Slavery: Some Facts or Some Fictions

[clara_barton]

Attempting to start my directed readings on slavery (off to the library to pick up American Slavery, by Peter Kolchin and Time on the Cross: the Economics of American Negro Slavery, by Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman), I found a book review of Time on the Cross that has 'upset' my budding apprentice Civil War knowledge.

The link is: http://eh.net/bookreviews/library/weiss

However, I've excised a portion below:

"
Project 2001: Significant Works in Economic History
Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1974. xviii + 286 pp.
Review Essay by Thomas Weiss, Department of Economics, University of Kansas.
…..
1. Slavery was not a system irrationally kept in existence by owners who failed to perceive or were indifferent to their best economic interests. The purchase of a slave was generally a highly profitable investment which yielded rates of return that compared favorably with the most outstanding investment opportunities in manufacturing.
2. The slave system was not economically moribund on the eve of the Civil War. There is no evidence that economic forces alone would have soon brought slavery to an end without the necessity of a war or other form of political intervention. Quite the contrary; as the Civil War approached, slavery as an economic system was never stronger and the trend was toward even further entrenchment.
3. Slaveowners were not becoming pessimistic about the future of their system during the decade that preceded the Civil War. The rise of the secessionist movement coincided with a wave of optimism. On the eve of the Civil War, slaveholders anticipated an era of unprecedented prosperity.
4. Slave agriculture was not inefficient compared with free agriculture. Economies of large-scale operation, effective management, and intensive utilization of labor and capital made southern slave agriculture 35 percent more efficient than the northern system of family farming.
5. The typical slave field hand was not lazy, inept, and unproductive. On average he was harder-working and more efficient than his white counterpart.
6. The course of slavery in the cities does not prove that slavery was incompatible with an industrial system or that slaves were unable to cope with an industrial regimen. Slaves employed in industry compared favorably with free workers in diligence and efficiency. Far from declining, the demand for slaves was actually increasing more rapidly in urban areas than in the countryside.
7. The belief that slave-breeding, sexual exploitation, and promiscuity destroyed the black family is a myth. The family was the basic unit of social organization under slavery. It was to the economic interest of planters to encourage the stability of slave families and most of them did so. Most slave sales were either of whole families or of individuals who were at an age when it would have been normal for them to have left the family.
8. The material (not psychological) conditions of the lives of slaves compared favorably with those of free industrial workers. This is not to say that they were good by modern standards. It merely emphasizes the hard lot of all workers, free or slave, during the first half of the nineteenth century.
9. Slaves were exploited in the sense that part of the income which they produced was expropriated by their owners. However, the rate of expropriation was much lower than has generally been presumed. Over the course of his lifetime, the typical slave field hand received about 90 percent of the income he produced.
10. Far from stagnating, the economy of the antebellum South grew quite rapidly. Between 1840 and 1860, per capita income increased more rapidly in the south than in the rest of the nation. By 1860 the south attained a level of per capita income which was high by the standards of the time. Indeed, a country as advanced as Italy did not achieve the same level of per capita income until the eve of World War II.
…..
By itself, for example, the finding that farms using slave labor were estimated to have been more efficient than farms using free workers might not have been controversial. It may have been surprising, but that was in part because no one had thought to look before. If that were an isolated finding, only those who worry about the details of estimating production functions would have cared. But it was not an isolated piece of information, it was part of a different view of the slave regime -- the centerpiece of it according to Haskell (1975, p.36). In the Fogel-Engerman scheme the efficiency of southern agriculture was the joint product of shrewd capitalistic planters and hard-working slaves. The innovative, and highly controversial point, was that slaves worked hard because they were rewarded for doing so, not because they were driven to it. Critics pointed out that there was little evidence on rewards; to a large extent this was inferred from the economic outcomes, and from the evidence on the slaves' material standard of living and the hierarchy of occupations in which they were employed, and from the evidence that whipping did not appear to be widely used to motivate the slaves.

