The great factor of communication was dividing the West, which had been so much of a unit in 1830, into three sections: the Lake region, affiliated with the Northeast; the southern belt, looking to New Orleans and other southern seaports; and the Ohio and Missouri valleys, the battle-ground of water and rail transportation, of northern and southern influences. The division of the country at the time of the Civil War was to show that by that time iron had become stronger than water. Another dividing element in the West was agriculture. Throughout the South cotton culture was coming to be everywhere the dominant industry. Along the rich river bottoms of the Tennessee it was replacing the more diversified farming of the frontier period; it spread down the banks of the Mississippi from the Ohio to the coast, and up the valleys of its western branches. Cotton culture carried with it slavery and the plantation system. Everywhere the tendency was toward larger estates, greater investments of capital, and the crowding out of the small proprietor, as had been the case in Virginia and South Carolina, although in no other state even in 1860 had the process developed so far as it had in South Carolina by 1830. Everywhere other products were raised, but everywhere the cotton planters were coming to be the ruling class. Spread of tion system. the planta in the North west. In the Northwest the emergence from frontier conditions Agriculture was characterized by more general diffusion of wealth and improvement of agricultural methods. The successful farmer put a smaller portion of his profits into the cost of living than in the South, for social exactions were not so high. There was a widespread increase of comfort, but fewer mansions and liveried equipages. The portion of his profits which was devoted to business was spent for labor-saving machinery instead of for slaves. In 1833 the McCormick reaper was invented, after 1840 its use increased rapidly, and by 1860 twenty thousand were manufactured yearly. To a small extent the use of fertilizers was begun, and in general, through |