8 ms·

> I am reminded by the perhaps revisionist history but still applicable belief that slavery was really ended by industrialization making abolition economically

> I am reminded by the perhaps revisionist history but still applicable belief that slavery was really ended by industrialization making abolition economically advantageous and not actually a socially driven movement. (In reality it was certainly a convoluted mixture of the two I'm sure.) More or less. Adam Smith famously wrote that slavery was economically detrimental way back in 1776. It still took nearly 100 years to abolish slavery, and even to this day, people still equate slavery with prosperity (as implied by that controversial 1612 Project article, for example). Another way to think about it, the South did not embrace slavery because it made them richer; the South embraced slavery because they opposed industrialization. Southerners would regularly complain about the hustle and bustle of the North, the size of the cities, and how hard regular (white) people had to work. The "Southern way of life" was a thing - a leisurely, agrarian society based on forced labor and land instead of capital. In this regard it's a doubly fitting metaphor because much of the opposition to abolishing slavery was cultural and not economic.

junofan 8mo ago
[flagged]
- octernion 8mo ago
  ah yes the famine was because the people were lazy and did not want to farm. the history understander has logged on for everyone here!
- thinkingtoilet 8mo ago
  What makes you think the newspapers of the day are all telling the truth? Does the media today tell the truth? Did newspapers disclose when the equivalent of a billionaire bought them out and drastically changed the editorial bias? I'm not saying we shouldn't read historical documents. I'm saying to not apply the same skepticism you would apply to modern media to old media is a mistake.
- legitster 8mo ago
  - The difference between Ben Franklin writing about farming in the 1770s and the civil war was that industrialization didn't hit the US until the 1810s/1820s when the first steel mills and steam engines were set up. - "These people categorically did not want to start a farm; otherwise they would not have been facing famine." The vast majority of immigrants to the US at this time WERE farmers who were not allowed to own land in Europe. The reason they came to the North instead of the South is because they were largely not allowed to settle anywhere East of the Appalachians in the South. The South was staunchly anti-immigrant and barely had any cities at the time. - At the outbreak of war, the Union army was almost entirely made up of American born volunteers. Later, immigrant brigades were enlisted, but most were highly regarded and commended and still made up less than half of the army. - Your explanation cutely ignores the fact that Southern troops fired first in the Civil War
  - selimthegrim 8mo ago
    - The South was staunchly anti-immigrant and barely had any cities at the time. New Orleans has entered the chat.
- tclancy 8mo ago
  I liked it better when you guys called yourselves "Know Nothings". It made it easier to follow what was going on.
- snozolli 8mo ago
  These people categorically did not want to start a farm; otherwise they would not have been facing famine. Please tell me more on your theories regarding these immigrants. The only ones I'm aware of were Irish immigrants. Most of them were urban dwellers, not farmers. The Irish who were farmers were generally working on farms owned by the English.
hippo22 8mo ago
[flagged]
- ceejayoz 8mo ago
  > Being able to lounge around while others toil for your gain is absolutely economic. And being comfortable doing it via slave labor is cultural. > if you exclude the enslaved, the south had a higher GDP per capita If you exclude the murders, Ted Bundy was a really nice guy.
  - Forgeties79 8mo ago
    Like trying to assess the economy of the Third Reich while omitting that whole pesky war thing
    - QuercusMax 8mo ago
      They used slave labor too, don't forget!
      - inglor_cz 8mo ago
        Slave labor is most efficient when it comes to non-skilled, hard work. Mining, agriculture, sex (where it still survives even in the Western world), where the output is easily checked and counted. When it comes to anything sophisticated done by qualified people, like "making advanced tools for the Führer", the options for subtle sabotage are there and pissed-off people will use them. In general, German occupation authorities had better results when they actually paid the workers and gave them vacation vouchers. But of course the racial theories got in the way, as it was unthinkable to treat, say, Jews as normal employees.
        05 8mo ago
        Counterpoint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharashka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharashka
helterskelter 8mo ago
The south wasn't really situated for industrialization at the time. They didn't have enough rivers that could turn a water wheel effectively. (That's what I've heard anyway)
- pm90 8mo ago
  Hmm, this doesn’t seem to be accurate. The missouri/mississipi rivers come to mind, as do many other river systems.
  - helterskelter 8mo ago
    My impression was that there was a lack of fast moving rivers which were suitable for water wheels. You could make some elevation, or build a larger wheel, but that can become prohibitive for the volume needed for a real factory. It looks like the south does have some suitable rivers, but you wonder why they exported their crops to the north just to buy them back again in their more processed form...that just doesn't make much sense from an economic standpoint. Clearly slavery wasn't a suitable replacement for the type of production work done in the north. It must have been a mix of social factors, combined with the fact that the north specialized in industry early on and you couldn't compete very well with the lack of expertise and lack of industry which supported the local industry in the south. Anyway this is all just wild speculation. Take it for what you will.
- legitster 8mo ago
  It's true the first mills were in the north because they had some good sites, but there are good mill sites throughout the South as well. More tellingly, when the first steam engines in the US were imported from Europe - they could have been just as easily installed in the South. I think more importantly, steam mills solved for a problem the south did not have. If one was to tell a southerner, I have a technology that will save on labor costs, the southerner's response would have been "what are labor costs?"
  - helterskelter 8mo ago
    You still have to wonder why the south never built factories to compete with the north. They exported most of their cotton to the north just to buy it back again the the form of textiles, so slavery working by hand wasn't able to compete with factories on that level. I'd venture that the north's earlier industrialization built up experience and supporting infrastructure which made it a dubious business prospect for any southerner that might have considered building a factory, along with the fact that making textiles by manpower alone made less money than picking cotton and exporting it.
roenxi 8mo ago
> Adam Smith famously wrote that slavery was economically detrimental way back in 1776. It still took nearly 100 years to abolish slavery... Slavery had basically been a thing for all of human history up to that point, and based on my discussions on HN many smart people don't believe a lot of what Adam Smith said. There are still a lot of basic economic ideas that would make people much wealthier that struggle to get out into the wild. With that perspective the near-total abolition of slavery in a century seems pretty quick. And it can't really be a social thing because it is clear from history that societies tolerate slavery if it makes sense. And we see what happened to the people who tried to maintain slavery over that century - they ended up poor then economically, socially and historically humiliated.
- legitster 8mo ago
  Slavery was already being abolished in the West when Adam Smith wrote the Wealth of Nations. But what was notable was that Adam Smith was really the first to make a strong case and prediction that it was not just the moral thing to do, but would lead to prosperity. Adam Smith also differentiated between different levels of slavery - that Roman slavery was different than Serfdom was different from chattel slavery in the US. It's worth noting that Adam Smith did not think total abolition was possible. One of his concerns about free markets was that people deeply desired control of other people, and slavery would increase as a byproduct of wealth.
  - jacquesm 8mo ago
    And effectively it did: many people are kept in their place by the combined pressure points of debt and employment to stay (barely) afloat. This is of course nothing compared to the cruelty of real slavery but the effect is much the same, a lot of people are working their asses of for an upper class that can ruin their lives at the drop of a hat. That there are no whips involved is nice but it also clearly delineated who was the exploiter and who were the exploited. That's a bit harder to see today.
    - eucyclos 8mo ago
      Rental versus outright purchase is a weird transition. I have this idea for a faction in a post apocalyptic setting that started out as a libertarian community that idealized a society with zero slavery but found it constantly hiding in arrangements like the one you describe, so they made it very explicit and transactional instead: every member of the community is a central bank, and the currency takes the form of small clay discs with a number and a thumbprint. Anyone can mint their own money, but anyone can redeem money for hours of slave labor with the issuing party. And of course there are rules limiting what slaves can be compelled to do, like no minting more hours and no demanding a specific slave. For some reason this concept is very sticky to me. I actually think it could work as a low tech monetary regime in a grid down scenario.
MengerSponge 8mo ago
Technology developed after Smith's writing changed the calculus. The cotton gin made wide-scale cotton cultivation far more lucrative, and drove American slavery: https://historyincharts.com/the-impact-of-the-cotton-gin-on-slavery/ https://historyincharts.com/the-impact-of-the-cotton-gin-on-... Without the cotton gin, chattel slavery would have probably ended at least one generation earlier in the US
Braxton1980 8mo ago
Mississippi declaration of secession. "“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world....Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth.” Georgia "“The prohibition of slavery in the Territories… is destructive of our rights and interests.”
- legitster 8mo ago
  The full preamble of the Mississippi declaration is fascinating, and further shuts down doubters that the civil war wasn't about slavery and racism: > Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin Also, they clearly make the case that cotton was the most important good in the world, perhaps imploring the intercession of foreign powers. I think it's worth pointing out though that these people were not being honest with themselves - nothing in their argument about the importance of cotton suggests it couldn't have been done with wage labor. They are dancing around the fact that only a very few benefit from slavery.
munificent 8mo ago
> It still took nearly 100 years to abolish slavery, and even to this day, people still equate slavery with prosperity (as implied by that controversial 1612 Project article, for example). The enslaved people sure as fuck aren't prospering in that situation, so the only way one could possibly equate slavery with economic prosperity is by simply not counting them as people at all. > Another way to think about it, the South did not embrace slavery because it made them richer; the South embraced slavery because they opposed industrialization... and how hard regular (white) people had to work. One way to think of slavery is that it's a far point on the continuum between equality and inequality. What they really hated was equality because that necessarily involves taking something away from them, the people who have the most.
xhkkffbf 8mo ago
Capital was actually a big part of it. The plantation owner didn't just need to capitalize the cost of the land, but the labor as well. When someone purchased a slave, they were paying up front for the remaining labor that could come from that body. This was often pretty expensive when the body was young. Before the Civil War, New Orleans was one of the biggest banking centers of the US because of all of the borrowing. People often make the mistake that the labor was "free". It wasn't to the people who bought slaves. It wasn't even really free to the slave traders because of the cost of transport. It was a horrible system in many ways, but it was also a outrageously expensive because of all of the banking and loans involved.
- parineum 8mo ago
  Reading this post made me wonder if there were "temp agency" type businesses for slaves. Having to own the labor would make your it very difficult to expand and contract your workforce. Morality aside, it really doesn't seem like a great system.
  - xhkkffbf 8mo ago
    Yup. This is why it failed. I think it was fairly common for plantations to loan, rent, or trade slaves just as they treated any other asset.
  - Breza 8mo ago
    This was incredibly common here in Washington DC. Think about construction. Building the Capitol required a ton of temporary labor, for example, so Congress contracted for both free and enslaved labor for its construction.
- Breza 8mo ago
  I highly recommend the book Accounting For Slavery to anyone even remotely interested in this topic. You talked about the costs of buying a human being, which is already horrible. But once an enslaved person was owned outright, they were used as collateral in loans to expand operations.

junofan 8mo ago

[flagged]

octernion 8mo ago
ah yes the famine was because the people were lazy and did not want to farm. the history understander has logged on for everyone here!
thinkingtoilet 8mo ago
What makes you think the newspapers of the day are all telling the truth? Does the media today tell the truth? Did newspapers disclose when the equivalent of a billionaire bought them out and drastically changed the editorial bias? I'm not saying we shouldn't read historical documents. I'm saying to not apply the same skepticism you would apply to modern media to old media is a mistake.
legitster 8mo ago
- The difference between Ben Franklin writing about farming in the 1770s and the civil war was that industrialization didn't hit the US until the 1810s/1820s when the first steel mills and steam engines were set up. - "These people categorically did not want to start a farm; otherwise they would not have been facing famine." The vast majority of immigrants to the US at this time WERE farmers who were not allowed to own land in Europe. The reason they came to the North instead of the South is because they were largely not allowed to settle anywhere East of the Appalachians in the South. The South was staunchly anti-immigrant and barely had any cities at the time. - At the outbreak of war, the Union army was almost entirely made up of American born volunteers. Later, immigrant brigades were enlisted, but most were highly regarded and commended and still made up less than half of the army. - Your explanation cutely ignores the fact that Southern troops fired first in the Civil War
- selimthegrim 8mo ago
  - The South was staunchly anti-immigrant and barely had any cities at the time. New Orleans has entered the chat.
tclancy 8mo ago
I liked it better when you guys called yourselves "Know Nothings". It made it easier to follow what was going on.
snozolli 8mo ago
These people categorically did not want to start a farm; otherwise they would not have been facing famine. Please tell me more on your theories regarding these immigrants. The only ones I'm aware of were Irish immigrants. Most of them were urban dwellers, not farmers. The Irish who were farmers were generally working on farms owned by the English.

