The Northern and Southern colonies have radically differant economic systems.
The Southern colonies have an economy based solely on cash crops. Cash crops are crops grown primarily to sell. The cash crops produced in the southern colonies are rice, indigo, and tabacco. The growing of cash crops led to large commercial estates where workers live and cultivate land for the landowner, these estates are called plantations. Most of the people who worked on the plantations are indentured servants. When indentured servants complete the amount of work specified on their contract they become what is known as backcountry farmers. Here is where the classes emerge in the Southern colonies, at the top you have the wealthy plantation owners, then at the bottom you have backcountry farmers, and slightly below them indentured servants and slaves. The wealthy plantation owners, also called the gentry, control most of the land as well as the government. The Backcountry farmers are left scrambling for whatever they can get.
Whereas in the Northern colonies the economy is mostly based on fishing, whaling, lumbering and shipbuilding, and they mainly export raw materials. The socail classes up north have more of a middle class, and not such extremes as the south (very rich or exetermly poor.) At the top you have merchants, much like like the Gentry of the south. Then you have the artisans, skilled workers such as blacksmiths or cobblers. Equal to artisans were innkeepers and retailers. Below them are the workers without skills, and finally at the bottom the slaves and indentured servants. This created many jobs and the rapid growth of cities, especially around docks and harbours.
there is a huge differance between the econmy of the Northern and Southern colonies, some of this may be based on soil climate or surrounding land, bugt other things just from the formatting of the society.
