Why Slaves?
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dannieboy20906 — 10 years ago(June 10, 2015 01:47 PM)
Dave Wile;
It was pointed out by another poster in another thread on this board, but apparently you didn't read it.
An attempt was made to enslave Native Americans or American Indians, but it failed for the obvious reason that they can escape and go home. They know how to live off the land and navigate cross-country to rejoin their tribes.
Slaves imported from Africa cannot return home because three thousand miles is a heckuva lot of water to swim. Subsequent generations cannot blend in with the local population and must make it all the way to Canada to get free. In the meantime, there is no support network to help them. Near the time of the beginning of the Civil War the Underground Railroad was making strides in moving escaping slaves up to Canada, but it was a dangerous task. -
generationofswine — 11 years ago(March 23, 2015 12:43 PM)
Now hold on everyone, it was one of the debates in Congress at the time of Amistad. The free laborers in the North had a FAR lower standard of living than the slave laborers in the South.
Slaves were an investment and between the housing costs (which were better than the tenements in the North) the Food cost (again better) and the healthcare costs (once more, better) it actually cost more to own a slave than it did to hire a free laborer.
The pro-slavery movement pointed this out, & the fact that slaves had a higher standard of living than free laborers time & again when they were arguing against abolition.
But the economic structure was extremely different & we were still an agrarian nation with a developing industrial base.
The reason that slaves were preferred over free labor was migratory. In the industrialized north companies held free-labor as slaves through debt to the factory stores & factory housing.
In the south with growing seasons that would be a difficult prospect & the labor needed for the farm to prosper would be far from guaranteed. Slaves, on the other hand, were sedentary & able to diversify as, like on Jefferson's plantation, there were artisan slaves.
In other-words, as where bigotry no doubt played a role in slavery, the economic argument is slightly flawed. It actually did cost far more to own a slave than to higher a free man.
However, because of an economic base in agriculture, a diversification in slave labor, & the fact that slaves unlike free farm-workers were not migratory, the benefits far outweighed the costs thus making the South's "peculiar institution," as they called it, more profitable than the cheaper free labor. -
NewCliches — 11 years ago(March 23, 2015 12:55 PM)
The free laborers in the North had a FAR lower standard of living than the slave laborers in the South.
If that were true, I would expect a fair number of free laborers to volunteer to be enslaved. How many did so? -
g_samov — 10 years ago(September 02, 2015 01:42 PM)
Hmm, good thinking I'd say. I'm not even sure if you find that surprising or what you're arguing here. Just look at the migrants from Africa drowning en route to France, UK and so on. I highly doubt they'd be taking equal risks if they knew they'd be facing good nutrition, health care but also a ball and chain at the end of their journeys.
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debrecenisrac38 — 9 years ago(April 15, 2016 05:19 PM)
I can give you a very good answer to that from a different perspective. After 1961, when the Berlin Wall was built and the Non-Aligned countries have formed, many Westerners were aware, that all costs in the communist bloc was lower, than in the West.
Yet, guest workers in the GDR came from Angola, Vietnam, and neighboring socialist countries. The answer to that question is the same as to yours: political will. Slave economy, much like a plan based economy is unfit to compete with free trade and is doomed to fail. So, the political will behind it has to keep it up by violence, and they did, and wherever there's still slavery, they still do. Individuals rarely give up their personal freedom, if they don't have to, so paying half for things was not enticing enough to move to a society, where most of your neighbors would snitch you out.
As for Indians being legally free, I strongly recall, Gandhi's early protests in South Africa as a lawyer concerned the mandate toward Indians not being able to walk on the road, only beside it. So yes, the British exchanged African slaves for workers of other colonies, or half colonies, like China.
Circling back to the GDR, people accepted guest worker spots, because the wage was better. Claims by the pro-slavery movement on slavery not being cost effective is akin to the communist argument of workers having it better, than being under capitalist exploitation. In other words both being a lie. It wasn't done, because it was more effective, only the ruling class wanted it.
Technically I wasn't born a slave, but not as a free person either, a long iron curtain prevented me from choosing where I wished to go. You may interpret this as a divide between white people, because I stand by my view of equating colonialist slave traders to communists. What celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution is to Russia is the Confederate heritage month to the South.
I live in the Gordius Apartment Complex, my interior designer was M.C. Escher.