flourish. While these authors made it seem the North-South divide was not entirely significant, the second article focused solely on this divide. Coclanis spends the entire article contemplating the reasons for the sharp contrasts between the two regions, citing startling statistics to illustrate this contrast. Indeed, the discussion of the South in the second reading closely resembles the discussion of Latin America in the first essay. Coclanis focuses on the high level of slave labor, the reliance on large-scale agriculture, the unequal distribution or land, and the relative inequality as prime factors for the South’s economic trends. Simultaneously, he discusses the North’s diverse and flexible enterprise system, its non-reliance on slave labor, its equal distribution of wealth, and its relative equality. Thus, while in the first article the North and South are virtually one and the same, in the second article it seems they are depicted as night and day. In sum, it is obvious these two essays, while similar in nature and methodology, differ greatly in scope and detail. Indeed, both readings bear remarkable semblance to one another as in-depth discussions of capitalist economics related to New World economics. They both have the same basic goal – to compare two distinct regions, one of which has outpaced the other in economic growth, and identify factors to account for this gap. In addition, both pieces seem to pinpoint the same factors, called factor endowments. Each article points to factors such as climate, soil, crop specialization, amount of slave labor, relative equality, and equality with respect to land distribution, wealth distribution, and political power. Finally, the articles both cite these factors as first and foremost while political factors have served to reinforce the differences created by factor endowments. The main difference lies in scope. Because one essay is based on the entire h...
