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Old 09-29-2013, 06:49 PM
 
Location: Berwick, Penna.
16,214 posts, read 11,290,935 times
Reputation: 20827

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I can see another parallel here between the revival of cotton production after the invention of the mechanical cotton gin and the Pax Americana fueled by the near-complete absence of foreign competition after World War II. The increased remand for cotton goods, and the raw material necessary to produce them, was made possible primarily by the opening up of new cotton-growing territory in Mississippi, Arkansas and Texas.

Furthermore, plantation owners in past-their-prime cotton-growing areas often supplemented their income by the breeding of slaves. Central Virginia, particularly the area north of Richmond, was a center of this at one time, and groups of adolescents were sometimes force-marched to the new cotton lands.

The depletion of even those new territories in the days before chemical and artificial fertilizer would, however, have had an effect eventually, just as globalization is acting to equalize industrial labor costs.

Last edited by 2nd trick op; 09-29-2013 at 06:59 PM..
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Old 09-29-2013, 07:05 PM
 
31,387 posts, read 36,975,677 times
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From your link:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rush71 View Post
some historians and researchers have a different account about that.

The French had previously built a railroad through Panama, linking the Atlantic to the Pacific, an undertaking that relied heavily on slave labour.
Ok...

But the French abolished slavery in all her colonies in 1848, Britain abolished slavery throughout the Empire in 1834. Slavery was abolished in Columbia 1757 so where did these slaves who you claimed worked on the Panama canal come from?

And as you link unequivocally points out:
"
The Caribbean workers, like their slave ancestors, were not willing to take this discrimination and abuse lying down. Strikes, disturbances and riots were common, and a number of workers fled into the surrounding jungles. Some workers would meet ships carrying newcomers and warn them about poor living conditions and ill treatment. The shadow of slavery still loomed; new arrivals were warned about the dangers of vaccination, which, they said, left 'an inextinguishable mark thereby forever preventing their leaving the Isthmus'."
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Old 09-29-2013, 08:23 PM
 
Location: Sumner, WA
358 posts, read 1,055,265 times
Reputation: 251
It only would've ended after some sort of uprising. I just realized this, but I am so proud the North knew slavery was wrong.
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Old 09-29-2013, 09:32 PM
LLN
 
Location: Upstairs closet
5,265 posts, read 10,694,982 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ovcatto View Post
I swear sometimes that Econ 101 in the hands of some is like giving a load gun to a five year old...

Yes capital/labor curves only tell us at what point the cost of labor exceeds the cost of equipment. In the case of cotton harvesting (as I have already pointed out) a machine capable of efficiently harvesting cotton did not become commercially viable until the post WWII era. Additionally it would appear that you and others are ignorant of the fact that slaves were allowed/required to grow subsistent levels of crops and build their own shacks and provide only the barest minimum of cloth from which they sewed their own cloths so the cost of "providing" for slaves was at a minimum at best.
I don't understand yor text at all. But the use of the word "ignorant" exposes your agenda. If you want to believe your version of history go ahead, matters not to me.

I can think of no one today that likes the idea of slaves on American soil. I also would wager that many wish the first slave had never been brought to this country. It is a sad part of our history, no doubt.

Human rights aside, it was a bad econmic decision, stifled innovation, and helped to create a socio-economic divide in the south. One side of my family had significant slave holdings, the other side were impoverished frontiersmen and women. There is a huge contrast between family history and stories passed down.
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Old 09-29-2013, 10:14 PM
 
14,612 posts, read 17,424,739 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Toyman at Jewel Lake View Post
The premise was that slavery would have ended because it wasn't economically viable by the mid-late 1800s.

Is there any truth to this premise? And if so, when would slavery have "died out" on it's own, without the slaughter of the civil war, and the decades of harm it did?
It's a highly speculative question, but most of the economics of slavery was passe by 1890 when the population of USA was 63 million (up from 23 million in 1850). The near tripling of the population probably meant that labor would be more economically viable than slavery. By this point the last of the slaves were freed in the new world without resorting to violent war.

1886: Slavery abolished in Cuba
1888: May, 13th Brazil passes Golden Law, abolishing slavery without indemnities to slaveowners or aid to newly freed slaves.

It should be noted that nearly ten times as many slaves were imported into Brazil as were taken into British North America.
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Old 09-29-2013, 11:28 PM
 
31,387 posts, read 36,975,677 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LLN View Post
I don't understand yor text at all.
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.

Quote:
I also would wager that many wish the first slave had never been brought to this country. It is a sad part of our history, no doubt.
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.

Quote:
it was a bad econmic decision, stifled innovation, and helped to create a socio-economic divide in the south. One side of my family had significant slave holdings, the other side were impoverished frontiersmen and women. There is a huge contrast between family history and stories passed down.
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.
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Old 09-30-2013, 09:50 AM
Status: "117 N/A" (set 2 days ago)
 
12,920 posts, read 13,611,483 times
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One business model today that might be similar to the plantation system is the junkyard. Buy 20 or 30 acres of prime industrial land,make a little on towing ,sell some parts but the objective is to collect metal and crush it once a year. Buying land to store more cars, sell parts and tow to pay taxes and stay EP regulated but the entire operation makes money on how many junk cars you can store.

At the outbreak of the Civil war many plantation owners left their land and buildings to fall in and tried to hide their slaves or take as many who would go with them when they fled.
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Old 09-30-2013, 10:41 AM
 
Location: NE Mississippi
25,440 posts, read 17,128,344 times
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So if the Civil War had not occurred, who out there believes that slavery would still exist in southern states today?
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Old 09-30-2013, 11:23 AM
 
Location: Vermont
11,754 posts, read 14,611,102 times
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Why do you ask? How long could a civilized society justify tolerating such an unmitigated evil?
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Old 09-30-2013, 11:32 AM
 
396 posts, read 363,687 times
Reputation: 138
by nature, Humans are evil, is just the level of it................what is more evil than slavery?........Wars?

This civilized society dropped 2 "A" bombs in 2 cities full of civilians and the majority accepted it as good and celebrated.........just saying......
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