hippo22 8mo ago

[flagged]

ceejayoz 8mo ago
> Being able to lounge around while others toil for your gain is absolutely economic. And being comfortable doing it via slave labor is cultural. > if you exclude the enslaved, the south had a higher GDP per capita If you exclude the murders, Ted Bundy was a really nice guy.
- Forgeties79 8mo ago
  Like trying to assess the economy of the Third Reich while omitting that whole pesky war thing
  - QuercusMax 8mo ago
    They used slave labor too, don't forget!
    - inglor_cz 8mo ago
      Slave labor is most efficient when it comes to non-skilled, hard work. Mining, agriculture, sex (where it still survives even in the Western world), where the output is easily checked and counted. When it comes to anything sophisticated done by qualified people, like "making advanced tools for the Führer", the options for subtle sabotage are there and pissed-off people will use them. In general, German occupation authorities had better results when they actually paid the workers and gave them vacation vouchers. But of course the racial theories got in the way, as it was unthinkable to treat, say, Jews as normal employees.
      - 05 8mo ago
        Counterpoint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharashka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharashka

helterskelter 8mo ago

The south wasn't really situated for industrialization at the time. They didn't have enough rivers that could turn a water wheel effectively. (That's what I've heard anyway)

pm90 8mo ago
Hmm, this doesn’t seem to be accurate. The missouri/mississipi rivers come to mind, as do many other river systems.
- helterskelter 8mo ago
  My impression was that there was a lack of fast moving rivers which were suitable for water wheels. You could make some elevation, or build a larger wheel, but that can become prohibitive for the volume needed for a real factory. It looks like the south does have some suitable rivers, but you wonder why they exported their crops to the north just to buy them back again in their more processed form...that just doesn't make much sense from an economic standpoint. Clearly slavery wasn't a suitable replacement for the type of production work done in the north. It must have been a mix of social factors, combined with the fact that the north specialized in industry early on and you couldn't compete very well with the lack of expertise and lack of industry which supported the local industry in the south. Anyway this is all just wild speculation. Take it for what you will.
legitster 8mo ago
It's true the first mills were in the north because they had some good sites, but there are good mill sites throughout the South as well. More tellingly, when the first steam engines in the US were imported from Europe - they could have been just as easily installed in the South. I think more importantly, steam mills solved for a problem the south did not have. If one was to tell a southerner, I have a technology that will save on labor costs, the southerner's response would have been "what are labor costs?"
- helterskelter 8mo ago
  You still have to wonder why the south never built factories to compete with the north. They exported most of their cotton to the north just to buy it back again the the form of textiles, so slavery working by hand wasn't able to compete with factories on that level. I'd venture that the north's earlier industrialization built up experience and supporting infrastructure which made it a dubious business prospect for any southerner that might have considered building a factory, along with the fact that making textiles by manpower alone made less money than picking cotton and exporting it.

roenxi 8mo ago

> Adam Smith famously wrote that slavery was economically detrimental way back in 1776. It still took nearly 100 years to abolish slavery... Slavery had basically been a thing for all of human history up to that point, and based on my discussions on HN many smart people don't believe a lot of what Adam Smith said. There are still a lot of basic economic ideas that would make people much wealthier that struggle to get out into the wild. With that perspective the near-total abolition of slavery in a century seems pretty quick. And it can't really be a social thing because it is clear from history that societies tolerate slavery if it makes sense. And we see what happened to the people who tried to maintain slavery over that century - they ended up poor then economically, socially and historically humiliated.

