Economics of Slavery

[Donald E. Pauly]

I came across this long and scholarly article in the process of finding out what a Negro cost before the War Between the States. This article allows the calculation of the cost when measured in current 2013 Jew dollars. This brought me to some staggering conclusions about modern day Negroes and Mexicans that I will post shortly. The authors allow complete posting with attribution.

Measuring Worth - Measuring the Value of a Slave

part 1

Measuring Slavery in 2011*
by

Samuel H. Williamson
MeasuringWorth
University of Illinois at Chicago
sam @ mswth.org

and

Louis P. Cain
Loyola University Chicago
Northwestern University
lcain @ northwestern.edu

Slavery was an ancient practice on the North American continent. Within the colonies that became the United States, slavery first appeared in Virginia in 1619. It was legal in all the British colonies, but it was practiced on a larger scale in what became the US South and the British Islands of the Caribbean. African slavery in the South was largely a response to the greater demand for labor on tobacco, rice, and indigo plantations. Northern farms were generally smaller, family-sized plots of land with the family supplying most of the labor. Before the American Revolution, there was no significant movement for abolition. By the early 1800s, most Northern states had passed laws in favor of abolition, but the acts called for gradual abolition.

In the South, on the other hand, slavery became an ingrained economic and legal institution. Slaves and their progeny were the property of an owner, and slaves were owned until they died. They could be bought and sold; their owners controlled their lives and those of their children. When slaves were sold, the contract was a legal document, even to the extent that a buyer could sue the seller if a slave was sold under false pretenses. Even slaves themselves had some protection under the law; they could not be abandoned or executed.

Before independence, the laws of the colonies could not be inconsistent with English law. Chief Justice Lord William Mansfield in the Somersett case (heard in London in 1772) held that English law did not support slavery, a ruling that eventually led to the peaceful extinction of African slavery in the British Empire. By then, the Americans were on a different path. In the Constitutional Convention discussions of 1787, it was held that slavery was not a moral issue but a matter of "interest" only. Some delegates believed that slavery was going to die out. Virginia had attempted several times unilaterally to end the slave trade to Virginia ports, but the Board of Trade lawyers in London had overruled it. The federal government prohibited the trade in slaves beginning in 1808, but statesmanship and jurisprudence could not find a way to end the institution. Within a decade of the Constitutional Convention, Eli Whitney's cotton gin appeared, which is popularly credited with sparking an explosion in cotton production in the South. This explanation may be partly true, but itis also the case that the technological improvements in spinning and weaving in England created a big increase in the demand for cotton, a cloth much preferred to wool. These events together reenergized the demand for slaves.

Slavery is a subject that most Americans have confronted as part of their education, but there are many aspects of slavery that have been left to the dim mists of history. This paper will review some of the basic dimensions of the economics of slavery in the United States and put them in perspective by showing what the financial magnitudes of the "peculiar institution" might be in the relative prices of today. In particular, in 1860 there were nearly four million slaves and their average market value was around $800, but what does that mean?1 How much would that be in today's dollars? Answers to such questions are not simple.

Comments posted to MeasuringWorth (see the appendix) indicate there is considerable current public interest -- and public confusion -- in regard to such questions. Our intention is to present, for the first time, macroeconomic and microeconomic dimensions of slavery in values measured by today's dollars. We are addressing two audiences: the public who know relatively little about these dimensions, and the specialists who may have forgotten that the relative magnitude of these dimensions would be conservatively described as large.

Why does anything have value?

A monetary value can be measured by a transaction when something is bought and sold, or as an expected value of an asset currently held. Some assets have value because of the potential income they can generate. An example would be a piece of capital equipment, such as a cotton gin for which planters would pay to have their cotton processed, or a slave who would pick the cotton.

Other assets may have value because of their potential resale value, such as land or a rare painting. The owners of a painting choose to have part of wealth invested in something that does not generate current income, either because of an expectation that it will appreciate or because they wish to "consume" the pleasure of owning it. These assets also may give their owner status and power. Owning a Rembrandt painting gives one bragging rights among art collectors. Owning half the acres in the county gives one lots of influence in local politics, regardless of whether the acres are in production or not.

What is the motivation for owning a slave;
what determines the price of a slave at a given point in time?

The demand for a slave is a derived demand, as is that for any productive resource. It is derived from the demand for the output that resource helps to produce. There was an active market for slaves throughout the antebellum period, meaning that slave owners believed the purchase of a slave would prove to be a profitable expenditure, even though that expenditure required a considerable amount of money2. As we will explain below, at the time the South seceded from the Union, the purchase of a single slave represented as much as $130,000 and more in today's prices. This was twice the average of 14 years earlier, indicating a sustained growth in the demand for slaves. Economists would say that these observations alone indicate that the profitability of "investing" in a slave was increasing substantially.

Why would a slave have so much value? A short answer is the value of a slave is the value of the expected output or services the slave can generate minus the costs of maintaining that person (i.e., food, clothing, shelter, etc.) over his or her lifetime.3. A quick list of the datathat have to be considered in determining the value of a slave's expected revenue would include sex, age, location, how much he or she is likely to produce (a factor that included a slave's health and physical condition), and the price of the output in the market. For a female slave, an additional thing to consider would be the value of the children she might bear.

In addition, there is considerable evidence that slaves were worked harder than free labor in Southern agriculture; what slavescould be induced to produce in bondage was greater than what they could be expected to produce with the freedom to make their own choice of labor or leisure.4

As these outputs and costs are in the future, they must be discounted to their present value, so an owner must choose a discount rate. And, as they are in the future, there is uncertainty in determining what they are, sothe present value of a slave is an estimate made bythe current owner5. In general, most economic historians believe that slavery was profitable, even at these expensive prices.

Figure 1 demonstrates how the price of slaves varied with respect to age, sex, and location during the antebellum period. As one can see, prices were higher in the New South than in the Old South (the states along the Atlantic coast) and higher for males than for females6. The statistics on slave prices show that healthy young adult men in the prime of their working lives had the highest price, followed by females in the childbearing years. Young adult males had more value as they were stronger, could work harder in the fields, and could be expected to work at such a level for more years. Young adult women had value over and above their ability to work in the fields; they were able to have children who by law were also slaves of the owner of the mother. Old and infirm slaves had low, even "negative," prices because their maintenance costs were potentially higher than the value of their production. Similarly, young children had low prices because the "cost" of raising them usually exceeded their annual production until they became teenagers.

Figure 1

Age-Sex Profile of Slave Values
Louisiana Male 18-30 = 100



Age-Sex Profile of Slave Values
Source: Source: Historical Statistics, Table Bb215-218. Index of slave values, by age, sex, and region: 1850. All the values are indexed to that of Louisiana males aged 18-30.

Those who have researched slave prices have discovered that a large number of additional variables went into the determination of the price of any particular slave at a particular point in time. A premium was paid if the slave was an artisan -- particularly a blacksmith (+55%), a carpenter (+45%), a cook (+20%), or possessed other domestic skills (+15%). On the other hand, a slave's price was discounted if the person was known to be a runaway (-60%), was crippled (-60%), had a vice such as drinking (-50%), or was physically impaired (-30%). In general, the discount for each of the slaves was slightly larger for females than for males.7. The prices presented above are average prices for the slaves transacted in a given year. A person studying their family's history might come across a notation that a family member purchased a slave at a given price or that a family member purchased their freedom at a given price. Without information regarding these details, it is difficult to interpret what the price of a single slave means.

