# American Civil War/When/how would the south have abolished slavery without it **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 10, 2014, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-when-how-would-the-south-have-abolished-slavery-without-it/683359 "2014-03-10T16:42:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![MOIDALIZE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e274bd/32.png) [@MOIDALIZE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MOIDALIZE)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2014, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-when-how-would-the-south-have-abolished-slavery-without-it/683359/201 "2014-03-30T18:57:34Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Well, textiles isn’t a random representative example. Cotton was the main southern export so textile makers were the only northern business concerned about southern exports. It was more of a political concern, no? Northern industrial interests supported protectionist policies that southern agriculture was opposed to. > [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > It’s worth remembering that the mid-west and the west were also primarily agricultural producers and faced the same economic situation the south did. But those farmers weren’t idle aristocrats overseeing large plantations worked by slaves. It was very much in their interest for slavery to be halted, if not abolished. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2014, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-when-how-would-the-south-have-abolished-slavery-without-it/683359/202 "2014-03-30T21:52:53Z")
> [@Hellestal](#): > > Yep. They sure did. And if you think that was an economical system, then I’m going to laugh in your face. They got a decent war machine up and running, and did so by sacrificing everything else they had. > > I’ve already said in both my previous posts that it’s possible for slave industrialization to exist. It just wouldn’t be very efficient. Now I say it a third time. Nazi Germany is a great example of how badly it works. > Well, there hasn’t been any country with “pure market forces”. There’s probably a very good reason for that. I don’t see how any society of normal human beings can run on pure market forces. I brought up that example because you claimed that the threat of sabotage would make slave driven manufacturing impractical. Forget about ideology - it was a war time economy. I was not using it as an example of the economic efficiency of a slave driven factory - I don’t think it argues for or against this. > [@](#): > > But markets such as actually exist have done [a pretty good job](http://www.themoneyillusion.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/osha.png) in making workplaces safer. It didn’t take OSHA to decrease workplace fatalities. The trend was a long-standing one. This isn’t about the benevolence of owners. It’s about having richer workers with other viable options. (This is not to say regulation has had no effect. But I don’t see how anyone can seriously argue that safety regulation has ever been more important than richer workers.) How interesting that your graph starts in 1933, long after other labor laws and regulations helped to get those workers richer. And worker mobility helps too - not a factor in a slave driven economy. > [@](#): > > Considering the [various](http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=9174) [reports](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2008/feb/14/sabotaging-hitlers-bombs/) of sabotage in Nazi factories, I’d say that there was probably a decent amount of sabotage in Nazi factories. And there would be slave sabotage. Not enough to make the factories uneconomical, though. > [@](#): > > Yet there was still genuine sabotage. People did what little they could to undermine their oppressors. These little things add up. If the Confederates had refrained from starting the war by firing on Fort Sumter, then it’s very likely the secession would have succeeded. Eventually the slave country would have industrialized, and they would have likewise found that free labor worked better in such an environment. Slave factories are possible, but not as economical, for all the reasons I’ve laid out. I shudder to think what they might have done, given an increasingly unnecessary and undesired slave workforce. There’s historical precedent for an industrial power using its lethal machination against a racial “sub-caste”. The slave factories would not have lasted forever. Improved technology would have made them uneconomic by the early 20th century. But they would have lasted for 50 years at least since very low labor costs reduce the incentives for automation. > [@](#): > > And it’s hard to see how owners would ever do better with disinterest, at least in the real world where there are appropriate criminal penalties for murderous neglect. That’s true even in Bangladesh. My hypothetical was to show that there was other causes for them to care, _in addition_ to the necessary criminal penalties. I’m surprised to see you write this, since it sounds like the conservative position that regulation is unnecessary since criminal penalties will make rational people not commit crimes. We know how well that works. Some of these people think they are immune from penalties, being powerful, or miscalculate the odds of a disaster. Sure most owners won’t provide unsafe conditions, but we have the outliers who do and their short term competitive advantage. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Ecks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/bcef8e/32.png) [@Johnny\_Ecks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Ecks)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2014, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-when-how-would-the-south-have-abolished-slavery-without-it/683359/203 "2014-03-31T14:06:04Z")
