What was the economic imbalance of the North and South?

Can anyone describe to me what the economic imbalance was like before the civil war, some time around the 1850's? My teacher always talks about wealth in the north and the industrial rev. vs. plantation agriclture, but I don't really understand what he's trying to say...

ThanksWhat was the economic imbalance of the North and South?
The Northern states contained over 92% of the manufacturing capacity of the country. The North possessed over 82 % of the existing railroad tracks. 90% of the countries canals (water highways of the day) were in the North. Thus manufactured goods, and rapid transport of them was nearly an exclusive domain of the North. The South was primarily an agrarian economy. They produced cotton, tobacco and foodstuffs. The food was largely for local consumption as the North could use canals and railroads to obtain grain from the western states.

Southerners, therefore, had to "import" most of their necesseties from the North. Although formal colonialism has mostly ended, the economic imbalance created then has intensified as the industrial world has increased its rate of technological change.



Most of the southern states and plantation owners had huge debts to banks and governments in the North which they had little hope of fully repaying.

The result wa\s a net flow of capital from the southern states to the northern ones. Tariff laws and other trade restrictions continued to prevent the even spread of industry in every region. Economic development can only occur by the reinvestment of profits; but the southern states were making few profits to invest outside of the top 8% of slaveowning landowners.