The path of the average of slave prices can be seen in Figure 2. While much of the movement can be explained by what is happening in the cotton market, the first two spikes are also related to general economic conditions. During and after the War of 1812 there was a 40% increase in all prices, with the price of raw cotton more than doublingduring the same period. In the 1830s, the price of slaves increased quickly due to expectations bred by discussions to refund the federal budget surplus to the states. Discussions about "internal improvements" (e.g., canals and railroads) led to a boom in land prices and, once again, cotton prices. After the "Panic of 1837" there was a long depression. Finally, the almost three-fold increase in prices after 1843 can be explained by several factors, including the rapid increase in the worldwide demand for cotton and increased productivity in the New South attributable to better soil and improvements in the cotton plant. It is clear during this time that the market for slaves was active, and that slaves were regarded as more valuable.

Figure 2

Average Price of a Slave Over Time
Current dollars



Average Price of a Slave over Time
Source: Historical Statistics, Table Bb212. Average Slave Price.
(continued below)

[Donald E. Pauly]

Here is the second part of four. A poster on this forum correctly observed that Negroes are obsolete farm implements. I say that they are badly in need of recycling.

Measuring Worth - Measuring the Value of a Slave

part 2

What is the comparable "value" of a slave to us today, but they would if we revalue them in today's dollars to the amount of money slave owners spent 150 years ago.8. The techniques developed in MeasuringWorth have created ten "measures" to use to compare a monetary value in one period to one in another, as explained in the essay "Measures of Worth."9 Of those ten, three are useful for discussing the value of a slave. They are: labor or income value, economic status and real price10. Using these measures, the value in 2011 of $400 in 1850 (the average price of a slave that year) ranges from $12,000 to $176,000.



Labor or Income Value

Figure 3

Labor Income Value
of Owning a Slave in 2011 Prices



Labor Income Value of Owning a Slave in 2011 Prices

As discussed above, the $400 price in 1850 represents the expected net value of the future labor services a slave would provide. This embedded meaning is why the labor or income value is the correct measure of the value of a slave's services in today's prices. That $400 would be $82,000 in today's prices.

While some slaves were rented out for farm and other types of work, most slaves worked on the farms and plantations of their owners. In both cases, the work they did was mostly unskilled, so a comparable measure of these services would be the unskilled wage.11. In other words, we can assume that to hire someone to do the work of a slave would cost the unskilled wage of that day. Thus, a measure of the average value of a slave would be the present value of the net rental cost over the life expectancy of the average slave.

Thus the value in today's dollars of a slave during the antebellum period ranges from $45,000 (in 1809) to $134,000 of a slave's expected revenue less maintenance costs. If we assume, for example, that the average slave will live 20 more years, then today's price for a slave valued at $400 in 1850 could be interpreted as the $82,000 in wages plus the 20 years of room, board, and clothing that it would take to hire unskilled workers today to perform the lifetime services expected of a slave.12. Unlike hired hands, slaves were responsible in large part for producing their own room, board, and clothing. Given that the work week today is significantly shorter than in 1850 and that slaves were made to work harder during the same amount of time as free workers, it would take more than one hired hand today to replace the labor supplied by a slave then.

Even at these prices, some slaves, particularly those with artisan skills, might ultimately earn enough to buy themselves out of slavery. It was not uncommon, especially in the Old South, for masters to allow others to hire the services of his or her slaves. This was particularly true of slaves who lived in urban areas, independent of the master. They were expected to make their own arrangements. "The master fixed the wage that the slave must bring in. All above this amount the slave might keep himself. … employers frequently hired the slave's time from the owner at a certain amount and paid the slave an additional wage contingent on amount of work accomplished."13

Figure 4

Economic Status
of Owning a Slave in 2011 Prices



Economic Status of Owning a Slave in 2011 Prices

The Economic Status.

The $400 average slave price in 1850 can also be thought of as a signaling device of status in a period where the annual per capita income was about $110. Economic status can be viewed as the ability to purchase expensive goods. Today, the middle and upper-middle classes aspire to goods and services such as a second home, servants, and an expensive car as a way of showing others that they have "arrived"-- that they have achieved some status in the economy. The average slave price in 1850 was roughly equal to the average price of a house, so the purchase of even one slave would have given the purchaser some status. Comparisons based on economic status are measured by the relative ratio of GDP per capita. Consequently $400 in those days corresponds to nearly $175,000 in economic status today.14

Figure 5

The Real Price of Owning a Slave
in 2011 Dollars



The Real Price of Owning a Slave in 2011 Dollars

Real Price

Economists commonly use the real price measure when they are trying to account for the impact of inflation. The real price today is computed by multiplying the value in the past by the increase in the consumer price index (CPI). The result compares that past value to a ratio of the cost of a fixed bundle of goods and services the average consumer buys in each of the two years. In the construction of the CPI bundle, an effort is made to compensate for quality changes in the mix of the bundle over time.15 Still, the longer the time span, the less consistent the comparison. In the 19th century, there were no national surveys to figure out what the average consumer bought. The earliest budget study used by economic historians was of 397 workmen's families in Massachusetts and was constructed in 1875. These families spent over half their income on food and rented their housing.16

The MeasuringWorth calculator shows that the "real price" of $400 in 1850 would be approximately $12,000 in 2011 prices. We all can identify with what that amount of money would buy today, but hardly anything we would spend $12,000 on today was available 160 years ago. $400 in 1860 would have purchased 4,800 pounds of bacon, 3,000 pounds of coffee, 1,600 pounds of butter, or 1,000 gallons of gin. It is unlikely, however, that this was the budget of the typical slave owner. Most of the food would be produced on the plantation, and housing would have been buildings constructed by the owner (and his slaves). The "opportunity cost" of the $400 for the slave owner would have been supplies for the plantation, or perhaps luxuries and travel.

Using the real price is not the correct index to use for measuring the value of a slave's labor services in today's prices. It does, however, give an idea of what the cost of purchasing a slave was in 2011 dollars. Thus, just before the start of the Civil War, the average real price of a slave in the United States was $20,000 in current dollars. There is ample evidence that there are several million of people enslaved today, even though slavery is not legal anywhere in the world. There are several organizations such as Anti-Slavery International that will point out that in many places today, slaves sell for as little as (or even less than) $100!

(continued below)

[Donald E. Pauly]

Here is the third part. I did the best that I could on the tables without access to HTML.

