How do all these numbers add up?"
DiogenesLmap: "I got that number from a source BroJoeK linked me to a couple of years ago.
I can go back through old messages and find it again, or perhaps BroJoeK remembers where that was?"
As I posted here, among other places, the true 1860 number for Confederate state cotton exports was ~$200 million, which alone accounted for roughly 50% of the US total ~$400 million in exports, including "specie" (California gold & Nevada silver).
I also pointed out that while Southerners imported relatively little from abroad, they did "import" about $200 million per year from the North (i.e., woolen clothing, shoes & iron products like stoves, farm equipment & railroad materials), and that's partly how Northerners earned money to pay for their own raw-material imports.
In that sense you might even say that virtually 100% of Southern cotton export earnings eventually ended up in Northern hands.
I should also mention again that the Confederate states' 1860 GDP totaled circa $650 million, or roughly 15% of the US $4.4 billion total GDP.
However, here DiogenesLamp's 60% figure is something quite different.
What he claims by it is that, first, nearly all Southern produced cotton effectively trans-shipped to NYC before export overseas and second, that somehow New Yorkers absconded with 60% of "profits" from such "Southern production".
Indeed, there was some number like 60% at some point claimed by a NYC booster referring to New Yorkers' earnings from transportation, warehousing, insurance, loans & supplies sold to Southerners.
But the truth cannot be what that NYC booster claimed, much less what DiogenesLamp makes of it.
For starters, the vast majority of Southern cotton exports shipped directly from ports like New Orleans & Mobile, not through New York.
So, if New York packet ships picked up small lots of cotton along the East Coast inland waterway, for consolidation in New York warehouses, that can only have been a small percentage of the South's total cotton exports.
But the real problem here is DiogenesLamp's abject, abysmal economic ignorance -- he really does sound like somebody trained in Marxist thought-rubbish with no real clues on how businesses work.
Again, for starters: sales dollars are almost never 100% "profits" -- there are always legitimate expenses that must be subtracted before you can even begin to think about "profits".
And the word "profits" never really stands alone -- there are always modifiers like "gross profits", "profits before taxes & interest", "net profits" and, my favorite: "net-net-net profits" meaning what's left, if anything, after you subtract out all the many expenses your business must pay or reserve for.
Typically, net-net taxable profits run circa 10% of sales dollars.
Now, when it comes to US cotton exports, as SoCal Pubbie & others have pointed out, most planters worked through Southern "factors" and bankers who, first, loaned them money to plant their crops, then paid for the cotton when it was ready to ship.
Local farmers took their produce to local markets for sale, then buyers (i.e. "factors") consolidated & shipped it to big cities & overseas customers.
So, just like every other businessmen in the world, when Southern farmers/planters in 1860 sold their produce, those sales dollars were not "profits" because, first & foremost, farmers had to pay-off everyone who'd loaned them money, supplies or hours of work.
What was then left might first be called "gross profits" but how much there was depended entirely on the farmer's individual circumstances.
Bottom line: very few Southern planters shipped their produce directly to New York for sale there.
Instead they sold in their local markets to "factors" or other financers who then transported & sold again in big-cities or to foreign customers.
So I think DiogenesLamp's 60% number is meaningless.
Steamboat with cotton on Mississippi River: