- Joined
- Aug 25, 2012
It would stand to reason though, if mechanization was forcing sharecropper labor need reduction, it would also have forced slavery need reductions, as it created a ever declining workforce need once the transition starts.
Whether that need had been filled by slaves or sharecropper family labor, the need was going to steadily decline.
I agree. At some point manufacturing and other industries could not use all the excess labor. But at what point?
I will use my father's father for an example. My grandfather owned a large farm and had not mechanize in the teens. Had it not been for the depression he might have mechanized in the 1920s or 1930s. However, during the depression young men knocked on his door practically begging for a job. He hired them but their only pay was room and board, they received no money. My grandmother took on a hired girl to help her, again for room and board. Because of the very low cost labor, my grandfather delayed the expense of mechanizing his agricultural business.
I would assume slavery would work in much the same way. In the South new large farms might opt to accept the expense of mechanizing, while farms that already had slaves would mechanize slower. I would also believe that some Southerns would have moral issues with selling off slaves who had worked for their family for generations. The same could be said with forcing their slaves to be deported to some colony. Mechanizing and riding your self of your slaves could possibly play in to the decision of mechanize.