Following on from the Calhoun thread.
Blush. I've had no idea about such plantation books, so I can't neither agree nor disagree with you.
Ok, think of it this way, slavery works best when you have a plan, slavery by the 1800s had a pretty good plan of how to maximise output, to get more work out of a human you need to feed the body, slave diet was often 4200+ calories, expetionaly good by the standards of the day, in return the body can be worked hard and long, knowing what to feed and how long you can then work was derived from books that explained to Managers of slaves how to get the most out of them, what the purpose of coercive punishments were and the consequences and so on. So there was a number of books describbing the best practices, planations would be run under these planation rules/laws, which covered pretty much all slaves ever came into contact with law, state and national law being rarely encountered, while most slaves lived their entire lives under planation laws, which were by 1860 the product of books detailing best practices, from what natural remidies to apply to injurys to diet to punishment that still allow work and so on, everything an owner neededd to know about the exploition of others to maximum profit.
The key thing they all have in common is the family unit and maintaining its co operation, they all advise against sexual exploitation.
"Almost" makes a difference. Even looking at my own ancestors' records I can see a few such cases of women giving birth year by year. Or consider John Bell Hood's marriage- in 11 years his wife gave birth to 13 children
Ah, so war was only his hobby!!, another example of a large family was N B Forrest, 10 brothers and sisters, all the males fought for the south, 1 had his spine broken in the war with Mexico and was paraysed and on crutches, when a Union officer insulted his mother, he struck the officer with one crutch, the officer kicked the crutches away and said and now what are you going to do cripple?, and thats when he shot him, not bad Mr Forrest, not bad at all, stood trial and got off an atempted murder charge.
So what is that difference?, is it that human reproduction is all deliberatly done for profit?, of course not, large familys are common, especially in pre contraception societys, to argue that negros were bred for profit, means that owners interfered with natural cause and effct, ie babys taken to wet nurse or given formula and the mothers body made ready to bear ofspring again by removing the milk that reduces fertility as soon as practible, but this is contradicted in the census data we have for time between babys, and that babys came later in life for negros than for whites, and generaly shared the same mortality rates. No one has found the data to support this kind of interference to my knowedge, all the data runs to the oposite in fact, so the claim that negros were bred at an early age for profit, is not supported by the data, the claim exoisats because they wanted to make the claim, and simply did not understand interegional movements of peoples and market forces, which really only was possible with the use of machines to understand the vast volume of data on slave sales etc, and economist of the 20th century not pursueing an agenda, but simply looking for answers.
Almost does covera lot of ground, the principle point being large families are not evidence of selective or forced breeding, unless you can also show where and how this was done to increase the adundent examples of large families, which is why micro level examples while intresting dont generaly answer much, and why macro level statistics do, the average white family 5/6 was do fifferent from the average negro family 5/6, the diference on a couple of .1 or 2 being the case.
A few ideas comes to my mind. First, the kids could be in future hired out instead of selling. From what I've read (probably in Bancroft), children could be sold/hired out from the age 6-8 and hiring was more profitable. The costs of keeping a slave were about 30$ a year, so not huge. Another thing- prices of slaves were not constant- they were growing.
One more thought- even if this business had been indeed unprofitable (which I doubt), slaveholders could have anyway invest in it because of lack of experience or because of belief in its profitability in future. Kind of stockbroking?
Rather depends of when we talking, but in 1850 the cost to owner was $20 per annum to operate a slave, this asset pricing of a slaves value will be discounted value of net income plus any capital investment/apreciation/dep[rection over the slaves lifetime, in short in 1850 the cost to run a slave was 20, anything over 20 was a profit. Hireing out was indeedd the most common use of slave labour, which was why all whites income was effected by slavery, perhaps as much as 30% of all whites income was generted by slaves, so while only a small % of white society owned slaves, the use of it effected pratcicly everyone.
slavery was not fuelled or run by child labour, ( its atarction was low unit labour cost, so child labour was not a finacial saveing because adults were already working for the lowest $ value imaginable, which is why the lost labour wages calculation work out to around 1.5+ trillion $ for underpayement of wages when the issue of compensation is worked out)a child has no skill sets worth speaking off, ( you need to ask who is hireing and what does he need doing?, is it his broken plough needing reforging, or his mules shod, or his crops harvested and so on, im not saying there is no demand for child labour, meerly very little demand, and what does exist probably also exist on the planation to do when it exist elswhere, as nor do children the pysical strength to perform well at most tasks, especialy if the hired work in miles away) the slave sytem was one of parenting into a skill set, slaves occupied many levels of social standing in the slave system, they filled 70% of the mangerial posistions in planations which was as high as they could go, they dominated the artisan( stonemason, carpenter etc)class in the south, while at the same time, the lowest rungs were the field hands, (70%ish of all slaves were here) which were completly different from the house servants, each got different advanatges. Each slave returned on average about 10% of its $ sale value per year, so yes the stock exchange analogy abounds in all the literature on slave profitability, but slavery worked and was profitable not beacuse it was also child slavery, who would hire a child when a fully grown man was available at excellent rates?, where you do see child labour is where labour is expensive because labour is short, thats in the NE, where large numbers of children were used in the industry that needed quick and small hands at bobbins etc.
