# Profitability of slavery vs. sharecropping **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 7, 2016, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profitability-of-slavery-vs-sharecropping/754213 "2016-05-07T20:47:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2016, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profitability-of-slavery-vs-sharecropping/754213/41 "2016-05-09T04:25:17Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > But a slaveholder who abused his slaves to force work above that which could be expected of a human body would be at a disadvantage to those slaveholders who understood that a human body required good food, rest, and medical care. You’re making straw men now. No one has said slaveowners forced all their slaves to work past their breaking point. What some of us have said is that they worked them as hard as they possibly could, which meant at some regular frequency at least one lucky person or two would have to be worked/beaten past their breaking point. And “good food?” Really? What kind of “good food” do you think slaves ate? This whole tangent started when I said that sharecroppers had the choice not to work themselves or their families to the point of exhaustion, sickness, or death. Remember? Since then you’ve denied that there would ever be an incentive for a slaveowner to work his slaves this hard, and I’m telling you that this is bananas. It doesn’t matter what you would do or how you would treat a car or whatever. These are people who had almost 300 years worth of trial and error to figure out best practices for their industry, and what they came up with was not kumbaya stuff like “good food” and plenty of rest. Unless you can provide a cite that shows that slaves had legal limits to how many consecutive hours they could be forced to work everyday; had rest breaks at intervals that were reasonable, humane, and mandatory no matter how much in the red the plantation was; call in sick, take maternity leave, and could file grievances against the slaveowner for hostile work environments, I’m inclined to think you are just kind of making up stuff. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2016, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profitability-of-slavery-vs-sharecropping/754213/42 "2016-05-09T05:22:24Z")
So thanks to insomnia, I’ve found some instructive reading for posters like **Ultra**. On [page](https://books.google.com/books?id=d0Oc5aYxwkUC&pg=PA270&lpg=PA270&dq=slavery+overwork+exhaustion+south&source=bl&ots=5Hf677xaz-&sig=B0HhfM3jIZS1V2TP9B9u2SjpnVM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiOm4PKmszMAhXJND4KHZg8BRgQ6AEIJDAD#v=onepage&q=slavery%20overwork%20exhaustion%20south&f=false) 270 of _Slavery in South Carolina and the Ex-slaves: Or, The Port Royal Mission_, the author quotes multiple sources that directly counter the view that abusing and overworking slaves hurt plantation profitability. These accounts suggests that “using up” slaves, even if that meant they became dead and useless after a few years, was the preferred business model over more humane treatment. Now, I suppose we should ignore this book because it is tainted by an abolitionist’s agenda. But im rather relunctant to do that until I see evidence from a more objective source saying the opposite. ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2016, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profitability-of-slavery-vs-sharecropping/754213/43 "2016-05-09T06:12:01Z")
Whats forgotten tho is sharecropping is what the “po’ ole white trash” did during and after slavery so there was great resentment between the poor whites and blacks Also there were a lot of former slaves that were so much in debt to the plantations and such that many couldn’t tell the difference between the “old days” and the new… supposedly there were families still in debt 20 years later ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2016, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profitability-of-slavery-vs-sharecropping/754213/44 "2016-05-09T06:50:26Z")
A few things. > [@Lumpy](#): > > 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. One key reason is that freedom for the slave meant that a good share of slaveowner wealth and savings went out the door. Even a profitable sharecropping business wouldn’t make up for that. Firstly, former slaves were no longer worked in gangs. That was tried briefly after the civil war, but I suspect they couldn’t pay them enough. Secondly, the shear number of labor hours declined to a level more like -wait for it- that exherted by free men and women. Combining lower employment fractions among the rural population, fewer days worked per year and fewer hours worked per day led to a 28-37% reduction in labor supply according to Ransom and Sutch (1975) as quoted [here](https://www.amazon.ca/New-Economic-View-American-History/dp/0393963152) (or rather an earlier edition of the same). As for punishment, Gutman and Sutch apply Fogel’s data on a particular slave plantation to come up with 1.2 whippings per slave per year. So yeah, deterence (aka terror) was a big part of the institution. Recognize though that this is based on the records of one plantation and it’s reasonable to be skeptical that all casual beatings made it into the dataset. Consider also that the above dry figure encompasses one public beating \*every 4 days. \* **UltraVires** poses a reasonable question though. Nobel Laurette Robert Fogel took an analogous stance: he presented slaveowners as profit maximizing businessmen in his work [Time on The Cross](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_on_the_Cross). That work unsurprisingly sparked a great deal of controversy, criticism and research. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2016, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profitability-of-slavery-vs-sharecropping/754213/45 "2016-05-09T07:08:58Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > I am not saying that abuses did not happen. Certainly not. But a slaveholder who abused his slaves to force work above that which could be expected of a human body would be at a disadvantage to those slaveholders who understood that a human body required good food, rest, and medical care. Presumably slaveowners would vary their treatment in accordance with the replacement value of the slave. Specifically, treatment in the Caribbean I understand was worse than treatment in North America especially after the ban in the slave trade kicked in. A close look at the financial forces really brings the horrorshow into focus. In some ways US slavery was nothing new: slaves had existed since before Roman times. But in other ways it was different: transportation costs had dropped sufficiently in the early 19th century so that slavery co-existed with a robust international commodity trade. In other words a highly competitive market, one with robust cost pressures. Those businesses that treated their slaves far too kindly or far too cruel would face liquidation and presumably subsequent auction of property, breaking up families. Ta-Nehisi Coates’ reading of the diaries of former slaves indicates that this was the part that led to the most escapes to freedom. Not the beatings. Not the shitty food. Not the long hours. But the fact that however hard you worked and however sharp your wit, you could have your family broken apart on a whim of overseer or fate. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2016, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profitability-of-slavery-vs-sharecropping/754213/46 "2016-05-09T13:49:10Z")
During the 1930s the government collected many interviews with former slaves. They are collected [online here.](https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/mesnbibStates1.html) There is probably survivorship bias going on so it will not give you a complete picture but it will give you a better understanding of the experience. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2016, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profitability-of-slavery-vs-sharecropping/754213/47 "2016-05-09T15:19:33Z")
If sharecropping was a better deal for plantation owners one wonders why it wasn’t pursued pre-Civil War. ---
**Author:** ![Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freddy_the_Pig)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2016, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profitability-of-slavery-vs-sharecropping/754213/48 "2016-05-09T16:13:03Z")
> [@nightshadea](#): > > Whats forgotten tho is sharecropping is what the “po’ ole white trash” did during and after slavery so there was great resentment between the poor whites and blacks. Not “during”. Nobody of either race sharecropped before the end of slavery. _After_ slavery, after Reconstruction, gradually, many white small farmers _were_ forced into sharecropping. It got harder and harder for small farmers to compete with mechanized Northern farms, and high interest rates didn’t help. White small farmers would lose their land to banks, and then have to sharecrop. As late as the 1890’s, some Southern politicians tried to rally poor blacks and whites in common cause. The Southern aristocracy responded by playing the race card, appealing to poor white “racial pride” and passing laws that effectively disfranchised black people, and many poor whites besides. > [@nightshadea](#): > > Also there were a lot of former slaves that were so much in debt to the plantations and such that many couldn’t tell the difference between the “old days” and the new… supposedly there were families still in debt 20 years later No, I’m sorry, but even the most ground down, indebted sharecropper knew the difference between sharecropping and slavery. Under sharecropping Massa couldn’t sell your spouse and children. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2016, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profitability-of-slavery-vs-sharecropping/754213/49 "2016-05-09T18:57:35Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > Moreover, at least on paper, black sharecroppers were American citizens. Under slavery, they were property that could be destroyed with impunity. Seems to me a no-brainer which type of labor force would be preferred by a cold-hearted bastard capitalist. To me too. The one you don’t have to buy in the first place and that you don’t need to feed when you don’t have sufficiently productive work for him. If he starves meanwhile, you hire another. If he becomes ill or has an accident while working, you just fire him and hire another, without any loss for you. And in both cases, he doesn’t cost you more on a daily basis than the bare minimum to subsist. If it weren’t the case, slavery would have been practised in Europe too. But as long as you have a large crowd of paupers who desperatly need to work to feed themselves, owning slaves is a waste of money IMO. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2016, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profitability-of-slavery-vs-sharecropping/754213/50 "2016-05-09T19:11:41Z")
> [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](#): > > Not “during”. Nobody of either race sharecropped before the end of slavery. It did happen, but in a very very minimal degree, apparently. ---