In the opinion of Fogel and Engerman, it was the traditional view in which slaves were lazy and not well motivated that gave rise to the false stereotype of black labor that still plagues blacks today (p. 215). In their revised view slaves were hard working; slave labor was of superior quality. Indeed, this helps explain why large slave plantations were much more efficient than free southern farms. "This advantage was not due to some special way in which land or machinery was used, but to the special quality of plantation labor" (p. 209). Ordinary slaves were "... imbued like their masters with a Protestant ethic" (p. 231).
….
And despite the pronouncements by some historians that the book was a "flash in the pan, a bold but now discredited work" (Kolchin, 1992, p. 492), it remains in publication and on the reading lists in economics as well as history courses."

My problem with this historical view is that it flies in the face of the few books I've read on slavery: principally, The Peculiar Institution by Kenneth Stampp. Supplementing that reading, I've done a number of primary documents of slave narratives. In none of these readings do I ever understand the conditions that Fogel and Engerman define and describe of slavery. Those conditions of incentives for better production in the form of rewards, little whipping or cruelty, 90% return on the on production; I've never encountered before.

Being fairly obtuse, I know I must be missing something: what?

[cw1865]

Originally Posted by clara_barton

Over the course of his lifetime, the typical slave field hand received about 90 percent of the income he produced.

Nonsense, at that rate, you're MUCH better off simply offering your land to sharecroppers (tenant farmers) where at the very minimum you're going to get a third.

[elektratig]

Clara,

I take it that your confusion arises mostly from the assertions in the quote about the quality-of-life issues, which are the most difficult to deal with. As Stampp suggests, there were no doubt horrendously cruel and abusive masters, relatively lenient and kind masters, and masters stretched along the entire continuum between the two extremes.

But in considering quality of life, one must remember that slaves labored under some conditions that even the poorest white northerners (think of the immigrants living in NYC's Five Points) never did: the impossibility of advancement, the possibility of sale and family breakup, the sheer degradation of being owned by another person.

Other issues are more easily addressed. Slavery was, in 1860, an economically vigorous institution. Slaves were selling for record prices, and they were increasingly being used for other than agricultural purposes -- railroad building, factories and the like. There is a thread here called "Was Slavery On the Way Out in 1860?" which has more discussion on this.

It may be argued that the South as a whole was shortsighted in investing so much of its wealth in slaves and land, thereby retarding industrial and other development. However, it is hard to fault any individual southerner (on economic grounds) for doing so. Fortunes were made, social status was achieved.

Gavin Wright's The Economy of the Cotton South is universally regarded as the single most important analysis of the southern pre-war economy. It's been a while since I've read it, but I'm pretty sure that Wright concludes that slave labor was as efficient as free labor, but not more so.

This is not to say that the south's slave economy did not present dangers. Wright, again, notes that cotton demand was leveling off while production was increasing. Even without the war, cotton prices would probably have declined substantially during the 1860s. A large-scale shift of slaves to non-agricultural tasks might have created resentment by white urban mechanics facing increased competition.

The "economies of scale" issue is described in somewhat misleading terms. The north suffered an employment shortage. Every yeoman want to own his own farm, not work for someone else. Therefore, there were few reliable hired hands available. Accordingly, the size of the typical northern farm was limited to the number of acres that a man and his family could physically manage themselves. Wealthy southern planters were not so limited. They could hire as many hand as they could afford to buy. In short, the increased size of the larger plantations over the size of northern farms does not demonstrate increased efficiency, simply a difference created by the availability of labor.

