"One problem might be the ability of the state to pay off their projects"
Cump,
I can see where that might be a problem for them. I am wondering, if perhaps you might have some info interms of how much the Federals granted to the various states in regards to state populations? I can see where the Feds spent monies to build railroads and other improvements out west in the territories. I am reminded of Wally Hickle who was Governor of Alaska in the not to distant past. He proposed building a rairoad out a 100 miles from Anchorage. His advisors pointed out to him that there was not much population where he wanted to build. His reply to them was that there was no population there because they had no way to get there and no way to recieve supplies, etc. and if they built the railroad the people would come. They built the railroad tracks and indeed the people did come. I think that is what happened in our western territory also. As far as the northeast and the southeast is concerned, they were already occupied and since they were, venture capitalist would provide the funds to improve infrastructure where it was needed and profitable. Kind of like today, no one in their right mind builds anything with out doing an economic impact study. To do less if to loose your money in bad projects. Business people don't do that. I must say, that I don't understand why no one bothered to build fabric mills and other things that could be sold to the southern folk. As someone has pointed out, they had some good harbors in the south. They could have recieved their imports in those harbors and shipped their exports from the same harbors. I don't think that anyone was trying to stop them from doing that. I realize that they seemed to be very backward in terms of manufacturing but they could have learned the process. During the conflict,what they made in terms of weapons of war was good, they just never were able to increase their production beyound start up quanities. I think at Talasse they were only able to build less than 500 very good carbines but that was not very good in regards to output. Maybe that was the problem.
FC