After the American Civil War, once it was no longer possible to own chattel slaves the south had to work out a new system of raising cotton. The northern idea that the freed slaves would become hired laborers turned out to be a pipe dream; in the cash-starved postbellum South what actually happened was a variation on the old system of serfdom or peonage. In exchange for providing a quota of cotton to the land owners, the sharecroppers could keep whatever tiny surplus they could grow, and would largely feed themselves. Combined with exploitive measures like perpetual debt, this ensured that the land owners would get as much and give as little to the sharecroppers as possible.
My question is, was this a slightly worse or slightly better system than slavery for the landowners? The major difference between the ante- and postbellum systems was the capital investment in slaves. On the one hand, the high cost of slaves was a substantial market barrier to all but the largest growers; but on the other hand slaves were a store of capital (and potentially a self-growing investment return) that could be sold off in hard times. In the sharecropper system however, the two-edged sword worked the other way: slaves had to be fed and cared for, disciplined and kept from running away, while sharecroppers were on their own.
One might presume that antebellum slave owners defended slavery so vociferously because (among other reasons) they knew that chattel slavery was a better deal for them than any other system of labor. But was this so? Before the war, could a planter who had freedmen (or dirt poor whites) sharecrop his land have done as well or better than the slaveholders? Or was sharecropping a second-best system as far as the planters were concerned?
Well, if you think about it, people today complain that a person “cannot live on the minimum wage.” So it seems, at least under that theory, that in slavery days, a slave was provided food, housing, medical care, etc. And the slave had to be bought at the outset. A minimum wage worker is not provided that.
So, at least as far as paying wages goes, it seems to be cheaper to pay a minimum wage worker than to own a slave.
I realize that it is not an apples to apples comparison because “just getting by” was different in 1860 than it is today. For example, no cars, phones, electricity, and the extent of your health care was that a local doctor would give you an elixir. If you didn’t get better, you just died.
But that does not really address Lumpy’s question,** UltraVires**, does it – the OP itself acknowledges this is not a comparison to wage-earning employment:
And in many states it was legally ruled that the “shares” were not wages. Though it IS true that in terms of economics wage workers are more economically efficient than slaves since you only have to pay for the specific labor, and employees are more readily fungible if you need to cut back or expand, the landowning class in the South saw the universe in other terms and were honestly short liquid cash.
IIRC sharecropping coexisted with slavery in some slavist societies including some US states, but ISTM that pre-emancipation sharecropping would have been at an economic disadvantage vs. slavery for the sorts of large plantations associated with the antebellum South. Slave-based plantations could function as one big crop plot where resources could be directed on command where and when needed, as opposed to several smaller ones each running sort of on their own; plus there was the capital reserve value of the slaves themselves. What I read is that where sharecropping happened in the antebellum South it was in areas whose agriculture was unsuited for the sort of large plantation model either by geography or profitability.
Slaves didn’t have to be bought; they more times than not reproduced themselves.
Food and housing came from labor the slaves themselves provided and as far are provisions go, they were not expenses equivalent to wages (many slaves had to grow their own gardens on the side just to stay nourished.) And medical care? I would need to see evidence this was an expenditure worth talking about, when slaves were not considered human.
Not when there is a shortage of wage labor willing and able to do the work that slaves were forced to do. A minimum wage was not sufficient to incentivize the drudgery needed to develop the South, in the time span that it did. So I’m not sure it makes sense to make this kind of statement, as if the economic conditions that made slave labor attractive to capitalists can completely ignored.
I was at a plantation house outside of New Orleans. The exhibit about the slaves and their quarters stated that the slaves were not provided with food. They had to grow their own food in their spare time outside of their 12 or so hour work day.
You might ask how long did sharecropping last compared to slavery, to figure this out.
Slavery had a big advantage over sharecropping: complete control over labor. If a sharecropping serf decided he had enough of farming, he could quit. Move to the city and find a factory job. Go to school and learn a trade or become an entrepreneur. Sell his possessions and become a grifter. Maybe it wouldn’t be easy to quit, but it was possible.
A slave? Not unless he wanted to risk his life. This means the slaveowner never had to really worry about losing his workers. If the crop was bad that year, he could make up costs by selling a few slaves and leasing a few others out. He didn’t have the threat of workers abandoning their fields in search of greener pastures. Slaves provided options that wage labor did not. The benefits that come with this degree of control explain why slavery was so fervently clung to.
The threat of violence always hanging over the heads of slaves should not be dismissed when comparing slavery profitability with other forms labor. You could force a slave to do things with zero reprecussions that you could not do a freeman.
In practice, not always. I believe I mentioned “exploitive measures like perpetual debt”: the laws prevalent in the antebellum south considered walking out on debt a form of theft, punishable by forced labor. And the laws passed against vagabondage made it virtually a crime to be homeless and unemployed, with chain gang labor (often hired out to local farmers) the favored form of punishment.
