Explain why the South failed to benefit from the industrialization and

Explain why the South failed to benefit from the industrialization and economic growth and expansion that characterized the rest of America in the late nineteenth century.

What will be an ideal response?

ANSWER
The South relied heavily on northern investment capital; therefore, it remained a “colonial” economy exporting raw materials and importing more expensive finished goods. White supremacist racial policies depressed wages and restricted the tax base. Sharecropping, reliance on a single crop, and no capital for investment doomed the South to slow economic growth.