Business Culture in the Old South

1. The Southern Paradox
   1. An "American" Entrepreneurial Culture
      1. Rapid Growth
      2. Prosperity
      3. Urban-Industrial Ambition
   2. But--A Different set of Rules
      1. Plantation Slavery
      2. White Supremacy
   3. Increasing Divergence From the North
      1. The Failure of Southern Emancipation
      2. A New Lease on Life--The Cotton Boom
         1. The OPEC of Its Day--Control of Raw Material Critical to the Industrial World
         2. Adaptability to Slave Plantation Agriculture
2. The Business of the Plantation
   1. Labor Supply
      1. Purchasing Additional Workers--Easier Than Hiring or Begetting Them
      2. Remaining Constraints
         1. No More Transatlantic Trade After 1808
         2. Maldistribution of Domestic Slaves
      3. Solution--the Domestic Slave Trade
   2. Secret of Plantation Profitability
      1. Strong Cotton Prices
      2. Regimentation of Slave Labor
      3. Expropriation of Slave Product
3. The Slave Plantation and Regional Development
   1. Suppressing African-American Entrepreneurship and Human-Capital Devleopment
   2. An Overspecialized Economy
      1. Entrepreneurial Overcommittment to Plantation
      2. A Simple Commercial Structure--The Factor
         1. Replicating the Same Enterprise on Different Ground
         2. Shallow and Poorly Articulated Markets
            1. Few Merchants and Towns
            2. Inadequate Transportation Development
            3. Little Stimulus to Manufacturing
   3. A Technologically Primitive Economy
      1. Plantation Technology--Gangs and Hoes
      2. Little Farm Mechanization--Why Cyrus McCormick Went to Chicago
4. The Outlook
   1. Short-Run--Prosperity (for Planters)
   2. Long-Run--A Train Wreck
      1. Commodity Booms Don't Last
      2. The Slavery Issue and the Cataclysm of the Civil War