Just a thought on industrial slavery- no numbers to back this up, but consider this: You want to start a factory, you need to buy machinery and such. This is expensive. If you are running a factory on slave labor, you also need to buy slaves, and slave housing, and incidentals. Slaves are expensive. You may not have to pay them, but you are massively increasing your up front cost. You either have to have very deep pockets, or take out a loan. Alternatively you can rent slaves- this was quite common, pre Civil War- but if you have to rent your manpower, how is it better than paying them directly? Every slave you have to punish, even if non-fatally, is a loss of resources- and thus cash. You also limit your ability to adjust production- instead of hiring and firing workers as needed, you have to buy and sell slaves- a much more time and cash intensive process. Now the Nazis did run factories on slave labor- but they had an virtually unlimited supply of expendable prisoners. When your resources cost nothing and can be replaced easily, discipline and manpower suddenly becomes less of a problem. The same cannot be said of the Antebellum south. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2014, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-when-how-would-the-south-have-abolished-slavery-without-it/683359/204 "2014-04-01T02:23:47Z")
> [@MOIDALIZE](#): > > But those farmers weren’t idle aristocrats overseeing large plantations worked by slaves. It was very much in their interest for slavery to be halted, if not abolished. That’s my point. The war wasn’t about tariffs. If it had been the mid-western and western states would have joined with the south. It was about slavery. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2014, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-when-how-would-the-south-have-abolished-slavery-without-it/683359/205 "2014-04-01T02:30:54Z")
> [@Johnny\_Ecks](#): > > Just a thought on industrial slavery- no numbers to back this up, but consider this: > You want to start a factory, you need to buy machinery and such. This is expensive. If you are running a factory on slave labor, you also need to buy slaves, and slave housing, and incidentals. Slaves are expensive. You may not have to pay them, but you are massively increasing your up front cost. You either have to have very deep pockets, or take out a loan. Alternatively you can rent slaves- this was quite common, pre Civil War- but if you have to rent your manpower, how is it better than paying them directly? Every slave you have to punish, even if non-fatally, is a loss of resources- and thus cash. You also limit your ability to adjust production- instead of hiring and firing workers as needed, you have to buy and sell slaves- a much more time and cash intensive process. Another factor that can’t be dismissed is psychology. In the south, land was considered the prestigious form of wealth. A person who made his money in trade or industry would be considered second-class. Southerners that did make money in some other fashion usually ended up either cashing out and buying a plantation so they would be “somebody” or they relocated to another part of the country where their accomplishments would be respected. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2014, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-when-how-would-the-south-have-abolished-slavery-without-it/683359/206 "2014-04-01T06:47:54Z")
> [@Johnny\_Ecks](#): > > Just a thought on industrial slavery- no numbers to back this up, but consider this: > You want to start a factory, you need to buy machinery and such. This is expensive. If you are running a factory on slave labor, you also need to buy slaves, and slave housing, and incidentals. Slaves are expensive. You may not have to pay them, but you are massively increasing your up front cost. You either have to have very deep pockets, or take out a loan. Alternatively you can rent slaves- this was quite common, pre Civil War- but if you have to rent your manpower, how is it better than paying them directly? Every slave you have to punish, even if non-fatally, is a loss of resources- and thus cash. You also limit your ability to adjust production- instead of hiring and firing workers as needed, you have to buy and sell slaves- a much more time and cash intensive process. > > Now the Nazis did run factories on slave labor- but they had an virtually unlimited supply of expendable prisoners. When your resources cost nothing and can be replaced easily, discipline and manpower suddenly becomes less of a problem. The same cannot be said of the Antebellum south. Yet they made it work quite well in agriculture. If it would have happened, it would have happened after technological advances in farming eliminated the need for many field slaves. That might have changed the attitude. As I mentioned, you still would have to pay free workers enough to live on - and feeding and housing slaves might cost less. And as I mentioned cheap immigrant labor, which powered northern factories, did not come to the south, so the labor there would have been more expensive. Many of your arguments could be used to prove that the use of slaves for agriculture could not have been practical. ---
