re: #62 Backwoods_Sleuth

I think the main thing is that cotton, tobacco and sugarcane agriculture is extremely labor-intensive. Before industrialization, free/underpaid labor was essential for those particular crops to be obscenely profitable.

I’ve heard that owning a sugar plantation in the Caribbean in the 17th and 18th Centuries was the equivalent of being an oil sheik today. They literally made more money than they could spend.