Change from Agrarian Society to an Industrial Society
...en the industrial base of the country was beginning to rapidly expand through technological advances. In 1865 America was coming to grips with the end of the civil war and the beginning of the reconstruction period. The American economic structure varied vastly from the North to the South. During the post-civil war era the South’s rail system was in a state of disrepair. This inhibited the flow of goods to and from this region. So to combat this problem many banks and individual investors from both the North and South began to invest in the railroads of the South. This was occurring at the same time that advances in technology were happening throughout the country. These advances included those related to farming and farming tools. This in turn made farming much more efficient than ever before. This improvement came as a double edge sword for the farmers and the farming community. The advance in farm technology such as the cotton gin and various other farm instruments were being introduced at the same time that the West was being opened up to numerous small farms and tenant farming (share cropping) was beginning to become deeply entrenched in the economic fibers of these regions. The raw goods that were produced were sent to the northern factories where they were refined into finished goods and sent to the market (both foreign and domestic) to be sold. This system of economics allowed for the North to reinvest their wealth into their factories and infrastructure making the economic divide wider and wider between the North and the South. This is not to say that the South was totally without an industrial base. To say that would be anything but true. As the advances in industrialization became more and more efficient the factory life began to spread throughout the South as well, most notably the Alabama steel industry. Once the in...