In response to JP Adams,
Excellent points.  In the mid 1980s, M. Boyd Coyner at William & Mary
looked at the expenses you asked about in regards to training, feeding,
etc.and concluded that the institution would have become so costly, based
upon your parameters, that it would have ended in VA by the late 1880s.  I
am very skeptical about the demise in the Commonwealth given the relative
value of enslaved property and I do not know if Coyner published his
findings or not.

As to costs, what form of slavery are we talking about?  Like that seen in
Cecelski's *Waterman's Song *about maritime slavery in eastern North
Carolina, the task system in the tobacco and hemp regions of the Upper
South, rice & indigo production in the Gullah-Geechi corridor, industrial &
mining slavery like in Charles Dew's *Iron Maker to the Confederacy *(Tredegar
in Richmond) or his *Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge*, or gang system
from the cotton plantations?  For example, the Gullah had no overseers
because tidal flooding rice production was an African technology that
Europeans were ignorant of the necessary process, so an overseer would be
detrimental and harmfully redundant.  The production & processing of rice
is a gendered system from the Senegalese-Gambian and Angolan ethnic groups (
*Black Rice *and *Deep Roots* both address the transference of rice
production to the Western Hemisphere using Ethno & paleo-botany,
linguistics, tools, and 18th Century advertisements for slave ship cargoes
offered at auction in Charleston and Savannah) that did not discriminate in
favor of male captives but, by necessity, involved entire family groups.
Costs in this case were relatively low because even young children were
employed in transplanting rice seedlings from the upland seed-beds to the
rice paddy.  Since an entire cultural group was transported to the U.S.,
even elderly people made contribution that they would not have been able to
do in any of the other types of slavery mentioned above.  The Gullah Museum
in Georgetown, SC maintains a proud tradition that they had no white men
(except the plantation owner acting as sales agent for the crop) on their
plantations.  The costs here were mostly tied to the initial purchase of
enslaved people from Rice production groups on the west coast of Africa,
who sold upon arrival at a significant premium above simple field-hands, so
that by 1860, costs were minimal for the maintenance of the enslaved
community in GA, NC, & SC rice plantations.  Just inland, beyond the tidal
zone, Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut writes that the expenses of maintaining
the enslaved people is a tremendous economic burden on her husband and it
is actually a net loss to him.  If we are to cherry pick the system for
costs, I would tend to think that the task system entailed more initial
expense than the other systems because of life cycle expenses (when an
enslaved person was not producing sufficient commodities to offset
maintenance).  Although mining and industrial slavery had more expenses in
training, the non-productive years of the life cycle were not a burden to
the owner; only older enslaved teenagers and adult men would be trained and
their labor was somewhat "voluntary" (at least among Anderson's workforce
at Tredegar where the coercive aspects of slavery were replaced with
economic incentives) so that enslaved men who were "Hired Out" would not
return to their owner because they had been forced into the mines or
furnaces, thereby making their training much more expensive relative to
production.  I cannot remember if this argument was from a book or journal
article but it followed labor value theory models from the 20th Century
when looking at relative costs.

As to unionization, Mary H. Blewett's* Men, Women, and Work: Class, Gender,
and Protest in the New England Shoe Industry, 1780-1910* (Urbana: U of
Illinois Press. 1988) pushes labor protest back to the early 1800s and
demonstrates early collective action (proto-unionism) with the formation of
the Society of Shoebinders in Essex and Middlesex Counties, MA during the
summer of 1831.  A little earlier and from women but with the same
arguments that you mention.

