I have to figure there were a few textile mills in cotton states that were operating before the Civil War using slave labor. This could be run like a regular f

I have to figure there were a few textile mills in cotton states that were operating before the Civil War using slave labor. This could be run like a regular factory with bookkeeping techniques where labor cost was certainly not zero even though laborers were not getting paid nor free to do anything else but go back to picking cotton. Labor cost could be reduced to a single line on a spreadsheet like any other business. After the war with slaves now being paid and free to work elsewhere if they could manage it, this would be offset by the workers paying their own upkeep after the slaveowner had become the employer. There would have been pressure to keep labor cost from escalating at all if possible. So things could go forward with as little change in financial risk as could be. A lot of companies today still have the same type structure as these places had after the war, which can be not much different than the structure they had before the war, and Wall Street is still in the same place it was before the war . . .