Absolutely fascinating insight, Henry, about which I knew nothing. Thank you. -- Stephan On 23 Jun 2007, at 00:15, Henry Wiencek wrote: > Re: Anita's post about slaves buying their freedom -- > I met a business historian at UVA several years ago who was doing her > dissertation on the development of the life insurance business. To > her > surprise she found that in the 1850s insurance companies were > writing more > and more policies for slaves. Most of these were taken out by > masters who > were hiring out their slaves to work in factories, but some > policies were > taken out by slaves with the masters as the beneficiaries. She > found that > this was a manumission strategy. A slave who wanted to buy himself > on, say, > a ten-year plan, would naturally meet resistance from the master -- > what > happens if the slave makes two years of payments and then gets > killed on a > dangerous job? The master loses 80% of the slave's value. But if > the slave > has a policy, the master gets the full death benefit. So life > insurance > eased the path to freedom. On the larger scale, the entry of the big > insurance companies into the slavery business showed how slavery was > evolving in the 1850s into something more modern, flexible, and > robust, > adapting to industrialization and becoming woven into the national > financial > markets. > > Henry Wiencek