Yes, but the systems in place to prevent runaway slaves was much more extensive and difficult to elude than they were for sharecropping. Furthermore, the latter’s children did not inherit their parent’s status. Once they left the home to find opportunities elsewhere, the chain of serfdom basically stopped at Ma and Pa. In contrast, slaveowners could trust that slaves would only beget more slaves, even if they were the ones doing the siring.
Sharecropping serfs had more freedoms than slaves did, however minuscule they were. As long as these workers could exercise some kind of volitional action that went against the immediate interests of the planter (like not working themselves or their children to the point of sickness and exhaustion, and taking advantage of public education, learning trades) this meant profits were more at risk than they were with slavery.
I realize that this may be taken the wrong way, so all of the standard disclaimers apply, but why would a slaveowner work his slaves to the point of sickness and death? He has a valuable invested in these slaves. Much like how you or I won’t drive our cars on the red line or go without regular maintenance. Or if it runs out of gas, we don’t get mad and set it on fire.
It does no good to work a slave to death, because you then have to buy another slave. Wouldn’t a prudent slave owner make sure his slaves were well-rested, well fed, and attended to medically?
You said it: a *prudent *slave-owner. One that did not become obsessed with the notion that they are all just about to kill him in his sleep and thus needs to keep them weak and terrorized… which was the attitude of many a slaveowner in the 19th century. Terms of slavery in some of the 19th Century US states were actually growing *more *repressive than in other places and times.
Not necessarily. Firstly, because sometimes slaves were cheap (this is especially in the Caribbean with sugar plantations, I think) and it was cheaper to replace them than care for them. Secondly, violence (not actually what you’re discussing, I know) was a way to keep them in line. If you have several slaves, then beating one would keep the others in their place and disciplined. Thirdly - think of how many people you see that do not maintain their cars or homes and let them fall in to crappy conditions.
Sure, but cars don’t think - setting one on fire won’t set an example for the other cars what will happen to them if they stop working for whatever reason.
But in the end, what is logical or reasonable or rational really has no bearing - what actually happened is what matters. And we have various records of abuse and mistreatment form both the slave and owner sides.
Even without that, there’s still the selling away and splitting of families, which could be prudent and make fiscal sense to a slaveowner. Not to mention slaves for sexual use.
Slaveowners were extremely profit-driven. Making money came before most other considerations. Maximizing the amount of productivity they could extract from their labor was their top priority, not promoting the welfare of their slaves.
As I pointed out earlier, slaves were not always purchased commodities, so whatever “investments” made in them was usually the bare minimum if that. I think folks like yourself overestimate the overhead costs associated with owning slaves. In hard times, you could whip your slaves to get them to work faster, and guess what? It would work. Slaveowners who didnt use these tactics would’ve been less competitive than those who did, which is why we can be sure that most big planters incorporated violence into their business models.
I’ve made this analogy before on this board: there is no amount of money that anyone could pay my black ass that could motivate me to pick cotton in 100 degree heat all summer long for the rest of my life. Given my druthers, I’d rather be a prostitute being paid minimum wage than do that kind of work. But if someone was threatening to whip the hide off my back if didn’t pick cotton, then I guess I’d be out in those fields doing it. I don’t like pain, I guess.
Now multiply me by hundreds of thousands of people, and hopefully you see why it’s not such a big economic loss to be abusive to them. For every one that is beaten to the point of sickness or death, you have 10 more that are motivated to work harder so as not to have the same thing happen to them. That means money, man. It also means more people too afraid to run away or rebel.
You can not extrapolate the principles behind car maintenance to slavery. A car lacks volition, a car lacks motivation, and a car doesn’t have to be psychologically broken for it to do what you want it to do.
And yet generations of sharecroppers did, apparently in the belief that they had no practical alternative. In any case this doesn’t address the question of whether sharecropping was more profitable or less than slavery for the land owners.
Upon review, you’re making the case that slaves could be exploited even more severely than sharecroppers. Doubtlessly true, but did it make that big a difference?
P.S. If I had to pick cotton ONLY 16 weeks a year and had the rest of year off (yeah, right) you could probably pay me enough but we’re talking megabucks here…
A slave complaining of a hurt back, headache, stomach troubles, fatigue, female troubles, etc. was just a lazy slave trying to get out of work.
It was typical for plantation slaves to be worked from sunrise to sunset. During the growing season, this is pretty much a 12-hour day. It’s nice to imagine that Massa would make allowances if you were suffering from an ailment, but the harsh truths make this a fantasy. One, overseers were in charge of slaves, not “prudent” slaveowners. An overseer didn’t care about his slaveowner’s “investment”. His job performance was tied directly to the slaves’ productivity. One slave looking to get out of work by feigning sickness would inevitably “infect” the whole plantation–an unacceptable prospect. So for the cold-hearted bastard overseer, it made complete sense to ignore all cries and signs of illness among the slaves and work them to the bone…at least until harvest time was over.
Two, large plantations could afford to lose a few slaves. Not all slaves were financially “valuable”. The ones that were a “dime a dozen” paid for themselves over a couple of years (if that long). At that point, Massa could do anything he wanted to that slave and not lose a red cent on his “investment”.