**Author:** ![Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freddy_the_Pig)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2016, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profitability-of-slavery-vs-sharecropping/754213/51 "2016-05-09T19:34:35Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > It did happen, but in a very very minimal degree, apparently. Yes, that’s true. Never say “never”, because with millions of people around there will always be somebody doing something. But it was not at all common or systematic. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2016, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profitability-of-slavery-vs-sharecropping/754213/52 "2016-05-09T19:40:40Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > To me too. The one you don’t have to buy in the first place and that you don’t need to feed when you don’t have sufficiently productive work for him. If he starves meanwhile, you hire another. If he becomes ill or has an accident while working, you just fire him and hire another, without any loss for you. And in both cases, he doesn’t cost you more on a daily basis than the bare minimum to subsist. > > If it weren’t the case, slavery would have been practised in Europe too. But as long as you have a large crowd of paupers who desperatly need to work to feed themselves, owning slaves is a waste of money IMO. This whole post reminds me of [this](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=707622&page=2&highlight=Cohen+slavery) thread. I don’t even know where to begin. So if you’re right, we have to believe: - Southern slave masters acted against their best interest for nearly 300 years, somehow never figuring out that they could make even more money by freeing their slaves, giving them rights as citizens, and hiring them as sharecroppers. Ok. - Southern slave masters were also so irrational and deluded about what was in their best financial interests–such incompetence comes with the territory of living in mansions, I guess–that they waged war against the North, sacrificing in the process hundreds of thousands of lives and almost all their net worth. Yup, that makes sense too. - And then too [Europe never practiced slavery.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery) Which should be so obvious anyway, because Europeans would never be so irrational as to round up people and force them to work in labor camps, amirite? ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2016, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profitability-of-slavery-vs-sharecropping/754213/53 "2016-05-11T13:02:44Z")
> [@you\_with\_the\_face](#): > > This whole post reminds me of [this](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=707622&page=2&highlight=Cohen+slavery) thread. I don’t even know where to begin. > > So if you’re right, we have to believe: > > - Southern slave masters acted against their best interest for nearly 300 years, somehow never figuring out that they could make even more money by freeing their slaves, giving them rights as citizens, and hiring them as sharecroppers. Ok. Did you notice this sentence in the post you quoted : > [@](#): > > as long as you have a large crowd of paupers who desperatly need to work to feed themselves ? Slavery made perfect sense in the America at the beginning (I wouldn’t know in 1860) : there was profitable work to be done, but no workforce. So, you had to import it. And given the westward expansion, those imported workers could just move and set up their own farm if they were unhappy with the conditions you were offering. So, to get them to work for a pittance as you expected them to, you had to force them to do so, either as indentured servants or as slaves. If slavery was a profitable prospect in general, it would have been used in Europe at the same period. And I’m pretty sure that if had still been generally profitable in the mid 19th century, it wouldn’t have been abolished in the USA, either. There would have been slaves in northern factories instead of free workers. Why people fought to maitain slavery? Because there still was a small minority who, given their peculiar activity, could make more money out of it? Because of social inertia and refusal of change? Both? Whatever. By this time, slavery had become economically non viable generally speaking, even in the USA. That’s the only reason why abolition could be implemented. Not because of the goodness of people’s heart. For all their enlightened ideas, your founding fathers kept owning slaves. That’s not random. In a fight between money and principles, money wins. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2016, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profitability-of-slavery-vs-sharecropping/754213/54 "2016-05-11T16:42:25Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > Why people fought to maintain slavery? Because there still was a small minority who, given their peculiar activity, could make more money out of it? Because of social inertia and refusal of change? Both? Whatever. By this time, slavery had become economically non viable generally speaking, even in the USA. It was probably still economical where had already been established; I would have said it was more a case of slavery having reached its geographic limits in the USA. Missouri and Texas were marginal for slavery, Kansas would have been even more so. Southern California was too far from the mass market for cotton and the rest of the continental USA was too arid or too cold for plantations. Remember that the pro-slave factions continually agitated for expansion into the Caribbean and central America, because the prospects for slavery were much better there. ETA: which brings up the question of why chattel slavery had been replaced with peonage in most of Latin America. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2016, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profitability-of-slavery-vs-sharecropping/754213/55 "2016-05-11T16:55:50Z")