On the "optimism" issue, the evidence is mixed. On the one hand, the record high slave prices certainly suggest that southerners were optimistic about their economic prospects and the viability of their institution. On the other hand, there are persistent suggestions in the literature that increasingly rapid economic change in the south was generating nervousness and disorientation

http://www.amazon.com/Political-Econ...3269755&sr=1-3

[cash]

Originally Posted by clara_barton

My problem with this historical view is that it flies in the face of the few books I've read on slavery: principally, The Peculiar Institution by Kenneth Stampp. Supplementing that reading, I've done a number of primary documents of slave narratives. In none of these readings do I ever understand the conditions that Fogel and Engerman define and describe of slavery. Those conditions of incentives for better production in the form of rewards, little whipping or cruelty, 90% return on the on production; I've never encountered before.

Being fairly obtuse, I know I must be missing something: what?

Fogel and Engerman's conclusions on slavery's profitability and efficiency have held up well, especially the profitability, which has been confirmed by a number of studies, notably Gavin Wright's work, and they confirmed some earlier studies, most notably Conrad and Meyers' study and Stampp's work.

The 90% return and the 0.7 whippings per year conclusions have suffered in the criticism and haven't been confirmed. Altogether, though, the book is a landmark study that gets much more right than it gets wrong. It's overturned a number of previous beliefs about slavery.

Regards,
Cash

[unionblue]

clara barton,

Perhaps some background on slave revolts might be in order.

Slave Revolts

http://www.footnote.com/storypage/1437

Be sure to scroll down the page to get more detail on the dates presented at the top of the page.

You also might want to read the following article by Frederick Douglass about life on a plantation for a slave.

http://history-world.org/a_general_s...e_slave_pl.htm

Sincerely,
Unionblue

[ole]

The 90% return and the 0.7 whippings per year conclusions have suffered in the criticism and haven't been confirmed.

Have though for a few days about that 90 percent return claim. Then I notice that it's presented as over a slave's lifetime. I suppose that, if we figure that the average slave might live 60 years, 35 of those might have been as a full hand--25 of those might be considered as not earning his keep. It would be difficult to figure a return in such activities as clearing fields or grooming horses. The obvious measure would be the rental income he earns or the yield on the parcel he is charged with.

It remains that 90 percent can be defended only by using some hocus pocus that escapes me.

The 0.7 whippings per slave per year: If we take at face value the claim that most masters never whipped a slave, then someone is getting more than his share of beatings. And, as the figure counts men, women and children, presumably of all ages, those who actually got the whippings must have gotten a lot of them.

Guess I'll have to read the whole book (it's actually the 5th down in the stack behind the printer. That's a first.)

ole

[clara_barton]

I begin to see that as many other issues concerning the CW, nothing is quite black and white. There's a continuum of ideas, behaviors, etc. The one clear issue, though, is the fact that the 'peculiar institution' was the cause of the War.

I guess a broader, more comprehensive, truthful view of the War and the surrounding issues comes over time from reading/discussing good historical works.

Unionblue the links are enlightening.

[whitworth]

I could accept one holding that slavery was a moral evil. However, that did not mean that slavery was unprofitable. Southerners became rich in the ownership of slaves and a survey of Virginia counties was done before the war, showing that counties with the most slaves, contributed the most taxes to the state.
Barring slaves from the territories, as proposed by Lincoln, was a clear threat to slavery. It would have decreased the opportunity to sell excess slaves from one area to the other. Such a barring would have affected, adversely, individual slave prices.
The Confederate Constitution expressed the right of slave-owners to take their slaves to any state or territory of the Confederate States, not limited by any state in the Confederacy. Indirectly, the Confederate Constitution expresses the economic opportunities of owning slaves. Why would any government protect something that is economic unviable?

[whitworth]

"However, the rate of expropriation was much lower than has generally been presumed. Over the course of his lifetime, the typical slave field hand received about 90 percent of the income he produced."

Economically, that is not possible. Plantation owners were getting a great return on their investment in slaves. One need only look at the life of many plantation owners, their homes, their education, their standard of living, and then compare it to the average Southern farmer with no slaves.

[Will Posey]

I think some slaves had lives of living hell, some had lives much better than what they had experienced in Africa, and some found slavery life to be tolerable survival.

All, I suspect, would rather have been free.