I'm really busy today but I wanted to pop in to dispute Drippy's point here.
That's a serious over-simplification. In 1860 unless you were a member of the plantation class in the south or the entrepreneurial class in the north life pretty much sucked. While it is true that the slaves were not paid they did have to be fed, housed and clothed and if one died it represented a definite loss of a capital asset to the slave-owner. Sure, a slave-owner could beat the shit out of a slave if he wanted to but you can buy a car and beat on it with a hammer, too. What's the point? You're wrecking your own property. Now, in the north the Irish/German immigrants who made up the bulk of the working class were paid a pittance in wages and from that they had to meet all of their needs because the factory owners weren't chipping in. Common laborers worked 60 hours a week for less than $1 a day. No wonder they lived ten to a room in fire-trap slums. BTW, if they got sick they were fired and replaced by the next guy off the boat.
Now these same noble factory owners were the ones out there forming the new republican party and demanding the abolition of slavery....but they cheerfully maintained the "vision" of what labor should be until the growth of labor unions in the 20th century and Teddy Roosevelt smacked them in the teeth.
Slavery would probably have collapsed of its own inefficiency without the civil war. Once the plantation owners realized they were losing money by supporting them instead of freeing them and paying them shit they would have figured it out real fast.
Quote:because the southern stated provided those materials so inexpensively (no lablor costs)
That's a serious over-simplification. In 1860 unless you were a member of the plantation class in the south or the entrepreneurial class in the north life pretty much sucked. While it is true that the slaves were not paid they did have to be fed, housed and clothed and if one died it represented a definite loss of a capital asset to the slave-owner. Sure, a slave-owner could beat the shit out of a slave if he wanted to but you can buy a car and beat on it with a hammer, too. What's the point? You're wrecking your own property. Now, in the north the Irish/German immigrants who made up the bulk of the working class were paid a pittance in wages and from that they had to meet all of their needs because the factory owners weren't chipping in. Common laborers worked 60 hours a week for less than $1 a day. No wonder they lived ten to a room in fire-trap slums. BTW, if they got sick they were fired and replaced by the next guy off the boat.
Now these same noble factory owners were the ones out there forming the new republican party and demanding the abolition of slavery....but they cheerfully maintained the "vision" of what labor should be until the growth of labor unions in the 20th century and Teddy Roosevelt smacked them in the teeth.
Slavery would probably have collapsed of its own inefficiency without the civil war. Once the plantation owners realized they were losing money by supporting them instead of freeing them and paying them shit they would have figured it out real fast.