Eric Richardson

On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 6:32 PM, John Philip Adams <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> Thanks
> I was only trying to point out issues of the time
> No one seems to speak of the exploitation of the northern factory workers.
> Child labor and extended hours. A reason for the unionization of the late
> 1800 and early 1900s and the rise of the progressive and socialist parties.
> Social economics were on both sides of the Mason Dixon.
> JP Adams
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Lyle E. Browning
> Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2012 1:02 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: The Peculiar Institution's End Without The Intervention Of The
> Civil War
>
> On May 8, 2012, at 4:50 PM, John Philip Adams wrote:
>
> > A couple of issues
> > 1.    Cost of feeding and clothing your slaves. Raising kids is really
> > expensive, so why would feeding, clothing, medical, training and
> > management of farm personnel be cheaper than a couple of cotton gins
> > and cotton pickers.
>
> Pure amoral capitalism has spoken to that in the 20th century. The "Kill a
> mule, hire a mule" syndrome operated after slavery and also operated where
> no slaves had ever been, i.e., in the manufacturing centers of the north
> that operated using cheap European immigrant labor, including children and
> women. Coal mining interests in PA had their own pernicious form of debt
> slavery in that if a miner died, his family was stuck with his debts and
> had
> to work them off in the mines.
>
> BUT, has anyone done a direct economic comparison to see what the actual
> costs of owning one slave were, removing purchase price from the equation
> and with that in the equation as comparables? Housing, food, clothing,
> medical, training and management (that would be the overseer with all of
> the
> same costs plus wages). Surely some economic historian must have sat down
> and worked out the costs.
>
> I would have thought that post-1865 labor costs could be used as comparable
> figures? Unfortunately, share-cropping would seem to interfere.
>
>
>
> > 3.    Besides, the training and education of the slaves was forced upon
> > even the most reluctant white farm owner.
> Training and education are meant here as direct vocational training as in
> how to be an efficient farm worker, rather than the 3 R's. The knowledge
> base for agricultural production is simply put a trade for which there is a
> learning curve and when one has finished apprenticeship, there is some
> hard-earned info in those who have had it.
>
> >
> > 6.    lastly, the population was escaping the eastern problems and moving
> > to the Midwest. Native American problems or not, the population was
> > voting with their feet, black and white, by escaping the age old
> > problems of the east.
> > Texas was a great melting pot then, as it is today.
>
> I will then have to move my mid and upper Mid-west to include the southern
> mid-west as well, at least those parts that were arable.
>
> I have contacted John Deer and Case IH to see what their archives have, but
> the preliminary look is that the mechanization of farming was driven by
> small families in exploding numbers from the arable lands east of the
> Rockies to the western slopes of the Appalachians who had small farms and
> actively pursued mechanized farming methods in order to put food on the
> table and to farm more land for profits. There are physical limits to what
> people labor (husband, wife, kids, neighbor groups/cooperatives) could
> accomplish, even with the Second Revolution of adding horse drawn equipment
> to the mix. Until mechanized farming took over, the production jump-shift
> was a non-event and would not have happened. The mechanization of farming
> would seem to have spread from there into the rest of the country. It took
> until past the 1950's for it to be pervasive in the South but it did
> happen.
>
>
> Lyle Browning
>
>
>
>
>
> > John P. Adams
> > Texas
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history
> > [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jeff Southmayd
> > Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2012 1:41 PM
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: Re: The Peculiar Institution's End Without The Intervention
> > Of The Civil War
> >
> > I would think based on accounts of how expensive slaves were to
> > purchase and provide for, and accounts of how lazy and shiftless many
> > were, Southerners would be pleased to substitute technology for the
> > problems and expense involved in keeping slaves in their work force.
> > With a ready market like Brazil for the sale of their slaves, they
> > would have an out to recoup what they had into their slaves.  While
> > there may not have been a widespread movement for emancipation in the
> > South, there was a widespread discussion on what to do with the
> > burgeoning slave population which was becoming more and more
> > problematic, to the extent that the northern Southern states were moving
> away from slavery and selling them to the deep Southern states.
> >
> > SOUTHMAYD & MILLER4 OCEAN RIDGE BOULEVARD SOUTH PALM COAST, FLORIDA
> > 32137
> > 386.445.9156
> > 888.557.3686 FAX
> >
> > [log in to unmask]
> > **********************************************************
> > THIS TRANSMISSION IS INTENDED ONLY FOR THE ADDRESSEE SHOWN ABOVE. IT
> > MAY CONTAIN INFORMATION THAT IS PRIVILEGED, CONFIDENTIAL, OR OTHERWISE
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> > PLEASE DO NOT READ, COPY, OR USE IT, AND DO NOT DISCLOSE IT TO OTHERS.
> > PLEASE NOTIFY THE SENDER OF THE DELIVERY ERROR BY REPLYING TO THIS
> > MESSAGE AND THEN DELETE IT FROM YOUR SYSTEM. THANK YOU.
> > ********************************************************
> >
> >> Date: Tue, 8 May 2012 10:44:50 -0700
> >> From: [log in to unmask]
> >> Subject: Re: The Peculiar Institution's End Without The Intervention
> >> Of The Civil War
> >> To: [log in to unmask]
> >>
> >> much different set of facts. Indian removal involved about 30,000
> >> persons,
> > overland, over a period of time. Many self-removed before the infamous
> > forced removals. Plus they provided their own transport.
> >>
> >>
> >> ________________________________
> >> From: "Kimball, Gregg (LVA)" <[log in to unmask]>
> >> To: [log in to unmask]
> >> Sent: Tuesday, May 8, 2012 1:24 PM
> >> Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] The Peculiar Institution's End Without The
> >> Intervention Of The Civil War
> >>
> >> Where did the United States find the money to remove Native Americans
> >> to
> > the West? As Bill Freehling has pointed out, it at least demonstrates
> > that the national government had the political will to execute a
> > removal program given the right incentives. I freely admit that there
> > were many differences in the two circumstances, but it gave a certain
> > veneer of plausibility to colonization.
> >>
> >> Gregg Kimball
> >>
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history
> >> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Finkelman, Paul
> >> <[log in to unmask]>
> >> Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2012 1:05 PM
> >> To: [log in to unmask]
> >> Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] The Peculiar Institution's End Without The
> >> Intervention Of The Civil War
> >>
> >> Hard to imagine where would have found the ships and money for a mass
> > exodus to Liberia.
> >>
> >> ========================================
> >>
> >> Paul Finkelman
> >> President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law Albany Law
> >> School
> >> 80 New Scotland Avenue
> >> Albany, NY 12208
> >>
> >> 518-445-3386 (p)
> >> 518-445-3363 (f)
> >>
> >> [log in to unmask]
> >> www.paulfinkelman.com
> >>
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history
> >> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Kilby
> >> Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2012 12:34 PM
> >> To: [log in to unmask]
> >> Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] The Peculiar Institution's End Without The
> >> Intervention Of The Civil War
> >>
> >> I wrote that, and it was in connection Lincoln's initial plan to send
> > freed slaves to Liberia. I clearly stated that that was veering off
> > topic of this thread. Lincoln abandoned that plan due to vocal
> > opposition from the black community.
> >>
> >> That sentence was part of a larger "conjecture" of how slavery would
> >> have ended had the South won, whenever it ended, if it would ever end
> >> (and it surely would.)
> >>
> >> Craig Kilby
> >>
> >> On May 7, 2012, at 11:53 PM, Finkelman, Paul
> > <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >>
> >>> One post suggested that "hundreds of thousands of blacks" might have
> > gone to Liberia?  On what boats?  How many ships were around to move
> them?
> > Who would pay for it?
> >>
> >>
> >> ______________________________________
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-- 
Eric J. Richardson
Master's of Arts in History
Master's of Arts Candidate in English
North Carolina Central University
Durham, NC 27707
[log in to unmask]
(336) 202-7341

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