[4] The steady increase in the
production of cotton explains the fall in price down to 1845. In 1822
the crop was a half-million bales; in 1831, a million; in 1838, a
million and a half; and in 1840-1843, two million. By this time the
world's consumption of cotton goods began to increase so rapidly that,
in spite of the increase in Southern crops, the price kept rising. Three
million bales were gathered in 1852, three and a half million in 1856,
and the remarkable crop of five million bales in 1860.[5]
Here we have data to explain largely the economic development of the
South. By 1822 the large-plantation slave system had gained footing; in
1838-1839 it was able to show its power in the cotton "corner;" by the
end of the next decade it had not only gained a solid economic
foundation, but it had built a closed oligarchy with a political policy.
The changes in price during the next few years drove out of competition
many survivors of the small-farming free-labor system, and put the slave
_regime_ in position to dictate the policy of the nation. The zenith of
the system and the first inevitable signs of decay came in the years
1850-1860, when the rising price of cotton threw the whole economic
energy of the South into its cultivation, leading to a terrible
consumption of soil and slaves, to a great increase in the size of
plantations, and to increasing power and effrontery on the part of the
slave barons.
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