In last month's column I began a series about the Industrial Revolution, which started about 1750 and ran until about 1850. It arrived in the United States in time for our Civil War. Its effect in the North was enormous, while the South decided it wasn't for them: They would remain an agrarian, labor-based economy.

The Industrial Revolution as it was used by the North allowed that region to develop at least four major battle systems with which it fought the Civil War. These four systems are listed at the end of this column.

I have already mentioned three inventions that changed life worldwide and noted how the changes affected this country, which by the middle of the century had already begun to separate into two sections. The inventions I wrote about were:

n 1769 the steam engine, which was used to power steam railroads and which allowed steamships to sail upstream.

n 1769 the spinning frame and the power loom, which made possible huge production of cotton thread, used to mass-produce cotton fabric.

n 1793 the cotton gin, which supplied deseeded cotton to mills in both England and New England that made the cotton products -- and because slave labor both planted and harvested the cotton and then provided the labor for the cotton gins, the gin made slave labor an economic necessity.

Other Industrial Revolution inventions perfected in time for our Civil War:

n 1820 the canning and preservation of food, starting with glass jars and then using cans. Civil War Application: This allowed fruits and vegetables to be preserved for use at any time in the future and soldiers to have nutritious and varied meals. By 1850, Gail Borden was able to preserve milk in cans.

n 1837 the steel plow, invented by John Deere, cut by half the time it took to plow an acre of land. CWA: This allowed increases in grain production, providing food for the military, civilians and export.

n 1844 the electric telegraph, invented by Samuel Morse, which allowed instant communication anywhere you could run a telegraph line. CWA: This allowed commanders in headquarters to monitor and supervise battles no matter how far-flung.

n 1847 the mechanical reaper by Cyrus McCormick allowed mass growing of grain with crop yields beyond anyone's imagination. CWA: using this reaper, farmers harvested grain up to seven times faster than they had previously been able to. McCormick industrialized food production and made it a consumer product. By 1860, McCormick had sold 80,000 units. During the war, he sold another 250,000 units to Northern farmers. The reaper helped win the war for the North, as the increased grain it produced not only fed Northern armies and civilians, it also replaced Southern cotton as an export item. The dollars earned with these grain exports helped finance the Northern war. Southern losses in export dollars helped bankrupt the Confederacy.

These inventions, which allowed products to be mass-produced, brought enormous changes. All sorts of goods that had formerly been made in the home were now being mass-produced. Craftsmen -- makers of chairs and tables and clocks and shoes and other leather goods -- saw their individual skills replaced by machines, able to mass-produce the goods with the same quality as before, but at a fraction of the price.

These lower-cost products were made in factories by workers. Factories were located in towns and cities, so people looking for work moved from farms and small villages into the cities, starting a huge change in population patterns. Towns and cities became the norm, as opposed to small villages with farm populations.

All these inventions, operated by civilians, helped transform warfare in the Civil War into the "total war" concept in which civilians on the home front, and their production of good, were as vital to the war effort as the men who carried the guns.

The North essentially adopted the Industrial Revolution as its pattern for development and success. "Opportunity" was the biggest concept these new factories gave their workers -- opportunity for any worker willing to work and earn. His or her salary meant a higher standard of living, and as money spread more broadly into society, the northern United States saw the beginning of a middle class. Further, immigrants arriving in the United States saw the North as the land of opportunity; they got a job as their first step in becoming part of the American dream.

The South, the land of the plantation and the yeoman farmer, wedded to a cotton economy, decided to remain with individual hand labor -- slave labor -- as its path to future growth. It rejected building its own factories, preferring to ship cotton to mills in New England and England. It remained an agrarian economy. Wealth was concentrated in the hands of the few: Pre-Civil War, the richest counties in the nation were in Mississippi -- and its slave-based economy offered few opportunities for European immigrants. Accordingly, the South attracted few.

The four battle systems the North used to defeat the South were communications, mechanical labor, transport -- such as railroads and steam ships -- and agriculture and food production.

Details on each of these systems will be in my next column; I shall also list the 11 combat systems the United States used in the Pacific Theater during World War II.

WANT TO WRITE? NED HARRISON is a Greensboro, N. C., writer who specializes in military history and writes a monthly Civil War column for the Roanoke Times. He wants to hear about your ancestors who were part of our Civil War. Write him at News & Record / RT, P. O. Box 20848, Greensboro, NC 27420 or e-mail him at: n-b-h@mindspring.com