You zero in on that "40%" thing, and completely ignore how New York had sewn up the entire market. Though why you think 40% of the entire profit is reasonable for people who just moved the material, I don't know. Do Shippers nowadays get 40% of the Net?
That article clearly demonstrates that New York would have taken a massive economic hit if the South had established normalized European trade.
But what is truth to people bent on dogma?
“Do Shippers nowadays get 40% of the Net?”
Now your reading comprehension is in question!
“Even when the Southern cotton bound for Europe didn’t put in at the wharves of Sandy Hook or the East River, unloading and reloading, the combined income from interests, commissions, freight, insurance, and other profits took perhaps 40 cents into New York of every dollar paid for southern cotton.”
It wasn’t net, and it wasn’t just shipping.
What made you think that I wasn’t going to read it? I especially liked this part:
“So how, in 25 years or so, did this national conflict shift to Southern slavery — which was the same thing it had been in 1820 and ‘30 — so much so that the declarations of independence of the various Southern states in 1860 and ‘61 seem to make it their chief reason for secession?”
Depends on the material & methods used, and especially if ownership changes hands before transport & warehousing, then sure, distributor markups can easily be 40% or more on sale to end users.
But in this case: 40% is a ridiculous number, because 40% of what?
You don't know, can only speculate.
It looks to me like 1860 cotton sold in New Orleans for $.10 per pound and in the Northeast for $.135 per pound, meaning 40% is roughly the difference -- for freight etc.
That 40% would be the same regardless of who carried it, so if Southerners wanted to dabble in shipping, insurance or banking, they were perfectly free to do so -- and who says that some didn't?