Measuring Worth - Measuring the Value of a Slave

part 3

Real Price

Economists commonly use the real price measure when they are trying to account for the impact of inflation. The real price today is computed by multiplying the value in the past by the increase in the consumer price index (CPI). The result compares that past value to a ratio of the cost of a fixed bundle of goods and services the average consumer buys in each of the two years. In the construction of the CPI bundle, an effort is made to compensate for quality changes in the mix of the bundle over time.15 Still, the longer the time span, the less consistent the comparison. In the 19th century, there were no national surveys to figure out what the average consumer bought. The earliest budget study used by economic historians was of 397 workmen's families in Massachusetts and was constructed in 1875. These families spent over half their income on food and rented their housing.16

The MeasuringWorth calculator shows that the "real price" of $400 in 1850 would be approximately $12,000 in 2011 prices. We all can identify with what that amount of money would buy today, but hardly anything we would spend $12,000 on today was available 160 years ago. $400 in 1860 would have purchased 4,800 pounds of bacon, 3,000 pounds of coffee, 1,600 pounds of butter, or 1,000 gallons of gin. It is unlikely, however, that this was the budget of the typical slave owner. Most of the food would be produced on the plantation, and housing would have been buildings constructed by the owner (and his slaves). The "opportunity cost" of the $400 for the slave owner would have been supplies for the plantation, or perhaps luxuries and travel.

Using the real price is not the correct index to use for measuring the value of a slave's labor services in today's prices. It does, however, give an idea of what the cost of purchasing a slave was in 2011 dollars. Thus, just before the start of the Civil War, the average real price of a slave in the United States was $20,000 in current dollars. There is ample evidence that there are several million of people enslaved today, even though slavery is not legal anywhere in the world. There are several organizations such as Anti-Slavery International that will point out that in many places today, slaves sell for as little as (or even less than) $100!

What was the distribution of slave ownership – from 1 to 2,000?

A second issue of interest is slave wealth in both micro- and macro-economic terms. Slaveholders were wealthy individuals both with respect to other Southerners and with respect to the whole country. At the time, the Census Bureau measured wealth in two forms: real estate and personal estate. The land and buildings of a slave plantation were real estate; the slaveholdings were part of personal estate. Together they sum to Total Estate (TE). On both dimensions, slaveholders were different from other Southerners. The average white Southern family in antebellum America lived on a small farm without slaves. Slave ownership was the exception, not the rule.

Table 1

Size Distribution of Farms - 1860
for farms of 3 or more improved acres)

acres number percent cum % cum %

1000+ 5,364 0.27 100.00 0.27
500 - 999 20,319 1.04 99.73 1.31
100- 499 487,041 24.91 98.69 26.23
50 - 99 608,878 31.14 73.77 57.37
20 - 49 616,558 31.54 42.63 88.91
10 - 19 162,178 8.30 11.09 97.20
3 - 9 54,676 2.80 2.80 100.00

Source: Soltow, table 5.1

Let us begin by looking at land. Lee Soltow collected the data by "spin" sampling from the 1860 census.17 Following the US census, he defined a farm as involving at least 3 improved acres of land, and it should be noted that this is for farms throughout the United States, not just the South. The size distribution of farms is shown below.

"Number" is the number of farms in the interval. The stereotypical picture of slavery is that it involved a large plantation. Farms that were greater than 500 acres (there are 640 acres in a square mile) comprise just 1.31 percent of farms. The vast majority of farms were between 20 and 500 acres.

Table 2 shows that the distribution of slave ownership in Soltow's data is more skewed than land.

Table 2

Disbribution of Slaves and Estate Value among
Free Adult Males in South - 1860

Number of slaves-Number of slaveholders-percent-cum %-Total Estate
1000+ 1 0.00005 100.00
500 - 999 13 0.00065 100.00 $957,000
100 - 499 2,278 0.11 100.00 $160,000
50 - 99 8,367 0.42 99.88 $72,000
10 - 49 97,333 4.89 99.46 $17,200
5 - 10 89,556 4.50 94.57 $8,800
1 - 4 187,336 9.41 90.07 $3,670
0 1,605,116 80.66 80.66 $-

Source: Soltow (1975), table 5.3

Over 80 percent of the free adult males in the South did not own slaves. Only 0.11 percent owned more than 100. The total estate for those in the upper tail of the distribution was enormous. It should be emphasized that this is not a small elite; as a group, slave owners were sizeable and wealthy. Those with more than 500 slaves were essentially millionaires in $1860.

Soltow calculated the Total Estate for free adult males at each of the break points in the distribution of slaves reported above. Soltow reports that the average Total Estate in the South in 1860 was $3978, as compared to just $2040 in the North.18 Given that the average slave price in 1860 was $800, if Southern wealth were exclusively slaves, that amount would equate to just over 5 slaves. Total estate, however, also includes real estate, and Soltow reports that amount actually involves an average of 2 slaves. Thus, according to the table above, 90.07 percent of free adult males in the South owned fewer slaves than implied by average wealth. In 1860, the top one percent of wealth holders held 27 percent of total estate; the bottom 50 percent held but one percent of the total.

In Figure 6 below, we see how the distribution of total estate in the South compared to that in the North in 1860. The data again come from Soltow's sampling. As one can see, there is almost no difference between the North and the South at the top of the distribution. The North is slightly above the South at the 0.001 level, but they are even at the 0.01 level. The largest planters were as wealthy as the major Northern merchants and industrialists. Between .01 and .10 levels, the South forges ahead before the North begins to close the gap. In both areas, the bottom 50% of the wealth distribution held but 1% of measured wealth. The evidence suggests that a Southern white farm family of four (a husband, wife, and two children) who owned a slave family of four had more wealth than a Northern white farm family of four that employed a couple of farm laborers. Non-slaveowners in the South were probably little different from Northern farmers. The aggregate share of the top 10% of the wealth distribution of Southern wealth is seven percentage points more than the top 10% of the Northern distribution (75% vs. 68%).

Figure 6

Wealth Distribution 1860
North vs. South



Wealth Distribution 1860 North vs. South

What is the comparable "value" of the wealth in slaves in today's prices?

Of the ten "measures" developed by MeasuringWorth, two are useful for discussing the value of the wealth invested in slaves. They are: economic status and economic power. We discussed the concept of economic status in relation to evaluating a slave's price above, but it is also useful for discussing wealth, as people with status are typically people of wealth.

Economic Power.

Economic power usually connotes wealth. The people who are the financial and political leaders of a community are often its most wealthy. Even if they have not been elected to power, the wealthy often have disproportionate influence on those who do. The MeasuringWorth definition of economic power is to compare the value of something as a percent of total GDP between then and now. Thus, for example, the $800 slave price would be $2.6 million today. While this number seems very large, as we will show below, the wealth tied up in slaves was a large proportion of the total wealth of the nation. Slave owners as a group had considerable economic power.19

It is interesting to note that the economic power of owning one slave was much higher earlier in the century – as high as $8 million. This finding is consistent with the history of the period when southern states exercised great influence on such issues as tariffs, banking, and which new areas of the country would allow slavery. As the century progresses, the "power measure" of owning a single slave declines because industrialization and agriculture in North are growing faster than the slave economy.

The estates of slave owners were quite large, as is demonstrated when measured in current dollars. Table 3 shows the economic status and power of their estates in 2011 dollars.

