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Indeed, the (London) Science Museum suggests that campaigners at the time thought steam might inhibit slavery, but there's no evidence to suggest that actually

by objclxt 14y ago

Indeed, the (London) Science Museum suggests that campaigners at the time thought steam might inhibit slavery, but there's no evidence to suggest that actually happened. http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/on-line/energyhall/page88.asp http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/on-line/energyhall/page88.as... And inventions like the cotton gin may have increased demand for slaves, because they enabled more cotton to be grown.

akiselev 14y ago
Yeah I did a bit more research. Looks like the cotton gin did greatly increase demand for slaves but that's not really related to steam engines. Combined with the fact that one of the primary applications of the steam engine was faster transportation of goods in the North (South had little in the way of industrialization until post Civil War), I'm almost certain that the steam engine did not decrease the need for slaves. Once the North began expanding European trade routes post War of 1812 and the entire continent started demanding Southern US cotton, it was an avalanche (that did not get tempered by the ban on international slave trading).
VLM 14y ago
No they enabled more cotton to be processed not grown. Maybe you're trying to say the labor bottleneck became harvesting instead of processing? Amazingly it took until 1950 for mechanized harvesting to take over. Kinda delicate! Processing is simpler and that was figured out and deployed widely around 1800. Processing cotton means pulling the seeds out. Otherwise your tee shirts would sprout if you get sweaty. Well not seriously, more like the spinners and looms would jam. Old days: hand pick cotton, hand process. 1800-1950: hand pick cotton, run thru a steam powered Whitney (dudes last name) gin to process 1950-today: Rust (dudes last name) cotton picker, electric motor powered (well, mostly) Whitney cotton gin. Not much use for human hands anymore. Now indirectly OP was kinda correct in that "the world" could tolerate plantation like treatment of poor blacks up to 1950 or so as long as it stayed away from "the world". But once all those poor blacks were unemployed and moved out into the world in factories and stuff, you can't ignore it as easily. So yeah mechanization (in the 1950s not steam era) led directly to blacks sitting on city busses goin' to factories instead of picking cotton on the neo-plantation and not feeling that sitting in the back of the bus was cool anymore, which led directly to civil rights protests and indirectly to the womens movement and all that. Ops details were all wrong but general message was completely correct. The gin resulted in lots of black people picking cotton where they got abused and pretty much no one saw or cared, the Rust picker (and WWII) resulted in them being unemployed and moving to factory jobs very much in the public eye, where the abuse became unignorable.

by objclxt 14y ago

akiselev 14y ago

Yeah I did a bit more research. Looks like the cotton gin did greatly increase demand for slaves but that's not really related to steam engines. Combined with the fact that one of the primary applications of the steam engine was faster transportation of goods in the North (South had little in the way of industrialization until post Civil War), I'm almost certain that the steam engine did not decrease the need for slaves. Once the North began expanding European trade routes post War of 1812 and the entire continent started demanding Southern US cotton, it was an avalanche (that did not get tempered by the ban on international slave trading).

VLM 14y ago

No they enabled more cotton to be processed not grown. Maybe you're trying to say the labor bottleneck became harvesting instead of processing? Amazingly it took until 1950 for mechanized harvesting to take over. Kinda delicate! Processing is simpler and that was figured out and deployed widely around 1800. Processing cotton means pulling the seeds out. Otherwise your tee shirts would sprout if you get sweaty. Well not seriously, more like the spinners and looms would jam. Old days: hand pick cotton, hand process. 1800-1950: hand pick cotton, run thru a steam powered Whitney (dudes last name) gin to process 1950-today: Rust (dudes last name) cotton picker, electric motor powered (well, mostly) Whitney cotton gin. Not much use for human hands anymore. Now indirectly OP was kinda correct in that "the world" could tolerate plantation like treatment of poor blacks up to 1950 or so as long as it stayed away from "the world". But once all those poor blacks were unemployed and moved out into the world in factories and stuff, you can't ignore it as easily. So yeah mechanization (in the 1950s not steam era) led directly to blacks sitting on city busses goin' to factories instead of picking cotton on the neo-plantation and not feeling that sitting in the back of the bus was cool anymore, which led directly to civil rights protests and indirectly to the womens movement and all that. Ops details were all wrong but general message was completely correct. The gin resulted in lots of black people picking cotton where they got abused and pretty much no one saw or cared, the Rust picker (and WWII) resulted in them being unemployed and moving to factory jobs very much in the public eye, where the abuse became unignorable.