I think part of it is that slavery is like protectionism - it looks like it ought to work, and it does benefit some people. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2016, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profitability-of-slavery-vs-sharecropping/754213/56 "2016-05-11T18:24:55Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > Did you notice this sentence in the post you quoted So you’re essentially arguing that at some point, the slaveowners should have wised up and realized that all the slaves they had in their possession should have been emancipated. Because obviously these newly freed people would volunteer to be paupers and promptly come begging them for the same “jobs” they did when they were property, being treated like animals. What this lovely idea overlooks is that with emancipation came the freedom for labor to act in unpredictable ways. The slavemasters had no reason to believe their slaves would peacefully stick around, merrily toiling in the fields for them. They had every reason to fear what eventually did happen (and worst): the majority of black folks migrated to the North, looking to get as far away from their oppressors as possible. With freedom, the slaveowning class lost its tight grip they had on the labor market, and with it, domination. > [@](#): > > If slavery was a profitable prospect in general, it would have been used in Europe at the same period. I find it amazing that you would say this without seeing how 1) false and 2) arrogant your position is. The Brits may not have wanted slavery practiced in their own backyards, but they sure as hell allowed in its colonies. And did France not profit handsomely from slavery while it was practiced in Haiti? Sugar, cotton, tobacco…do you think it’s a coincidence most of these commodities came from areas where slavery was practiced, very much under European rule? > [@](#): > > Why people fought to maitain slavery? Because there still was a small minority who, given their peculiar activity, could make more money out of it? Um, yeah. That’s exactly the answer. It’s clear you think it has to be more complicated than that, but the question is why. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2016, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profitability-of-slavery-vs-sharecropping/754213/57 "2016-05-11T18:58:29Z")
[This](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/biography/flood-leroy/)account illustrates the risks that emancipated labor represented to even the most business savvy plantation owner. > [@](#): > > In the Mississippi Delta, nothing was more vital to the success of Percy’s empire than labor. Although he tried repeatedly to lure Northern farmers and immigrants to Washington County, no one but African Americans came in large numbers or stayed long in the area. Guided by a combination of noblesse oblige and calculated self-interest, **Percy was determined to convince his workforce that they had a future in the Delta. As a result, conditions for his tenants were among the most favorable in Mississippi. At a time when African Americans in the South were disenfranchised, lynched and chased off their land, Percy saw to it that they received loans for mortgages to buy farms in the Delta.** Washington County had African American policemen, judges and mailmen, and the best schools for African Americans in the state. Percy’s patrician liberalism paid off. Greenville prospered, and Washington County was an island of comparative civility in the Jim Crow South. In 1910, Percy was appointed to fill a vacant seat in the United States Senate, achieving the highest public office ever held by a member of the Percy family. > > Percy’s victory was, however, short-lived. His agenda clashed with the populist forces outside the Delta. His greatest rival was the governor of Mississippi, James K. Vardaman, who tapped into populist racial politics and publicly supported white supremacy. When Percy came up for re-election in the Senate, Vardaman’s allies came out in full force and crushed Percy in the election. Vardaman won the Senate seat, and his supporters, including the Ku Klux Klan, gained a foothold in the Delta. > > {snip} > Yet the delicate balance LeRoy Percy had maintained between the black and white communities in Washington County was soon washed away by the Great Flood of 1927. Percy, whose son Will Percy headed the relief effort in Greenville, turned a blind eye to the brutal treatment of the African American laborers and their families during the crisis. When the floodwaters receded, the bond between the Percy family and their tenants would never be the same again. \*\*With their homes destroyed and their crops ruined, there was no reason for the sharecroppers to remain in Washington County. As if to fulfill LeRoy Percy’s worst nightmare, thousands of African Americans cleared out of the area, most of them for the North. Within a year, 50 percent of the Delta’s black population had already departed. \*\*Heartbroken by the demise of his empire and the subsequent death of his wife, Senator Percy died in Greenville, Mississippi, of a heart attack on December 24, 1929. Under slavery, Percy could have coped through this misfortune simply by selling or leasing out his slaves until things were restored. Under sharecropping, his labor could leave and nothing could stop that. See also what Percy had to do to entice labor to work for him. Under slavery, none of these “perks” would have been necessary. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2016, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profitability-of-slavery-vs-sharecropping/754213/58 "2016-05-11T22:54:40Z")