Table 3

Distribution of Total Estate among Slaveholders-Number of Slaves-Total Estate (thousands of 1860 Dollars)Economic Status-(millions of 2011 $)-Economic Power (millions of 2011 $)

1000+ NR - -
500 – 999 $957 $336 $3,320
100 – 499 $160 $56 $555
50 – 999 $72 $25 $250
10 – 49 $17 $6 $59
5 - 10 $9 $3 $31

Comparing these two tables, it becomes quite clear that the holder of 10 slaves likely ranks in the top one percent of the distribution, if economic status is used as the standard of comparison. Potentially all slaveholders rank in the top one percent, if economic power is used as the standard of comparison. Clearly, the ownership of even one slave implied that the owner was a wealthy member of the community. Those who owned over 500 slaves had a measure of economic power that compares to billionaires today.

How much wealth was invested in slaves?

Slaves had an important impact on the differences in regional wealth. Gavin Wright made estimates of both Northern and Southern wealth. His data for 1850 and 1860 are reported in the table below. The "value of slaves" figures are taken from Sutch and Ransom (1988).20

Table 4

Regional Wealth in 1850 and 1860
Millions of dollars (except per capita)

Section North South North South
Year 1850 1850 1860 1860

Total Wealth $4,474 $2,844 $9,786 $6,332
Value of Slaves ------ $1,286------ $3,059
Non-slave Wealth $4,474 $1,559 $9,786 $3,273
Wealth (free) per capita $315 $483 $482 $868
Non-slave (free) Wealth per capita $315 $174 $482 $294

Source Wright (2006), p. 60.

A significant proportion of the wealth in slaves was eliminated by the stroke of Abraham Lincoln's pen when he signed the Emancipation Proclamation that freed slaves in the rebellious areas. Success on the battlefield ensured their freedom. Remember that the Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves only in areas in rebellion – not all slaves. More fundamentally, it was success on the battlefield that eliminated this wealth. Total slave wealth was immense. Figure 7 shows the aggregate value of slaves adjusted to today's prices measured using the relative share of GDP. While it varies with the price of slaves over the period, it is never less that seven trillion 2011 dollars and, at the time of Emancipation, was close to ten trillion 2011 dollars.

Figure 7

Wealth in Slaves in Trillions of 2011 dollars
As Measured by the Share of the GDP



Wealth in Slaves in Trillions of 2011 dollars As Measured by the Share of the GDP
An alternative way of making that calculation is to use Soltow's finding that Total Estate in slaves was 15.9 percent of the 1860 total.22 The Federal Reserve's Flow of Funds accounts report total assets for households is about $69 trillion in 2011. If Soltow's percentage is applied to that data, the result is again approximately $10 trillion. Lest anyone think this a relatively small number, it is roughly 70 percent of GDP today.

If Wright's figures above are adjusted to today's prices through the use of the relative share of GDP measure, they tell the same story as the table below shows.

Table 5

Regional Wealth in 1850 and 1860
Billions of $2011 dollars

Region North South North South
Year 1850 1850 1860 1860

Total Wealth $25,400 $16,100 $32,700 $21,100
Value of Slaves ------ $7,300------ $10,200
Non-slave Wealth $25,400 $8,800 $32,700 $10,900

It should be noted that wealth grows roughly 30 percent over the decade of the 1850s in both the North and South. However, in the South, the value of slaves grew about 40 percent over the decade, while non-slave wealth grew at only about 25 percent.21 Some economic historians have hypothesized that Southerners had so much wealth tied up in slaves that they did not invest sufficiently in other types of investments. This is a concept called "crowding out." Whether that is the reason or not, it is clear at the start of Civil War, the North had three times the amount of non-slave wealth as the South, and this discrepancy would be at least partly represented in factories and other capital that was an advantage in waging a war.

Conclusions

Slavery in the United States was an institution that had a large impact on the economic, political and social fabric on the country. This paper gives an idea of its economic magnitude in today's values. As noted in the introduction, they can be conservatively described as large.

(continued below)

[Donald E. Pauly]

Here is the fourth part with comments, references and contact information.

Measuring Worth - Measuring the Value of a Slave

part 4

Appendix

The following quotes are from users of MeasuringWorth making comments about the US dollar relative value calculator.

I'm using this to calculate the cost in today's dollars for the $1,000 fine imposed by the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. I'll be using the $26,631 CPI figure for the comparison. We are renovating a home used by a prominent York PA businessman (William C. Goodridge) for his Underground Railroad activities. This is one measure of the risk he took to help runaway slaves gain their freedom. We plan to use this information on our website and will cite your website as the source.

A slave purchased her freedom from her owner for $600 in 1794. This calculator says that equals over $11,000 today. How could a slave possibly earn that much money? This is for an academic book that's already been published, so I was asking the question just for my own information.

Thank you so much for this resource. I teach United States history in the middle school to put historical figures into perspective. When teaching about slavery, for instance, it helps students understand the Southern perspective to know that an African American slave ran about as much as a new car would today.

I teach English. I found the price for a slave back in 1830 could go up to $4000. Your calculator showed that this corresponds to almost $90,000. This would rather suggest, "care" than "kill" by the owner. The whole slavery issue seems to be presented too simplified to be true. The conflict cannot be understood.

I am writing a book on Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln estimated that in 1860 the total value of all slaves in the United States was equal to $2,000,000,000 (two billion dollars. I want to know what that equates to in today's dollars.

I am a retired physician, now occupied with reading about a variety of historical topics related to the U. S. Civil War. I am a volunteer at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Springfield, IL. A common question asked by visitors is the average cost of a slave in the South in 1860, and its equivalent in current dollars.

I am a middle school history teacher and am trying to explain to my students what it meant for a slave to be sold for $1000 in 1850. How much would that be now? I figure the CPI is the one that shows the data I need, but it is confusing to figure out which one fits my needs even with the descriptions. A person with limited economics background is left unsure.

When my father was researching his family's genealogy, he came upon an ancestor's will, which mentioned the dispositions of his 3 slaves. The adult male was first to be offered to his family if they could buy him for $700; otherwise he was to be sold at auction. No later mention was made of the slave and I don't know what happened to him. This was shocking to me. I know many people must have slave-owning ancestors, but to have actual documentation of this in my family, no matter how far back, was repulsive. I know this was a huge amount of money in pre-Civil War times, in the 1840's-50's, and I wanted to know the equivalent amount today. I am not sure which indicator I want to use or what I intend to do with the information.

I am dealing with history: During the Civil War slave owners were paid $300.00 per slave in order to "release" them so they could serve in the Union Army. I know that in 1864 $300 was a lot of money; I am interested in understanding what that amount would represent today - in 2010.

I am researching compensation claims made after the Civil War of slaveholders loyal to the Union claiming compensation for the "value" of the slave, if said slave served in the Union army.

I was checking the cost of a prime field hand slave just before the American Civil War started, to see just how much of an investment one was at the time.

Bibliography

Carter, Susan B., Scott Sigmund Gartner, Michael R. Haines, Alan L. Olmstead, Richard Sutch and Gavin Wright, editors, Historical Statistics of the United States: earliest times to the present (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

Conrad, Alfred, and John Meyer. "The Economics of Slavery in the Antebellum South." Journal of Political Economy, vol. 66, no. 2, April 1958.