Quote:
If you mean the census data of the old south shows a population admixture of stable families who have multiple ofspring, as oposed to the new south (states which enter the Union and import from the old souther states) age groups of the prime filed hand range because that maximises profity from field work, then we are talking about the same thing. [...]
Maybe I'm just tired, cos' I don't follow your logic in this whole paragraph
My bad, i assumed you were familiar with intergional movements, and why the natural limits thesis explanation of slavery claims that the old south was a baby farm fuelling the new souths exploitation, and as each new soil becaome exhusted that states owners turned to baby famring to fuel the next territotrial expansion to fresh soil.
You refered to the upper south selling slaves into the deep south, this while true, needs to be seen in its proper context, what happens there is the same as happened when slaves spread out from Va/maryland to take advanatge of new states soil, the prime field hands were sold or went with their masters, as its they who could max out profitabilioty in the new land, or brought the best price if sold west, this ment, exactly as in the case of the border states selling an age group, (ie the prime field hands age range) south, because of the finacial profitability to sell them was high, which was why the border states population mix was odd, the yound unatached were sold off leaving the stable family units behind, which becuase of what they are are not as profitable to sell south, and include more ofspring, showing therfore that the border states appear to have a ratio of births higher than the states recieveing the age group sold, who have alower ratio of births because of a) most sold into that state are prime hands and not reproducing yet, and b) if comming in with masters are of the same because new citizens to a state with slaves from the exporting state also had the same age range come with them, to max out the chances of finacial success rather than rear familys, which was what appears to be happeneing in the exporting states and not in the importing states. Which is true, but not because of some baby breeding programe, but because of market forces dicating how to max out profitability,( SC for instance sold huge numbers west because the market dicated that here was where youmade the highest profit on cotton, and therfore the price of slaves here was also the highest) which ment owners moved the most advantagous labour to oportunity, causing odd age groups in exporting and importing states, since these same age groups appear in the border states to the south, in the free northern states negros population after emanicpation, ie the prime field hands age group is under represented because they were sold off prior to the state emancipation, but more generaly, called the old south and new south as the old states filled up and exported slaves to new states, filling up Miss and Ga by reducing Maryland VA slave poulations (56% ofall slaves lived here in 1800, by 1820 only 35% and by 1860 only 15%), so that SC wanted to re open slave importaion to obtain more slaves because prices were so high, and they could not obtain more, slavery expnasion and interegional movement threw up perhaps a million people moving vast distances, and the age range was not a uniform one, it was one of economic advanatge of the owner, which gave the appearence to observers that the old south, ie the soil exhusted baby farms aboliotionst saw, because that what they wanted to see, where in fact nothing of the sort, merly the result of market forces imapcting on society and producing imbalnced populations, which existed nation wide in all slave population because that simply a by product of moving labour to oportunity, rather than offer incentives to move, which would again in the 40s and 60s draw huge numbers of negros north from the south, the only difffernce was thay this time this huge interegional movement was one of choice, and was done by the family unit, instead of the most profitable portion of it.
Polish analogy here seems to work, huge numbers of economic migrants have left Poland when it joined the EUnion, not as familys, but a high incidence of an age group that does not include children, resulting in other EU countyrys, the Uk for instnce benifitting from there skill sets since we dont have to train the docters, dentist to tradesaman to cleaners, that have came here, perhaps several 00 of 000s strong, within a few years these economic migrants have now began to produce familys. Babys that would have been produced back in Poland are now in the Uk, back in poland, the population base is shot to hell because huge numbers of the young are elswhere, but the stable family age group are still there and producing further children, not because Poland is a baby farm, and the Uk a babay free zone, but as a result of economic dislocation of poplation.
Does the statistic consider children sold with their parent(s)?
1790-1862 total slave sales from exporting to importing states was 825k-1,000,000 kinda range depending on which book you pick up, the last 3 decads being the peak period. Maryland/Va/NC/SC supplied 85% of the migrants, which ment importing states pop grew 3.6 times faster than natural increase alone, and exporting states population was similary retarded.
1804-1862 records show 84% of all such tranfers over age 14 were with owners and were unmarried. Married with parteners was 6%
children under 13 with no family members, acount for 9% of all sales, typicaly 15% of this age group are orphans, in 1850 therfore, 190,000 orphans and 1250 or that sort of range at least, sales of children without parents sold means the number sold who had parents is statsicly very low, and in all probalilty, it was orphans who comprise the interegional sale, not the break up of familys. Im not claiming it did not happen and 1 is 1 to many, but instead attempting to get some sort of context of how many, how often.
Bancrofts work cites only 20 odd instances of child sales, covering 26 years, and is at odds with the slave records of whjich there are 00s of 000s of records, U B Phillips "Young children were hardly ever sold seperatly", and common sense, who wants to own an un profitibale aset?, which was why the whole slavery was un economic argumnet was put, slaves were status symbols not economic pwer houses that made the USA, not as able to thrive and propser by hard work under a reward and punishment regime, ( however extreme the punishment was, it must always be compared to the carrot element and also seen in the context of the time, which was rather violent) but driven to it by whip and lash because negros were inferior to whites. Bancrofts racism was of a different king, he downplayed the negros into a sly work shy caricature, and unfourtunatly has been much copied since then, and the slave owners as criminals without morals.