**Author:** ![Hellestal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3ab097/32.png) [@Hellestal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hellestal)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2014, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-when-how-would-the-south-have-abolished-slavery-without-it/683359/207 "2014-04-11T02:39:22Z")
I had a nice bit written which got eated by the interwebs. Then I got distracted by another thread. Anyway. > [@Johnny\_Ecks](#): > > Just a thought on industrial slavery- no numbers to back this up, but consider this: > You want to start a factory, you need to buy machinery and such. This is expensive. If you are running a factory on slave labor, you also need to buy slaves, and slave housing, and incidentals. Slaves are expensive. Yes, slaves were expensive. And it’s true that the upfront “capital” cost of slave agriculture is almost exclusively the slaves, while the upfront capital costs of factories are both the slaves and the equipment. This does distinguish slave industry from slave agriculture. But there’s no reason why slaves couldn’t be rented for some price approximating a wage, rather than being purchased outright. In fact, much of agricultural slavery was built on debt as a way to amortize slave costs over a longer period rather than paying all at once. The “capital” costs for a slave factory are naturally greater than for agriculture, but they could still be amortized in a fashion similar to paying a wage. > [@Voyager](#): > > How interesting that your graph starts in 1933, long after other labor laws and regulations helped to get those workers richer. And worker mobility helps too - not a factor in a slave driven economy. Those labor laws were important. Those labor laws were much less important than economic growth. This remains true today. If all our capital equipment suddenly dissolved into a cloud of dust, the laws you refer to would mean less than nothing. If the labor laws vanished but our tangible wealth remained, well, there are lot more regular folk than business owners, and their marginal product hasn’t changed. Plenty of horror stories would make the front page of the New York Times, but we would not slip back into 19th century conditions. We wouldn’t come close to that. Market forces, which include worker unionization, were always the bigger deal. It’s historically backward to give an overabundance of credit to legal statutes for victories that workers were fighting for and winning through more direct means over an extended time. Real wages were increasing, slowly and unsteadily, from even before the Industrial Revolution. Those laws were powerful political victories for workers, but they won those victories in conjunction with a longer and more personal struggle. The political victories are totally meaningless without economic growth. If somehow it were possible to institute, and enforce, a 40-hour workweek in a preindustrial society, then the result isn’t a magical rain of riches on farm workers. The result would be starvation and death. Their poverty would be too severe to subsist with so little effort. Fundamentally, it was productivity that made workers richer. It’s not a slight against those political victories to admit that fact. Beyond that: Automation and industrialization go hand in hand. The reason that the Industrial Revolution was a proper upending of how we had previously lived was the increased productivity from automation. It was the incentive to create more and better machines that changed the world. This is fundamentally what industrialization is about. Humans with machines can do much more than humans laboring on their own. In arguing that “cheap labor” (which isn’t necessarily, based on the needs of the business) provides an incentive against automation, one makes an argument _against_ slave industrialization. If slavery delays automation 50 years, then it delays proper industrialization 50 years. It does so because slavery is uneconomical for this sort of work. > [@Voyager](#): > > I’m surprised to see you write this, since it sounds like the conservative position that regulation is unnecessary since criminal penalties will make rational people not commit crimes. Honestly, I don’t see how I can “sound like” I believe rationality acts as a brake, when I explicitly said that people aren’t rational. It’s a funny trick to sound like I hold a position that’s exactly the opposite of what I actually said. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-when-how-would-the-south-have-abolished-slavery-without-it/683359.md?page=10)