David, Paul, Herbert Gutman, Richard Sutch, Peter Temin, and Gavin Wright. Reckoning with Slavery: A Critical Study in the Quantitative History of American Slavery. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.

Fogel, Robert William. "A Comparison between the Value of Slave Capital in the Share of Total British Wealth (c.1811) and in the Share of Total Southern Wealth (c.1860)," chapter 56 of Robert William Fogel, Ralph A. Galantine, and Richard L. Manning, Without Consent or Contract: Evidence and Methods. New York: Norton, 1992.

Fogel, Robert William. Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery. New York: W. W. Norton, 1989. Fogel, Robert William, and Stanley Engerman. Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery, 2 vols. Boston: Little, Brown, 1974.

Gray, Lewis Cecil, History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860. Baltimore: Waverly Press, 1933, p. 566

Kotlikoff, Laurence J. "Quantitative Description of the New Orleans Slave Market, 1804 to 1862," chapter 3 of Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Without Consent or Contract: Markets and Production: Technical Papers, Volume 1 (New York: Norton, 1992), reprinted from Economic Inquiry, vol. 17, no. 4, October 1979.

Officer, Lawrence H. "What Was the Value of the US Consumer Bundle Then?" MeasuringWorth, 2009a. URL: http://www.measuringworth.org/consumer/

Officer, Lawrence H. "The Annual Consumer Price Index for the United States, 1774-2009," MeasuringWorth, 2009b. URL: http://www.measuringworth.org/uscpi/

Officer, Lawrence H., and Samuel H. Williamson, "Measures of Worth," MeasuringWorth, 2008. URL http://www.measuringworth.com/worthmeasures.html

Olmstead, Alan, and Paul Rhode, Creating Abundance: Biological Innovation and American Agricultural Development. New York, Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Ransom, Roger and Richard Sutch, "Capitalists without Capital: The Burden of Slavery and the Impact of Emancipation," Agricultural History 62 (3) (1988)

Soltow, Lee, Men and Wealth in the United States 1850-1870 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975).

Wright, Gavin. Slavery and American Economic Development. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006.

* The authors thank Stanley Engerman, Richard Sutch, Gavin Wright, and Robert Whaples for their comments on a previous draft as well as participants in the Northern Illinois University Economics workshop and the 2010 All-UC conference.
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1 Susan B. Carter, Scott Sigmund Gartner, Michael R. Haines, Alan L. Olmstead, Richard Sutch and Gavin Wright, editors, Historical Statistics of the United States: earliest times to the present (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), series Bb212.
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2 Between 1804 and 1862, 135,000 slaves were sold on the New Orleans market. Kotlikoff, "Quantitative Description of the New Orleans Slave Market, 1804 to 1862" (1979)
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3 These costs are an obligation of the slave owner even when the slave is too young, old or infirm to work. There is ample evidence that these slaves who were not productive did not receive as much food as the able bodied, but there is no evidence that they were allowed to starve.
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4 See Robert William Fogel, Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989), Chapter 3.
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5 Present value is the value today of a series of payments, or a single payment, that will be received in the future. Money put in a bank or alternative investment today will grow over time depending on the interest rate. What is received in the future is principle plus interest. Present value calculations determine the amount of principle that is needed today in order to realize a given series of payments in the future.
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6 The main reason that New South Slaves had higher prices was that the soil was more fertile there, so plantations were more productive. See Alan Olmstead and Paul Rhode, Creating Abundance: Biological Innovation and American Agricultural Development. New York, Cambridge University Press, 2008.
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7 See Fogel, op. cit., pp. 69-70.
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8 Of course, the number had different meaning to the slave. However, as there were cases where slaves bought their own freedom, the opportunity cost question is the same.
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9 Lawrence H. Officer and Samuel H. Williamson, "Measures of Worth," MeasuringWorth, 2008. URL: http://www.measuringworth.com/worthmeasures.html
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10 A fourth measure, economic power, is used in our discussion of the magnitude of the wealth represented by the ownership of slaves.
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11 In his famous history of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860, published in 1933, Lewis Gray writes "Planters preferred to employ their own slaves…rather than hire them to others.
Because of the scarcity of efficient white labor, demand for Negro artisans was usually considerable, and good wages were offered for their services. Unskilled labor was in demand for lumbering, mining, the constructions of canals and railways, steamboating, dock labor, and other 'public works.'" p. 566
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12 Unskilled workers today are those who have less than a high school education.
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13 Lewis Gray, op. cit, p. 566
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14 While it might be better to make the comparisons using average wealth then and now, those numbers are not available. There is evidence, however, that wealth and income are closely related and move up and down together.
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15 See Lawrence Officer, "What Was the Value of the US Consumer Bundle Then?" MeasuringWorth, 2009a,and Offficer, "The Annual Consumer Price Index for the United States, 1774-2009," MeasuringWorth, 2009b.
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16 Today the share of food and beverages of the average household is 15% and most of the cost of housing is to maintain a residence that is owned.
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17 Lee Soltow, Men and Wealth in the United States 1850-1870 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975).
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18 Soltow, op. cit., p. 181.
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19 To understand how MeasuringWorth distinguishes between economic status and economic power, consider two economies. In the first economy there are 999 people who have $10,000 in wealth and a rich person who has $250,000. The rich person has great "status" over the rest, but his or her wealth is only two and a half percent of the total. In the second economy there are people, 49 people who have $10,000 in wealth and a rich person with $250,000. The rich person owns a third of all the wealth in this economy. In both cases the rich person is 25 more wealthy than the rest of the society, but in the second case he or she controls 13 times more of the total and has much more economic power.
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20 That amount of wealth in slave was calculate by Roger Ransom and Richard Sutch as the product of a three-year moving average of slave prices and the size of the slave population.
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21 Most economic historians feel the slave prices in 1860 were artificially high for a variety of reasons and that even without the War, they would have fallen, so these comparisons of wealth somewhat overstate the wealth of the South at the time.
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22 The percent figure was calculated by Fogel from Soltow: Robert W. Fogel, "A Comparison between the Value of Slave Capital in the Share of Total British Wealth (c.1811) and in the Share of Total Southern Wealth (c.1860)," chapter 56 of Robert William Fogel, Ralph A. Galantine, and Richard L. Manning, Without Consent or Contract: Evidence and Methods (New York: Norton, 1992.
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[Donald E. Pauly]

The first thing that jumps out is the the dollar was stable from 1789 to 1913 when the Jews took over the Federal reserve. Since then it has lost 99% of its value. Gold in 1860 was $20 per ounce and its real price is now about $1,600. This is an 80 to 1 reduction in the true value of the money. The various prices here can be approximated in current dollars by multiplying the old figures by 80.

An average priced Negro in 1860 cost $800. This is $64,000 now. This is the price of a used tractor. The tractor can do 100 times as much work as a Negro. It does not have to be whipped to get it to work and will not try to escape. Even if slavery was legal, you couldn't get $10 for a Negro today. These days there is no work that a Negro can do that is worth the price of the food to keep it alive.

