Do you have evidence for this? I thought it was fairly well-established that slavery had higher agricultural production than the systems that followed it. Production is the last thing I’d expect to increase with abolition because sharecroppers and other free people want to grow food, have free time, etc rather than spending 90 hours a week picking cotton in a gang labor system. ChatGPT agrees that slave plantations had higher productivity.
The clearest example is prewar Virginia where there was direction competition between free and slave labor. The free labor outcompeted slave labor at growing tobacco, which is why people expected slavery to die out on its own. Then the cotton boom caused Virginia plantations to switch to growing slaves.
You also make a theoretical argument. At most that suggests that the landowners should earn more. That is not the same as production. Moreover, free people put most of their surplus into growing the next generation of free people. Empirically, free populations expand much faster than slave populations.
The clearest example is prewar Virginia where there was direction competition between free and slave labor. The free labor outcompeted slave labor at growing tobacco,
Source? No source I can find supports this.
Then the cotton boom caused Virginia plantations to switch to growing slaves.
Virginia plantations specialized in breeding slaves because the price of enslaved people was extremely high, because slavery had high agricultural production.
You also make a theoretical argument. At most that suggests that the landowners should earn more. That is not the same as production.
My claim was directly about production: the number of bushels of cotton, tons of sugar, etc produced per unit of land, or per laborer. Of course the free farmer or sharecropper can have higher welfare than the slave, because they can invest in their own welfare at the expense of production.
Moreover, free people put most of their surplus into growing the next generation of free people. Empirically, free populations expand much faster than slave populations.
This doesn’t seem true for the US historically. The growth rate of the US Black population seems basically constant in 1840-1880. If emancipation increased the growth rate we would see it in the trends. The reason is that when the slaveholding class steals the surplus of the slave class, they also have an incentive to increase the slave population, as in Virginia.
If free labor actually increased cotton production, we would see production after 1865 quickly surpass the 1860 trendline, not just the level. Instead, just surpassing the level took until late 1870s and needed greatly increased land area and better technology, while the trendline remained permanently below the pre-1860 trend. The economics literature suggests that the end of slavery meant a huge downwards shock in agricultural productivity in the American South, and the disadvantages, like reduced human capital investment, mostly affected skilled labor sectors rather than agriculture.
The destruction of the civil war, the reconstruction afterwards, and the cost of transitioning social structures is definitely a confounder for your graph. Even then, there are more general reasons we might not expect total cotton production to increase despite increased efficiency per worker. The person you’re respond to didn’t provide any sources, but surely there are per-acre or per-person comparisons somewhere?
There is detailed analysis in the 1975 study Time on the Cross by Nobel winning economist Robert Fogel. The field has even better data or methods since then, but I’m not an economist and can’t point to them—all I know is that most secondary sources agree that plantation slavery had high agricultural productivity.
Do you have evidence for this? I thought it was fairly well-established that slavery had higher agricultural production than the systems that followed it. Production is the last thing I’d expect to increase with abolition because sharecroppers and other free people want to grow food, have free time, etc rather than spending 90 hours a week picking cotton in a gang labor system. ChatGPT agrees that slave plantations had higher productivity.
The clearest example is prewar Virginia where there was direction competition between free and slave labor. The free labor outcompeted slave labor at growing tobacco, which is why people expected slavery to die out on its own. Then the cotton boom caused Virginia plantations to switch to growing slaves.
You also make a theoretical argument. At most that suggests that the landowners should earn more. That is not the same as production. Moreover, free people put most of their surplus into growing the next generation of free people. Empirically, free populations expand much faster than slave populations.
Source? No source I can find supports this.
Virginia plantations specialized in breeding slaves because the price of enslaved people was extremely high, because slavery had high agricultural production.
My claim was directly about production: the number of bushels of cotton, tons of sugar, etc produced per unit of land, or per laborer. Of course the free farmer or sharecropper can have higher welfare than the slave, because they can invest in their own welfare at the expense of production.
This doesn’t seem true for the US historically. The growth rate of the US Black population seems basically constant in 1840-1880. If emancipation increased the growth rate we would see it in the trends. The reason is that when the slaveholding class steals the surplus of the slave class, they also have an incentive to increase the slave population, as in Virginia.
See this chart ChatGPT made:
If free labor actually increased cotton production, we would see production after 1865 quickly surpass the 1860 trendline, not just the level. Instead, just surpassing the level took until late 1870s and needed greatly increased land area and better technology, while the trendline remained permanently below the pre-1860 trend. The economics literature suggests that the end of slavery meant a huge downwards shock in agricultural productivity in the American South, and the disadvantages, like reduced human capital investment, mostly affected skilled labor sectors rather than agriculture.
The destruction of the civil war, the reconstruction afterwards, and the cost of transitioning social structures is definitely a confounder for your graph. Even then, there are more general reasons we might not expect total cotton production to increase despite increased efficiency per worker. The person you’re respond to didn’t provide any sources, but surely there are per-acre or per-person comparisons somewhere?
There is detailed analysis in the 1975 study Time on the Cross by Nobel winning economist Robert Fogel. The field has even better data or methods since then, but I’m not an economist and can’t point to them—all I know is that most secondary sources agree that plantation slavery had high agricultural productivity.