0, production levels had skyrocketed to just under five million bales (Randall and Donald 36). Cotton was now bringing in nearly $200 million a year, which constituted almost two-thirds of the total export trade (Brinkley et al. 329). "King Cotton" was born, and it soon became a fundamental motive in Southern diplomacy. However, during this short burst of economic prowess, the South failed to realize that it would never be sustained by "King Cotton" alone. What it needed was the guiding hand of "Queen Industry." Eli Whitney soon came to realize that the South would not readily accept change, and decided to take his inventive mind back up to the North, where it could be put to good use. He found his niche in the small arms business. Previously, during two long years of quasi-war with France, Americans had been vexed by the lack of rapidity with which sufficient armaments could be produced. Whitney came to the rescue with the invention of interchangeable parts. His vision of the perfect factory included machines which would produce, from a preshaped mold, the various components needed to build a standard infantry rifle, and workers on an assembly line who would construct it ("Industrial Revolution"). The North, eager to experiment and willing to try anything that smacked of economic progress, decided to test the waters of this inviting new method of manufacture. It did not take the resourceful Northerners very long to actualize Eli Whitney's dream and make mass production a reality. The small arms industry boomed, and kept on booming. By the onset of the Civil War, the confederate states were dolefully noting the fact that there were thirty-eight Union arms factories capable of producing a total of 5,000 infantry rifles per day, compared with their own paltry capacity of 100 (Catton, Glory Road 241). During the mid-1800s, the Industrial Revolution dug its spurs deep into the side of the Northern states. Luckily, immigration numbers were s...