[Donald E. Pauly]

I can't think of anything in history that has shown such a disastrous drop in price as a Negro. They were worth on average about $64,000 in current dollars before the War Between the States. You couldn't even get $10 for a Negro these days even if slavery was legal. The best slide rule in 1960 cost about $100 which is $3,000 now. It would still fetch $100 as a collector's item. That is only a 30:1 drop in price. The Negro has experienced an infinite drop in price. Nobody would even want one for a conversation piece.

[Donald E. Pauly]

These slide rules are still worth something in this picture from 1950. The Negroes are not worth anything.



1950 African-American Students.Prarie View, TX. Texas A&M

[Donald E. Pauly]

This video commemorates the days when Negroes were still worth something. They sang those Negro spirituals in the fields while they were picking cotton.

Song from a Cotton Field - Bessie Brown - YouTube

Song from a Cotton Field - Bessie Brown - YouTube

[Donald E. Pauly]

This photo was taken in 1940 before the cotton picking machine had been invented. It was no longer legal to own Negroes but they would still work a little bit if you paid them. When the cotton picking machine was invented, the Negro market collapsed. Lyndon Johnson's so called Great Society finished the collapse. This type of Negro was once worthy $64,000 in current money!

http://historyinphotos.blogspot.com/...or-photos.html

[Donald E. Pauly]

The price of Negroes which had a history of running away was much lower that that of an obedient Negro. After an escape, they typically sold at a 60% discount. It was very expensive to get them back, especially if they ran away to a free state.

Here is an example of a troublesome Negro midget who escaped when he was drunk. Because of inflation, the reward for his return would now be about $8,000 and for his arrest about $3,200. This presumably means that it would have cost $4,800 to bring this Negro back to his master. This Negro probably would have been worth around $64,000 in current money if he had never escaped. After an escape he would have been only worth $25,600. It wouldn't take very many escapes to make a Negro worth nothing.

Runaway Slave Notices in Newspapers : West Tennessee

Randolph Recorder: 16 January 1835

$100 REWARD

Ran away from the Plantation of H. R. W. HILL, two miles northwest of Covington, about the 20th October last, a negro man named STEPHEN. He is about 30 years old, 5 feet two or three inches high, remarkably black, speaks very mildly, is obedient when sober but quarrelsome and impudent when intoxicated; he is very fond of spirits. He carried off with him a black wool hat, brown jeans roundabout lined throughout with heavy domestic, brown pantaloons, and generally wore check shirts, though he had others. The above reward will be paid on his safe delivery to me, or forty dollars for his confinement in jail so that I may get him.

[Donald E. Pauly]

In these days, law enforcement was good for something besides writing speeding tickets. They returned escaped slaves to their rightful owners.

Runaway Slave Notices in Newspapers : West Tennessee

Randolph Recorder: 16 January 1835

Jailor's Notice

Committed to the Jail of Tipton County, Tennessee, on the 9th January, 1835, a negro man who says his name is NATHAN, and that he was brought to the western country about two years ago by his young master Eli Rigdon of Hartford County, Maryland. Nathan says that he has been running the Mississippi River the most of his time since he has been in the western country, and was employed as a fireman on the steamboat Huron, when she sunk. Nathan is about five feet 10 inches high - and between 28 and 30 years old; will weigh about 180 pounds; rather yellow complected, round full face, the white of his eyes show more than common, very white teeth, has a scar under his right eye which he says was occasioned by a boil; he had on when committed, an old cotton shirt, gray cassinet pantaloons, a blanket roundabout coat and an old wool hat; all of said clothing is nearly worn out. The owner is requested to prove property, pay charges and take him away, or he will be dealt with as the law directs.

Randolph Recorder: 16 January 1835

R.J. MITCHELL
Jailor of Tipton County, Tennessee

[Donald E. Pauly]

I finally found this on Google books. This planter figured out how to get work out of Negros after slavery became illegal.

The World's Work - Google Books



MAKING COTTON PAY

THE STORY OF A PROGRESSIVE COTTON PLANTER— INDUCING SHIFTLESS NEGROES TO WORK EFFICIENTLY—GROWING SUBSIDIARY CROPS—RICH OPPORTUNITIES FOUND IN GROWING COTTON ACCORDING TO TWENTIETH - CENTURY METHODS

BY

ULRICH BONNELL PHILLIPS

COTTON has again become king. The cotton-fields of the world will not supply this year cotton enough to meet even last year's rate of consumption. And under pressure of the growing demand— and waked to effort by soaring prices—the South has roused itself to industrial activity unprecedented since the war.

Modern methods are supplanting the shiftless systems of agriculture that rose on the ruins of slavery. At first. planters rented thirty-acre "one-horse" farms to the Negroes. Merchants supplied rations of meal and pork, month by month, during the spring and summer, waiting until autumn for payment. Both landlord and merchant were obliged to inspect each debtor-tenant's crop to prevent neglect, and for their risk and trouble charged two or three prices for the land or groceries. The average Negro's unfitness for independent production made this system bad. With no working capital, with the most primitive implements and methods, and with no love of work, the Negro tenant-farmer has remained in debt from one year's end to another, and well-nigh hopeless.

Often the landlord has supplied not only the land and cabin, but also a mule, implements, seed, and fertilizer, and a little supervision as well, and received in return half the crop. In some cases the Negro supplies a part of the farm equipment and pays only one third of the crop. Administered by absentee landlords, this system is as bad as the other. A Negro of my acquaintance had agreed to pay a third of his cotton and corn crops to his landlord. When the season had passed and inquiry was made why he had brought no corn for rent, he explained: "Well, you see, boss," said he, "'twuz dis way. I tuk'n heaped all dat cawn crap on de groun', an' I wuz gwine tuh haul two loads to my crib an' den one load to yourn, an' two loads to my crib agin an' one to yourn. I hauled dem fust two loads all right, but dey wuzn't no third one fo' yo' rent." It required the services of the sheriff to collect from him.



THE CLUSTERED CABINS OF THE NEGRO LABORERS Photographed by Trtss'ar. Montgomery, Ala.

Thousands of white farmers were also producing cotton; and as the population multiplied and the use of commercial fertilizers was extended the output of cotton was increased until during the nineties the market was over-supplied. The price of cotton fell to where it would no longer yield profit. There were hard times in the Cotton Belt. Race-friction increased, and crime was more than usually prevalent.

But the hard times brought their own cure. Labor was cheap. Accordingly, cotton mills and other factories were built and immense numbers of white families left the cotton fields. The cotton output has been lessened in the last few years, and the price has so risen that the industry is now one of the most profitable in America. The prosperity has brought a demand for an improved system of production which is beginning to be met. For men of initiative and ability are "going into cotton."

The story of Mr. J. W. Young, who lives near Prattville, Alabama, is perhaps the best example to be found of this twentieth-century movement. Five years ago Mr. Young, deciding that selling ginnery outfits could no longer be the career of a typical Southerner, bought a select piece of land, contracted with satisfactory laborers, and on a small scale began cotton-planting. His farmer neighbors thought he was buying his land too dear, and that he was too liberal in his labor contracts and too reckless in his investments in patent plaws and harrow, fancy cottonseed, high-priced mules, and new Negro houses.

