On Nov 13, 2008, at 2:44 PM, [log in to unmask] wrote:

> Lyle Browning argues that technological change would have inevitably  
> killed slavery.
I knew someone would take exception to that when I wrote it;) I also  
saw that typos garbled the message. What the last sentence should have  
said is this: Mechanized farm equipment evolved from equalling human  
output to steadily topping it in the late 19th century and was able to  
top that by 200 times in the 1990's.

>  The implication is that the Civil War was a tragic mistake
That's the part that muddies the waters. Techno-change is in fits and  
starts but takes off during times of extreme stress, such as wars. The  
Civil War brought about enormous change in technologies, that were  
adapted and continued in the civilian arena after the Civil War. WWI  
mass production technologies adapted for peacetime use resulted in the  
explosion of truck farming and tractor usage on farms. One can also  
argue that without the impetus of warfare, techno-change wouldn't have  
been able to make much of a difference. The Romans had the most  
advanced technologies but where slaves were usable, technologies not  
applied and progress stagnated.

> --that the politics of the slave debate, which culminated of course  
> in war and bloodshed, was unnecessary.
Not by my thinking at all.
>
>
> This turns out, however, to be at best a partial truth.  Without  
> developing this claim to any large degree, let me point out two  
> facts which complicate the picture of technological determinism.
>
> First:  agriculture in the United States mechanized at differing  
> rates.
Absolutely agree.

>  Share cropping (the post-emancipation form of racial and economic  
> control) died not because of mechanized agriculture, but because of  
> the policies of the federal government in the New Deal.
How so?

>  California, where agriculture was most capitalized, mechanized  
> agriculture in the first decades of the 20th century.
You also saw mid-west farms becoming increasingly mechanized by the  
introduction of the steam tractor, later supplanted by the IC engined  
tractor. Ever larger acreages could be worked by machines, replacing  
the roughly 1/3 that had to be set aside for animal fodder. Before  
mechanization, a farm was as big as your family could work with the  
cooperative effort of neighbors.

>  You can chart this by looking at the distribution of mule ownership  
> in the United States--in the 1940s, the only part of the US in which  
> most farmers still owned mules was the South.  By contrast, the only  
> part of the US in which most farmers did not own tractors was the  
> same region--the South.
Sure, because you had your share-cropping and the same labor force as  
before, namely African-Americans to do it and because a mechanized  
cotton picker, and the combine harvester for corn or cereal crops  
hadn't been invented yet, and undoubtedly because tractors were way  
too expensive for southern farmers to afford, and probably because the  
South hadn't emerged from the financial straits it found itself within  
after the Civil War. Mechanized farming did not come to parts of  
Virginia until well into the 20th century.
>
>
> Second:  Slavery proved quite adaptable to factory manufacturing.   
> Charles Dew has written two very fine books on Virginia iron  
> foundries which demonstrate that under the right conditions, slaves  
> could be quite profitably used in heavy manufacturing industry.
That's very true, but the number of skilled workers is far smaller  
than the numbers of folks who hadn't those skills. Black migration out  
of the south to the West, the Rust Belt and the Northeast in the  
various waves bespoke volumes as well. The oppressive political  
climate was as much as factor as the higher wages as causes of those  
movements.
>
>
> Together, these two facts suggest that technological change is  
> thoroughly mediated by cultural, legal, and institutional factors.   
> Over very long periods of time it may well be determinitive-- 
> although even this is debated by historians of technology.  Over  
> shorter periods of time--the 20-30 year span that Lyle Browning  
> suggests--technological change is far more ambiguous--and politics  
> far more important.
I wasn't perhaps clear in my time-span. The invention of the various  
mechanized equipment types was within a small time period, but their  
effective wide-spread use was far longer, depending upon the invention  
and modification of equipment that eliminated the need for cheap labor  
that had been previously supplied by African-Americans. The 30 period  
I referred to was from 1865-1895 which did see mechanized advances  
outside the South. One can argue that McCormick's reaper and Whitney's  
gin were pivotal but did not increase production so drastically as to  
overwhelm the labor force. The wide-spread use of the traction engine,  
first in steam and then in IC mode was able to overwhelm. The first  
reaper simply cut grain. To move it from the reaper required people  
and then it was back to people doing what they'd done for eons to  
process it. But once processing technology caught up, the net result  
to was to surpass what a gang of people could do. The surplus people  
either had to be put to work elsewhere or not used.

The what-if bogs down into whether uses would have been found  
elsewhere for the ag workers if they'd been slaves or whether a cost- 
benefit ratio analysis would have shown the system to be broken. Too  
many variables outside of reality for that one to compute.

I would also think that with the second-half 19th century onward  
influx of Europeans that the economies that made slavery attractive  
would tend to disappear. By that I mean if one could hire people in  
the model of amoral capitalism as in "kill a mule, hire a mule where  
you substitute your ethnic preference for mule" it would ultimately be  
less expensive to hire than to buy and maintain with all the problems  
that ownership had been shown to have. In urban areas, one traditional  
means of earning money before marriage for young women was for them to  
enter into the domestic service arena. Masses of immigrants followed  
this path.
>
> Slavery ended because of political processes.  This is true not just  
> for the United States, but (to my knowledge anyway) everywhere that  
> plantation slavery died.  Its death was political, and certainly not  
> inevitable.
If necessity is the mother of invention, a continued plantation system  
by another means would certainly have slowed mechanization, but in  
order to achieve the productivity gains that agriculture has made  
since mechanization, cheap labor would, I think, have inevitably  
disappeared. Whether it would have been channeled other directions  
once there was no need, I think not.

Lyle Browning


>
> All best,
> Kevin
>
> ---- Original message ----
>> Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 23:29:06 -0500
>> From: "Lyle E. Browning" <[log in to unmask]>
>> Subject: Re: And Now Nat Turner in a Politically Correct Light
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>
>> Mechanization is to me the death
>> knell of slavery. Boulton & Watt's steam engine, Eli Whitney's cotton
>> gin and Cyrus McCormick's reaper were the nails in the coffin of an
>> institution that didn't know it was dead. Maybe it would have lasted
>> another 30 years but eventually the economic reason for it, which
>> seems to have been the driving force, would have disappeared. The
>> steam engine, once it was set on wheels, and then once it had an
>> adapted mill technology for auto-motion, was the device that would be
>> the major determinant. Why? because one slave could tend about 10
>> acres per year in the "system" and that was a driven efficiency.
>> Mechanized farm equipment evolved from equalling human output to
>> steadily stopping it in the late 29th century and was able to top  
>> that
>> by 200 times in the 1990's.
>>
>> Lyle Browning
> Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
> Department of History
> James Madison University
>
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