The self-sufficing age went out; the commercial age came in.
Prior to 1830 the South had specialized in cotton, as we have seen before, but the adoption of machinery did not extend into that region. The old hand methods continued on, though the production of cotton was six times greater in 1860 than it was in 1830. This increase was due almost wholly to natural increase for, though immigrants poured into the country by hundreds of thousands, they avoided the South on account of slavery and in 1860 there were only eleven cities of more than 800 population in that whole region.
The near Southern states of Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri engaged largely in the growing of tobacco, a crop the slaves were well adapted to cultivate; but, after all, the negro was not kept to grow the crop; the crop was grown as an excuse for breeding the negro. In 1836 a field hand was worth $600; in 1849 he sold up to $1,000, and in 1860 the prime "nigger" brought $1,400 in the Southwest.
A determining factor in the transformation period was the building of the railroads. There were no roads in operation in 1830, but by 1860 there were 30,000 miles of line, extending into all the territory east of the Missouri River. Fifty thousand miles of telegraph lines were erected between 1844 and 1860, and in 1850 letter postage was three cents for distances under 3,000 miles. The isolation of the colonial and pioneer periods was broken. The markets of the world were nearer and ideas found more room in which to spread.
The European situation also helped the transformation in America. The development of Eng-