The average man, indeed, by following Mr. Young's plan of a large preliminary outlay, might speedily have come to grief in that conservative region. By Walton Young was the exceptional man. He had not only vim and courage, but knowledge, and tact, and common sense. From thourough observation he had learned the things which should be known about the Negro, the mule, the land, and the staple.



THE LABOR PROBLEM IS TO INDUCE THE NEGROES TO DESIRE A BETTER STANDARD OF LIVING



He won the confidence and admiration of his laborers. He indulged them in small things and always saw to their comfort, but made them work from earliest dawn to evening twilight, always under his own alert, intelligent, and kindly direction. A considerate employer, he was their master none the less. He saw personally to the feeding and housing of his mules, watched carefully the special qualities of his soil, and made judicious experiments in the treatment of his cotton plants. His very first crop was a "bumper." It opened the eyes of his neighbors to what they also might be doing.

Cotton was low, but Mr. Young sold his crop at the current rate, and bought more land, on credit, at still higher prices. The second year he sold another large crop at a rather low price, and bought more land and mules, built more Negro cabins, and contracted with more laborers. In the third year the crop was heavier than ever, but the price still low. In the fourth year the seasons were bad, and the crop only half its usual size, but the prices much improved. Finally, in 1903, the crop was not far below the average size, while the prices ranged between the very high figures of nine and sixteen cents a pound. This, of course, meant a very comfortable profit. Mr. Young was producing crops of two or three times the value of the land on which they were grown. By 1901 the land adjacent to his estate was run up to a prohibitive price. A tract which had been valued at $2.50 an acre in 1890 and at $7.50 in 1898 was now held for $30 and $35. Mr. Young declined to buy at those prices, but for the past two years has been renting a tract at $2.00 and $2.50 an acre.

EVEN THREE-YEAR-OLD PICKANINNIES DO THEIR SHARE AT THE PICKING SEASON Photographed by George Stark



AS SOON AS A BALE IS GINNED IT IS WEIGHED. NUMBERED, AND MARKED WITH THE OWNER'S INITIALS



His plantation now embraces 450 acres of fine plateau land, of which all but a small pasture of twelve acres is under cultivation. He has no woodland and no waste land. In 1903 there were 33+ acres devoted to cotton, producing, in spite of bad seasons. 215 pounds to the acre. At an average price of 12 cents per pound the crop was sold at $8,600. As a by product, 62+ tons of cottonseed were sold tor $859, which will pay for two-thirds of the fertilizer for next year's crop and still leave enough seed on hand for the new season's planting. His net cash profit, aside from the interest on the capital employed was about $2,500 a year from the cotton crop alone. This, in addition to all the table supplies, meat, eggs, meal, fruit, melons and vegetables, is no contemptible income especially in a region where for forty years the people have barely been able to keep body and soul together. The lands of this plantation, lying high and dry. are not well suited for corn Accordingly. Mr Young devotes a relatively small acreage to it and buys his grain from the West. But he has a plan to annex a district grown between the peach-tree rows. Watermelons and cantaloups are raised only for home supply, but sweet potatoes are sold in considerable quantities.





Most of the modern planters like Mr. Young grow subsidiary crops like this to absorb labor which would otherwise be idle at certain seasons or to utilize land otherwise valueless. One raises "razorback" hogs in a great river swamp where he cuts and hauls out timber in the winter. Another keeps a herd of blooded milch and beef cattle. A third has a water-power grist-mill, and uses part of his stream in summer to irrigate a market garden. A fourth devotes his spare time to strawberries, and a fifth has developed an extensive scuppernong vineyard which furnishes great quantities of white wine and vinegar. In recent years thousands have planted peach orchards, intending to supply fruit to the northern market, or in some instances to convert the peaches into canned goods or brandy. Mr. Young last year made an experiment with snap-beans and green peas. From six acres devoted to these crops he cleared $150, in spite of bad weather. Cotton was planted between the rows before the peas and peans were gathered, and yielded an unusual fruitage there because of the heavy fertilization which had already been more than paid for by the fancy crops. Next season he intends to plant ten acres in each of these crops, and expects to clear above $500 net profit from them.



Mr. Young has worked out his own system of handling labor. Of the plows upon his "fifteen-horse plantation," six are operated by hands working for wages and nine by "croppers" who work on shares. These croppers are practically hired laborers in a profit-sharing system. The planter furnishes the land, house, implements, and blacksmithing, the mule and its feed, and half the seed and fertilizer for the crop. He receives half the crop and pays half the marketing expenses. The cropper furnishes all the labor and pays for half the seed and fertilizer required for the thirty acres allotted to him. He is authorized to draw rations each month, which are charged to him at fair prices, with the planter standing security for the debt. Should his crop need extra labor, it is hired at his expense. The accounts are very carefully kept, and at the end of the farming year half the proceeds of the crop from his land, less the amount already drawn in advance, is paid in cash to each cropper.

To each of his hired plowmen Mr. Young gives a cabin upon the place and wages of $8 to $10 a month, according to contract. Women are hired by the day at 40 cents. All the laborers buy their own rations. These laborers cultivate 180 of the 450 acres, nearly always working in squads. In the winter and early spring the whole plowing force of the plantation works in one squad until all the land is broken up and the cotton crop planted. First a heavy, three-horse disc turn-plow cuts a broad, deep furrow, rolling the soil off to one side. Just behind follows a one-horse subsoil plow, with a long, narrow tongue, breaking the earth deep below the surface and preventing any "hardpan" from forming that year. Then follows a second turn-plow, cutting another furrow, from which it throws the soil into the furrow of the first two plows, leaving a broad trough for the subsoiler behind—and so on.

Seed and fertilizer are placed by squads of laborers. As soon as the crop is planted the croppers withdraw to their several allotments and begin cultivating, while the hired hands continue to work in a plow-squad and a hoe-squad, each with a foreman who receives an extra wage for setting a lively pace and keeping the working-chant from dragging too slowly. As soon as the cotton plants appear above ground they must be chopped and plowed, and plowed and hoed and plowed again. From March to the first or the middle of July there is little time for rest in fair weather on the plantation. Six one-horse shallow-going plows are moving in a group in the middle of the plantation, with a dozen women and boys chopping and singing near by. Two or three children "tote" water from the spring. Every one is busy, though no one is in haste save the planter, who is now explaining the management of a balky mule, now directing the "thinning out " of a few more cotton stalks, and now trudging away across the shimmering fields to visit in turn each of the croppers and the hoe-hands.

At length the crop is "laid by," and the laborers flock from the farms to celebrate the Fourth of July and to get religion anew at the church revivals and camp-meetings. Now watermelons and peaches are ripe, and chickens just at frying size. With no more odd jobs till fodder-pulling and cotton-picking time, the darkies have their season of joy.

With the middle of August in ordinary years the cotton-bolls begin to open, and the fields must be picked again and again until the crop is gathered. The plantation force is never sufficient for the cotton - picking. Outside labor is usually to be had at the rate of 30 or 40 cents per hundred-weight picked, a rate which yields expert pickers from $1.00 to $1.60 a day. The hired hands are put upon a stint in cotton-picking season, and besides their wages receive the prevailing rate for all cotton picked beyond their stint of, say, 150 pounds per day. When working in this way the Negroes are so industrious that the planter may safely take a vacation every day, being careful only to be on hand when the baskets of cotton are weighed.

