Use the excerpt from the documentation of the Magnolia gins and presses at the Magnolia Plantation in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, to answer the question.
In the decades leading up the Civil War, cotton production
A. increased exponentially in order to keep up with rising market demand.
B. declined as a component of the United States economy.
C. increased the demand for manufactured cloth produced in England.
D. declined because there were insufficient technological gains for ginning.