Use the excerpt from the documentation of the Magnolia gins and presses at the Magnolia Plantation in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, to answer the question.
Using the excerpt, answer (a) and (b).
(a) In 2-3 sentences, explain the significance of the increase in cotton production in the South for the industrializing North.
(b) In 2-3 sentences, analyze the relationship between the mutual market dependence on cotton for the agricultural South and the industrializing North and the different economic interests of the two regions.
Excerpt from the documentation of the Magnolia gins and presses at the Magnolia Plantation in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana
Cotton ginning includes the cleaning and other preliminary processes involved in preparing seed cotton, as well as the separating of the fibers from the seed. When harvested, cotton usually contains dirt, hulls, leaf fragments, and other material which must be removed if the ginned lint is to have the highest market value.” In short, the ginning process involves not just a single machine, but a sequence of devices designed to separate lint from sticks, trash, hulls and seeds. Separation of trash and other plant materials from the cotton boll is accomplished as the cotton is transported from wagon to gin to condenser. Seeds are removed by the saw gin, a variation of the invention first patented by Eli Whitney in 1794.
Ginning capacity improved throughout the nineteenth century. Gin size was generally rated by the number of saws, although increases in their diameter and speed to some extent also increased capacity. In 1830, a Mississippi plantation, sixty-saw gin cleaned seed cotton enough to make approximately four bales; just over two decades later, a fifty-five saw gin produced by Daniel Pratt yielded five bales in just 12-1/2 hours. More efficient pressing technologies likely would amplify the superiority of the later gins, whose bale-output was measured at nearly 500 pounds per bale. By the Civil War, eighty-saw gins had become common on the largest plantations, with output rated at about ten bales per gin per day.