At Christmas-tide the fields are brown and bare, but the labor of breaking up the soil has already begun for the next year's crop. The darkies cannot remember that in February the ground is always water-soaked, and thus they cannot see the use of this heavy work so long before planting. The planter, therefore, finds in this season his chief labor difficulty, for the Negroes dislike to work in cold weather, and the mules sympathize with the Negroes.

In winter most of the Negroes show their shortcomings. Negro laborers are good, bad, and indifferent—mostly indifferent. Under Mr. Young's direction and inspiration the indifferent ones do good work, but they will not keep at it longer than they have to. At the end of each year there is a migration of croppers. Those who have earned a surplus are disposed to move to town and live in idleness till the surplus is gone, and those who are in debt to the planter decamp by night with their few possessions, or find some other planter needing laborers who will pay the debt for them and charge it to next year's account. The removal of many is prompted by pure shiftlessness. "Giving notice" is almost unknown.

One day last summer, meeting upon the road a former tenant, Mr. Young inquired of him why he had left the plantation. "Well, you see, boss," the darky replied, "you rings dat bell o' yourn whut sez 'go to wuk' too soon in de mawnin'; an' de mule whut leads yo' plow-gang steps too lively fuh dis yeh n*gger to keep up wid him. I jes' 'cided dat I cud git cawn-bred 'n' side-meat 'nuf to do me widout wukkin' so ha'd. "Yas, suh," he continued, "yo' crappers sho' do come out ahaid at de een' o' de yeah, but dat wouldn't do me no good, kase whut a n*gger lak me don' need fuh bred 'n' meat he sho' is gwi' spen' fuh likker an' dat sawt o' foolishness. You sho' is de right sawt o' boss fuh dese yeh vig'rous n*ggers, but I ain't dat kin'."

Yet the planter who enjoys a reputation for success, if he can use some tact, is rarely short - handed. There are nearly always many families who are seeking a chance to better their livelihood by working under a capable manager. The chief trouble is in the necessity of educating a new set of laborers each year in the use of modern implements and in the practice of steady habits.

Not one man, but scores—perhaps many hundreds—in the South are using the methods which Mr. Young is following. And these men are educating the Negroes into habits of industry and reliability—slowly but surely. At the end of January, 1903, long before planting time, Mr. Young sold most of his anticipated crop for delivery in October at 13 cents a pound. Cotton producers on a small scale are excluded from such opportunities to take advantage of future markets.

The numberless opportunities for enterprise which the progressive planters may develop for their own and their neighbors' advantage throughout the Cotton Belt are typified by a piece of road-making between Prattville and the Young plantation. That road runs up hill and down and then crosses a broad plain. The hills are of clay, the plain a sand bed. In wet seasons the road across the hills was formerly the deepest mud; in dry weather the sand-bed was a severe strain upon heavy laden teams. Mr. Young explored and found a bed of pure clay and another of coarse gravel. He set his plantation force paving a short stretch of roadway with a mixture from the two beds, and invited the town and county authorities to test it. Some came in dry weather and found no dust, others in rain and found no mud. They tested it with wheels and with hoofs, and even with plows, and found it good. "But," said they, "we have no public funds for road-building."

Nothing daunted, Mr. Young circulated a subscription list, with himself as the leading subscriber, and brought the town to agree to assume half the expense. The planters and farmers who were to benefit from the road arranged to carry the other half by furnishing teams and laborers. The road, as now completed, is among the best rural highways in the Cotton Belt, a region notorious for its bad roads. The trip from the plantation to town now requires from a third to a half of the time formerly needed. The weight of the loads drawn can be made much greater, and the damage to running-gear is many times less.

Every progressive planter, by setting an attractive example and by doing a sort of social settlement work in molding the Negroes into a greater fitness for membership in a complex civilization, is doing his part to build up a prosperous South. It is cotton that provides the incentive.

[Donald E. Pauly]

My buddy Calypso Louie, aka Minister Farrakhan, has some words of wisdom on slavery, Uncle Sambo and Tiger Woods. Louie doesn't like skittles.

Min. Farrakhan speaks on Travon Martin, Obama, Black Youth and Parenting - YouTube

Min. Farrakhan speaks on Travon Martin, Obama, Black Youth and Parenting - YouTube

[Donald E. Pauly]

The Council of Conservative Citizens points out that the first legal slaveholder in North America was a Negro. Prior to 1655, Negroes could only be indentured for seven years. I didn't know that Sierra Leone was formerly used for repatriating Negroes.

The first American slave owner was black and Abraham Lincoln was almost beaten to death by black thugs

America’s First Chattel Slave Owner Was A Black Man



Actual drawing of Anthony Johnson. America’s first slave owner.

Prior to 1655 there were no legal slaves in the colonies, only indentured servants. All masters were required to free their servants after their time was up. Seven years was the limit that an indentured servant could be held. Upon their release they were granted 50 acres of land. This included any Negro purchased from slave traders. Negros were also granted 50 acres upon their release.

Anthony Johnson was a Negro from modern-day Angola. He was brought to the US to work on a tobacco farm in 1619. In 1622 he was almost killed when Powhatan Indians attacked the farm. 52 out of 57 people on the farm perished in the attack. He married a female black servant while working on the farm.

When Anthony was released he was legally recognized as a “free Negro” and ran a successful farm. In 1651 he held 250 acres and five black indentured servants. In 1654, it was time for Anthony to release John Casor, a black indentured servant. Instead Anthony told Casor he was extending his time. Casor left and became employed by the free white man Robert Parker.

Anthony Johnson sued Robert Parker in the Northampton Court in 1654. In 1655, the court ruled that Anthony Johnson could hold John Casor indefinitely. The court gave judicial sanction for blacks to own slave of their own race. Thus Casor became the first permanent slave and Johnson the first slave owner.

Whites still could not legally hold a black servant as an indefinite slave until 1670. In that year, the colonial assembly passed legislation permitting free whites, blacks, and Indians the right to own blacks as slaves.

By 1699, the number of free blacks prompted fears of a “Negro insurrection.” Virginia Colonial ordered the repatriation of freed blacks back to Africa. Many blacks sold themselves to white masters so they would not have to go to Africa. This was the first effort to gently repatriate free blacks back to Africa. The modern nations of Sierra Leone and Liberia both originated as colonies of repatriated former black slaves. However, black slave owners continued to thrive in the United States.

By 1830 there were 3,775 black families living in the South who owned black slaves. By 1860 there were about 3,000 slaves owned by black households in the city of New Orleans alone.

Sources:
John Casor
Anthony Johnson

[Donald E. Pauly]

For those not familiar with Pastor Manning from Harlem, here is one of his better sermons. He criticizes Negros for not doing anything in Africa until the White man colonized the continent. He points out that the White man got some work out of Negroes during slavery.

This Video Will Shock South African people... wmv - YouTube

This Video Will Shock South African people... wmv - YouTube