legitster 8mo ago
Slavery was already being abolished in the West when Adam Smith wrote the Wealth of Nations. But what was notable was that Adam Smith was really the first to make a strong case and prediction that it was not just the moral thing to do, but would lead to prosperity. Adam Smith also differentiated between different levels of slavery - that Roman slavery was different than Serfdom was different from chattel slavery in the US. It's worth noting that Adam Smith did not think total abolition was possible. One of his concerns about free markets was that people deeply desired control of other people, and slavery would increase as a byproduct of wealth.
- jacquesm 8mo ago
  And effectively it did: many people are kept in their place by the combined pressure points of debt and employment to stay (barely) afloat. This is of course nothing compared to the cruelty of real slavery but the effect is much the same, a lot of people are working their asses of for an upper class that can ruin their lives at the drop of a hat. That there are no whips involved is nice but it also clearly delineated who was the exploiter and who were the exploited. That's a bit harder to see today.
  - eucyclos 8mo ago
    Rental versus outright purchase is a weird transition. I have this idea for a faction in a post apocalyptic setting that started out as a libertarian community that idealized a society with zero slavery but found it constantly hiding in arrangements like the one you describe, so they made it very explicit and transactional instead: every member of the community is a central bank, and the currency takes the form of small clay discs with a number and a thumbprint. Anyone can mint their own money, but anyone can redeem money for hours of slave labor with the issuing party. And of course there are rules limiting what slaves can be compelled to do, like no minting more hours and no demanding a specific slave. For some reason this concept is very sticky to me. I actually think it could work as a low tech monetary regime in a grid down scenario.

MengerSponge 8mo ago

Technology developed after Smith's writing changed the calculus. The cotton gin made wide-scale cotton cultivation far more lucrative, and drove American slavery: https://historyincharts.com/the-impact-of-the-cotton-gin-on-slavery/ https://historyincharts.com/the-impact-of-the-cotton-gin-on-... Without the cotton gin, chattel slavery would have probably ended at least one generation earlier in the US

Braxton1980 8mo ago

Mississippi declaration of secession. "“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world....Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth.” Georgia "“The prohibition of slavery in the Territories… is destructive of our rights and interests.”

legitster 8mo ago
The full preamble of the Mississippi declaration is fascinating, and further shuts down doubters that the civil war wasn't about slavery and racism: > Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin Also, they clearly make the case that cotton was the most important good in the world, perhaps imploring the intercession of foreign powers. I think it's worth pointing out though that these people were not being honest with themselves - nothing in their argument about the importance of cotton suggests it couldn't have been done with wage labor. They are dancing around the fact that only a very few benefit from slavery.

munificent 8mo ago

> It still took nearly 100 years to abolish slavery, and even to this day, people still equate slavery with prosperity (as implied by that controversial 1612 Project article, for example). The enslaved people sure as fuck aren't prospering in that situation, so the only way one could possibly equate slavery with economic prosperity is by simply not counting them as people at all. > Another way to think about it, the South did not embrace slavery because it made them richer; the South embraced slavery because they opposed industrialization... and how hard regular (white) people had to work. One way to think of slavery is that it's a far point on the continuum between equality and inequality. What they really hated was equality because that necessarily involves taking something away from them, the people who have the most.

xhkkffbf 8mo ago

Capital was actually a big part of it. The plantation owner didn't just need to capitalize the cost of the land, but the labor as well. When someone purchased a slave, they were paying up front for the remaining labor that could come from that body. This was often pretty expensive when the body was young. Before the Civil War, New Orleans was one of the biggest banking centers of the US because of all of the borrowing. People often make the mistake that the labor was "free". It wasn't to the people who bought slaves. It wasn't even really free to the slave traders because of the cost of transport. It was a horrible system in many ways, but it was also a outrageously expensive because of all of the banking and loans involved.

parineum 8mo ago
Reading this post made me wonder if there were "temp agency" type businesses for slaves. Having to own the labor would make your it very difficult to expand and contract your workforce. Morality aside, it really doesn't seem like a great system.
- xhkkffbf 8mo ago
  Yup. This is why it failed. I think it was fairly common for plantations to loan, rent, or trade slaves just as they treated any other asset.
- Breza 8mo ago
  This was incredibly common here in Washington DC. Think about construction. Building the Capitol required a ton of temporary labor, for example, so Congress contracted for both free and enslaved labor for its construction.
Breza 8mo ago
I highly recommend the book Accounting For Slavery to anyone even remotely interested in this topic. You talked about the costs of buying a human being, which is already horrible. But once an enslaved person was owned outright, they were used as collateral in loans to expand operations.