data I came across for yield stops at 1866...calculating before that would be problematic anyway for the country as a whole due to the rebellion. And while that yield value was on the low side, similarly low yields were common, happening in five of the next 20 years. I would expect the war years to have depressed yields per acre and/or reduced acreage in production due to the war--less labor, and production disruption.

The wheat production value I've seen for 1860 is 173 million bushels, not "the 100 million" you stated. This was roughly the same as production in 1866 (170 million bushels.)

 

[Red Harvest]

Yes, the greatest issue the south faced was transportation and distribution. There were lots of foodstuffs grown in VA, NC, GA and elsewhere. But as waterways were lost and railroads degraded -- rapidly on both counts -- it became harder to get the food out of the local market.

And this also indicates what is being said, that many regions were not self-sufficient.

And as for the issue with beef in Texas....I recall an article I read many years ago in which it was argued that the importance attached to Vicksburg was greatly overrated. The importance is often stated as: Confederacy cut in two, Trans-Mississippi cut off from the rest of the CSA. The author argued that very little could get out of Texas to the other states anyway. With or without Vicksburg, there weren't enough miles of railroads. It was an interesting argument.

It is precisely this deficiency in Southern infrastructure that makes it more likely that the Cotton states with their coastal/river production and transport would be "importing" more from Northern states. They were set up to move material this way. Note however that the Upper South tended to have decent or even good regional infrastructure...and 77% of Southern wheat production, while the Cotton states had very little (7 million bushels/yr in 1860 out of 173 million for the United States.)

When we examined the Texas cattle export issue recently there was some effort to figure out how much beef was being driven to the river and ferried across in the area from Port Hudson to Vicksburg. One of the better indications was the surplus of beef/plummeting value when Vicksburg fell. This coupled with immediate post war exports and pricing suggested a rather large number of cattle were being driven there. My guess based on the limited data was enough to feed a moderate sized Confederate field army year around. I would like to see a real study of this.

 

[dvrmte]

I find it more logical to consider the data rather than your nudges. The shear magnitude of the changes don't jibe with what you suggest.

In the years before the war there was a small wheat export, in the 4 years of the war, there was six times as much wheat exported...and that average includes the relatively lower value of 1865 where considerable portions of the harvest would again be available to the Southern market. In 1866 wheat exports fell back to a level in line with pre-war. The correlation appears to be almost perfect each year.

The Deep South in particular appears to have been a large consumer of this excess that was exported when they were out of the market. Since the areas that produced cotton had access to transport, backshipping wheat/flour makes a lot of economic sense. At 60 lb/bushel this matches up closely with the cotton production values. Cotton had a much higher value per pound than food commodities like wheat.

Perhaps it is all some sort of strange coincidence as you suggest, but when a decade of data points in the same direction and fits well with basic theory and many other observations, I tend to give more weight to that.

If you can present data for the yield and total production in the northern states from around 1858 through 1866 then please do. The US data I came across for yield stops at 1866...calculating before that would be problematic anyway for the country as a whole due to the rebellion. And while that yield value was on the low side, similarly low yields were common, happening in five of the next 20 years. I would expect the war years to have depressed yields per acre and/or reduced acreage in production due to the war--less labor, and production disruption.

The wheat production value I've seen for 1860 is 173 million bushels, not "the 100 million" you stated. This was roughly the same as production in 1866 (170 million bushels.)

I corrected those figures, I have no idea why I wrote those numbers because my source showed 100 million for 1850 and 173 million for 1860. Still the revised figures demonstrate a constant increase in production that would continue for many years.

I'll go with Gavin Wright and Sam Hilliard, who compared local production with local consumption as part of their basis for concluding that the South as a whole was very close to self-sufficient.

 

[dvrmte]

And this also indicates what is being said, that many regions were not self-sufficient.



It is precisely this deficiency in Southern infrastructure that makes it more likely that the Cotton states with their coastal/river production and transport would be "importing" more from Northern states. They were set up to move material this way. Note however that the Upper South tended to have decent or even good regional infrastructure...and 77% of Southern wheat production, while the Cotton states had very little (7 million bushels/yr in 1860 out of 173 million for the United States.)

When we examined the Texas cattle export issue recently there was some effort to figure out how much beef was being driven to the river and ferried across in the area from Port Hudson to Vicksburg. One of the better indications was the surplus of beef/plummeting value when Vicksburg fell. This coupled with immediate post war exports and pricing suggested a rather large number of cattle were being driven there. My guess based on the limited data was enough to feed a moderate sized Confederate field army year around. I would like to see a real study of this.

Two things, wheat was not the major grain consumed in the South and beef wasn't the favorite meat. Beef was considered inferior to pork in the South.

The big plantation areas along the Mississippi River and the South Carolina coastal areas weren't self-sufficient in some items such as pork and wheat but South Carolina had plenty of rice.