<P> The U.S. economy was primarily agricultural in the early 19th century . Westward expansion plus the building of canals and the introduction of steamboats opened up new areas for agriculture . Much land was cleared and put into growing cotton in the Mississippi valley and in Alabama, and new grain growing areas were brought into production in the Mid West . Eventually this put severe downward pressure on prices, particularly of cotton, first from 1820 to 1823 and again from 1840 to 1843 . </P> <P> Before the Industrial Revolution most cotton was spun and woven near where it was grown, leaving little raw cotton for the international marketplace . World cotton demand experienced strong growth due to mechanized spinning and weaving technologies of the Industrial Revolution . Although cotton was grown in India, China, Egypt, the Middle East and other tropical and sub-tropical areas, the Americas, particularly the U.S., had sufficient suitable land available to support large scale cotton plantations, which were highly profitable . A strain of cotton seed brought from Mexico to Natchez, Mississippi in 1806 would become the parent genetic material for over 90% of world cotton production today; it produced bolls that were three to four times faster to pick. The cotton trade, excluding financing, transport and marketing, was 6 percent or less of national income in the 1830s . Cotton became the United States' largest export . </P> <P> Sugar cane was being grown in Louisiana, where it was refined into granular sugar . Growing and refining sugar required a large amount of capital . Some of the nation's wealthiest people owned sugar plantations, which often had their own sugar mills . </P> <P> Southern plantations, which grew cotton, sugar cane and tobacco, used negro slave labor . </P>

4 issues in america in the early 1900s