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It really isn't that hard to understand if you indeed understand "labor capital curves."
A producer of a good will replace labor if and when the cost of labor is greater than the cost of machinery to produce an equal or greater amount of widgets, or in this case cotton.
Your assumption and the assumption of others is that the cost of slaves exceeded the cost of machines. The problem with that argument is that you assume, without a shred of evidence that it was more costly to maintain a slave workforce than it would to hire free force. So what were the actual costs for maintaining a slave workforce? Food, the slaves grew their own. Housing, the slaves built there own. Clothing, a few scraps of fabric that they would sew into their own garments. So what were the cost for maintaining a slave workforce once the initial investment in their purchase (keeping in mind that slaves were a self-reproducing commodity)?
I also raised the point that the first device for the mechanical harvesting of cotton was not developed until the late 1940's. If that is the case your "labor capital curve" would clearly indicate that the costs of slave labor was less expensive than any other alternative.
That is a bet that I would not take because slave owners like Thomas Jefferson were very clear in their correspondence that they believe that slavery was an curse, not that it stopped them from profiting from it.
As a matter of social policy slavery did stifle innovation, created a socio-economic divide across the entire nation. But that is a macro public policy view. But, for those engaged in profiting from slavery, slave intensive business was very profitable for those who engaged in it, be they southern planter, New York banker or a New England ship owner and that is the subject of the thread. As a result it is nothing but wishful thinking that slavery would have ceased on its own within a decade or even two of 1860. The growth in the slave population, the rising productivity of slave labor intensive agriculture in 1860 gives not the slightest indication that slave intensive agriculture was in decline and not one poster proffering such a wishful belief has offered a shred of evidence to the contrary.
Would have slavery ceased by means other than a civil war. very possibly. Without the intervention of federal authority... highly unlikely if the history of Reconstruction and the resistance to civil rights is any guide.
I feel your responses are long on emotion, short on reality. No point in arguing.
I am sorry the subject of slavery is so painful. It has been 150 years since the end of slavery.. Your focus should be on the windshield not the rear view mirror.
.....I am sorry the subject of slavery is so painful. It has been 150 years since the end of slavery.. Your focus should be on the windshield not the rear view mirror.
Although you were responding not to me, but to another poster, the above is just plain silly. The topic of this thread is precisely the "rear view mirror" because it seeks to look back into United States history. This is, after all, the History Forum.
So if the Civil War had not occurred, who out there believes that slavery would still exist in southern states today?
I doubt that slavery could exist into the 21st century. It was widely criticized in Europe in the 18th century. At most, it could not have survived the cultural upheaval of the mass immigration particularly from 1890-1910.
But I do think you could make a case that it would have survived another 25-35 years without the war.
Although you were responding not to me, but to another poster, the above is just plain silly. The topic of this thread is precisely the "rear view mirror" because it seeks to look back into United States history. This is, after all, the History Forum.
Quoting out of context often leads to folly.
In the quoted response you succeeded.
The poster to whom I responded appears to be hung up on the terrible nature of slavery, rather than examining the economic issues which undeniably would have ended, on its own, without war, as occurred in the rest of the Western Hemisphere, the heinous system of slavery.
The research of Fogel and Engerman,to which the poster seems to trumpet, has been soundly discredited. For years. He sounds like a broken record.
Coincidently, and a bit uncanny is a piece in the Sept 27th Economist again addressing the question of the institution of slavery's natural demise (to which most relevant scholars) now and for some time have agreed.
Your observation that this is after all a history forum is a classic statement of the obvious. One that studies history, while not using current resources and current understanding, will contribute little to advancing discussion.
It's a no brainer that slavery would have ended and it would have ended soon. Capital labor curve and all that. Tractors, fertilizers, means of transport.
Look how much manual labor has been replaced by automation.
Plus, and this may be my bias on human nature....if the economics would have favored slave labor, I doubt the institution would have gone away. Sorry, but examples of human greed and exploitation neither started nor stopped with slavery.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LLN
I feel your responses are long on emotion, short on reality.
Although you were responding not to me, but to another poster, the above is just plain silly. The topic of this thread is precisely the "rear view mirror" because it seeks to look back into United States history. This is, after all, the History Forum.
Speculation about possibilities of changes in history is done by many (if not all) historians. Barbara Tuchman, one of USA's most noted historians, wrote whole books about "what if" scenarios.
The original post was a sensible question. It's on the same level as asking "What if the 80 year old Porfirio DÃaz had chosen to retire instead of run for President of Mexico one more time in 1910?". Would the civil war have happened anyway with his successor? Or would a million lives have been spared?
One could also ask "what if the European powers had sided with the South and they won their independence". Then how long would the South have maintained slavery?
Slavery had 250 years to "end on its own" Perhaps one day we will voluntarily stop using gas in our cars for some better alternative. IMO The Civil War put an end to the; buying ,selling, hoarding and owning of labor, but virtually eveything else stayed the same for quite a while after. I knew people who were still picking cotton in Mississippi as late as 1970 and not making much money at it.
Slavery had 250 years to "end on its own" Perhaps one day we will voluntarily stop using gas in our cars for some better alternative. IMO The Civil War put an end to the; buying ,selling, hoarding and owning of labor, but virtually eveything else stayed the same for quite a while after. I knew people who were still picking cotton in Mississippi as late as 1970 and not making much money at it.
Cotton represented 75% of all U.S. exports. Guess who financed the cotton plantations with loans and lines of credit? It wasn't southern bankers. Guess shipped the cotton to British ports? It wasn't Capt. Johnny Reb. What nascent industry that played no small part in development of northern manufacturing depend upon? Cotton!
That would have been the English textile mills, who were the customers for southern cotton. Unfortunately for the South, public sentiment in England was strongly anti-slavery, so England cut off support for the South at secession.
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