> [@you\_with\_the\_face](#): > > Think about how easy it would be to overwork an old slave until they succumbed to disease and died. What would it cost an slaveowner to do this, when an old person isn’t exactly a promising longterm investment anyway? Even in the U.S., which was better by far than the Caribbean in terms of slave longevity, old slaves were distressingly rare. Look at the slave schedules and you see far fewer slaves 60 and over than you do free people. They do exist of course- even the occasional centenarian- but at a small fraction of the rates for even subsistence level free farmers. When you consider that African Americans are already more predisposed to hypertension and cardiac disease than whites, and then you add in the stress of a lifestyle where if you make your “boss” mad he has literal power of life and death over you and those you love (and while he probably won’t kill you, beatings were frequent in places and selling you or your loved ones away is not only possible but it’s probably going to happen at least once in your lifetime), and your diet contains lots of lard and fatty meat, and you’re working from before sunup to after sunset in heat and humidity that can still kill people who grew up in it, and then add in poisonous snakes and unvaccinated animals and medical technology that wasn’t that advanced over the Stone Age, it’s really amazing ANY lived to be old. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2016, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profitability-of-slavery-vs-sharecropping/754213/59 "2016-05-15T19:49:02Z")
> [@you\_with\_the\_face](#): > > You’re making straw men now. No one has said slaveowners forced all their slaves to work past their breaking point. What some of us have said is that they worked them as hard as they possibly could, which meant at some regular frequency at least one lucky person or two would have to be worked/beaten past their breaking point. > > And “good food?” Really? What kind of “good food” do you think slaves ate? > > This whole tangent started when I said that sharecroppers had the choice not to work themselves or their families to the point of exhaustion, sickness, or death. Remember? Since then you’ve denied that there would ever be an incentive for a slaveowner to work his slaves this hard, and I’m telling you that this is bananas. It doesn’t matter what you would do or how you would treat a car or whatever. These are people who had almost 300 years worth of trial and error to figure out best practices for their industry, and what they came up with was not kumbaya stuff like “good food” and plenty of rest. > > Unless you can provide a cite that shows that slaves had legal limits to how many consecutive hours they could be forced to work everyday; had rest breaks at intervals that were reasonable, humane, and mandatory no matter how much in the red the plantation was; call in sick, take maternity leave, and could file grievances against the slaveowner for hostile work environments, I’m inclined to think you are just kind of making up stuff. I’m unclear about what you are claiming. It seems that you are claiming that slaveowners had an incentive to work his slaves to the point of “exhaustion, sickness, or death.” I am not saying that some slaveowners did not do this, but there is no such incentive to abuse personal property in this way. There is, however, an incentive to abuse an employee in this way. Do you believe that sharecroppers were allowed liberal maternity leave or could complain of a hostile work environment? Yes, they could vote with their feet by leaving so long as their debts were paid, but the system was set up so that their debts were never paid. Your argument seems to be the same as saying that there is no need for a minimum wage increase because those unhappy with their minimum wage pay could simply negotiate a better contract with the fast food joint across town. The problem is that workers of this particular skillset could not negotiate for anything better because they have nothing better to offer a competitor. I would love (in a perverse way) to see a sharecropper telling the owner of the plantation that he was quitting unless his wife got FMLA time off, or that he wanted to file a grievance because Dave over in the tomato and peppers section was telling sexually insensitive jokes. I know that is not what you meant, but what particular protections did sharecroppers have in this respect that slaves did not? Yes, they could leave for very strict definitions of “could” which were simply unattainable. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2016, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profitability-of-slavery-vs-sharecropping/754213/60 "2016-05-15T19:51:49Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > I’m unclear about what you are claiming. It seems that you are claiming that slaveowners had an incentive to work his slaves to the point of “exhaustion, sickness, or death.” I am not saying that some slaveowners did not do this, but there is no such incentive to abuse personal property in this way. Sure there could – an older or weaker slave might not be particularly productive, or might not even be (for normal levels of work) worth the cost of feeding and housing them, and therefore is only profitable for the master if they increase productivity to levels that result in their death. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profitability-of-slavery-vs-sharecropping/754213.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profitability-of-slavery-vs-sharecropping/754213.md?page=4)