The South is Gonna Rise Again!

[Art_from_Ark]

17. Fayetteville, Arkansas, is not in the cotton belt

There were a few slaves there, but the economy thrived because, as the Union soldier noted, the town was a center of learning and culture.

And the problems you describe in the South were also quite prevalent in the North. Whereas the South utilized slave labor, the North had no problems with exploiting child labor, and immigrant labor. The great steel mills of Pittsburgh and coal mines of Pennsylvania were manned by men who worked 'til they died, with no safety net, because the steel and coal barons knew they could easily hire replacements when workers died. And a lot of those replacements were kids. And the farms of the North utilized a different kind of slave labor, more like indentured servants-- farm kids who were forced to work on their parents' farms until they reached adulthood. My great-grandfather, for example, took my grandfather out of school in his senior year in high school in Kansas just so he could spend one more year working on the farm. And that was apparently fairly common.