Three, the slave-owning class did not have much empathy for the enslaved class. If they had, the enslaved would have never been enslaved. Recognizing that your slave is truly ill, injured, or fatigued and not malingering or exaggerating requires empathy for that person and a recognition that they are a human being, the same as you. This is a deficient that still infects people today.
It’s hard to believe it wouldn’t make a big difference.
In some arrangements, sharecroppers were allowed to keep up to a half of their own crops. Even after you factor in all the debts that were applied to this income, that’s a lot of more money than your typical slave got, which was nothing. Sharecroppers could earn enough to buy stuff beyond food and shelter; it was possible to save for a better tomorrow. Could a slave? No. All that extra income went into the master’s bank account.
So how could that alone not make slavery a more profitable system overall? To argue otherwise means we have to assume all sharecropping arrangements took the most exploitative, quasi-enslavement form, but that would be misleading.
This is kind of as aside but it bears mentioning: Since post-Civil War sharecropping would have not existed had slavery not entailed the forced migration of Africans to the Americas, I do have to question the validity of your OP. Even if we imagine sharecropping was more profitable to the landowning class than slavery, where would planters have obtained all the sharecroppers to farm their land in the first place? These were former slaves suddenly in need of jobs. And where would the infrastructure that allowed plantations to become viable enterprises come from, without the labor supplied by enslaved Africans? There wouldn’t have been any farmable land in the first place if millions of slaves hadn’t tilled that land into money-making soil. So in that sense, it doesn’t really make sense to think that sharecropping could have always been a successful business strategy down there.
Again, all standard disclaimers apply. And I really mean that. After visiting Monticello last summer, I have a renewed and even visceral hatred that any man could enslave another man. There was a black man in our tour group, and I remember thinking that if he actually punched me right then and there, that I would give him a free shot. That being said:
A human being can only maximize his production if he is properly rested and nourished. I could work 18 hours today with no food and not die. Tomorrow I will be dragging, and a normal 8 hour day will not be as productive. If someone beats on me to work that 8 hour day (or another 18 hour day) then I would probably do it and be just as productive. But this cannot continue forever. At some point due to exhaustion, injuries from beatings, and lack of nourishment, I will collapse.
The point is well taken about the psychological affects on humans to work harder, but humans have a maximum return of value of production. I might be afraid of not being able to make my mortgage payment, but I cannot work 24 hours per day, no matter how much I want to. Even if I could work 20 hours per day, my productivity levels fall, and would be better if I only worked 12 hours, ate properly, and then got 8 hours of sleep. One would have to assume that under any sort of business enterprise, the proprietors, by and large, use their own property efficiently lest the market beat them.
The analogy to car maintenance is clearly imperfect, but I think it is apt. A car, like a human being, can only perform a given amount of work. Pressing a car, or a person, past that point is harmful and against the economic interests of the person who owns the car. I can beat a horse to make him keep running today, but the overall effect will be to diminish the economic value of the horse. Suppose another horse could understand that he will get a beating unless he runs all day; that then diminishes that horse’s economic value.
But back to the point of the thread, I would think that sharecropping would be more profitable, at least under that system. I do not have an ownership interest in the sharecropper. He owes me extortionist amounts of “rent” and if he falls short, then that’s on him. From an economic standpoint, I don’t care if him and his whole family dies. I do care about my slave or horse dying, however.
In short, with all disclaimers, at least under slavery the owner had a vested economic interest in the well being of his slave. Under sharecropping (and arguably current minimum wage workers) the owner doesn’t care. Do the job, or someone else will.
The overseer is in the owner’s employ. If he is using harsh tactics which diminish the value of the slaves, then that dude is fired and another one is hired.
Even if I own 100 cars, that does not mean it is profitable to abuse all 100. The effects of beatings and forcing people to work more than the maximum value output is the same if I pressed all of my cars to the max. I’ve got to go buy more cars and sooner because of my foolish decisions.
Of course, people make foolish decisions, but is there any evidence that this harsh treatment of slaves was a majority or a significant minority of the treatment? Or is it just anecdotal evidence of the admitted horrible nature of human slavery?
Based on various former-slave interviews and letters (and the like) that have survived, such harsh treatment (along with rape of the young women) was extremely commonplace.
I don’t know what else could convince if this is your argument. History has shown time and time again that employers will demand extremes from their workers, if left unregulated.
I mean, we all know that hiring children to work 12 hr factory jobs is neither humane nor the best way to increase productivity, right? But it happened during the early days of industrialization because there a demand for low-cost labor. Same thing with slavery.
Sweatshops work people to the bone and yet they generate enough productivity to make it worth it. Gee, how can this be? If what you say is true, sweatshops would not exist.
The point at which health and quality of life begins to suffers comes sooner than the point that the capitalist stops making money off you. If I become exhausted after picking cotton after 8 hours (which is generous for me) but I can be forced to pick another 4 hours without collapsing, then boss man is winning in the long term by giving me a 12 hr workday.
In contrast, if I have the freedom to quit after 8, then that is 4 hours of work he losing from me. That is the risk that sharecropping presented to landowners.
