The cotton gin made cotton farming so profitable that it discouraged the South from industrializing.

Invented by Eli Whitney in 1793, the cotton gin revolutionized the processing of short-staple cotton by mechanically removing seeds. Before this invention, a single person could clean only about one pound of cotton per day. Whitney's machine increased this output to 50 pounds daily, making cotton the most lucrative crop in the world.By the mid-19th century, the American South produced 75% of the world's cotton supply. This massive profitability created a 'path dependency' where Southern capital was consistently reinvested into land and enslaved labor rather than infrastructure. While the North developed a complex network of 22,000 miles of railroad track by 1860, the South had only 9,000 miles, much of which did not connect major cities.Historians often point to this as the 'Dutch Disease' of the 19th century, where one booming sector kills off all others. In 1860, the South produced less than 10% of the nation's manufactured goods. This industrial stagnation proved fatal during the Civil War, as the Confederacy struggled to produce basic military supplies like rifles, uniforms, and locomotive parts. The region's reliance on 'King Cotton' left its economy fragile and unable to sustain a long-term total war against the industrialized North.