While the Antebellum South may have had a much more prosperous agricultural sector than the North, it lagged behind in many other categories such as manufacturing and education. The South’s inability to keep pace with the North when it came to industrialization was the main concern of Fred Bateman and Thomas Weiss’ 1981 book, A Deplorable Scarcity: The Failure of Industrialization in the Slave Economy. Drawing from census information gathered in the 1850s and 1860s, they attempt to reason an explanation via economic analysis for why the South fell behind the North in industrialization as well as many other qualitative measures such as literacy, immigration and educational infrastructure. I believe that it is necessary to discuss these failings
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He concedes that the South did lag behind the North in regards to industrialization, but insists that this lag was only due to the enormous strength of the agricultural sector in the South, whose relentless demand for labour undermined the development of Southern industry. While this appears to a feasible explanation for the phenomenon at hand, it also marks one of rare times in which Fogel actually makes the distinction between economic growth, measured in per capita output, and economic development in areas such as urbanization, literacy and industrialization. In this way, Without Consent or Contract (1989) shares much of its historical naiveté with its precursor, Time on the Cross …show more content…
It can be concluded that slavery was profitable to plantation owners as well as the entire South. Assuming that the typical slave owner was irrationally minded and did not act in accordance with their best economic interests is an erroneous standpoint. The acquisition of a slave was most often a very worthwhile investment, which borne rates of return that measured up to the most lucrative investment opportunities in other sectors of the economy. It was these fantastic returns on investment along with slavers’ exhaustive utilization of capital and labour that made a slave farm 35% more efficient than a free farm in the same period and gave the South the most rapid per capita income growth of its
He concedes that the South did lag behind the North in regards to industrialization, but insists that this lag was only due to the enormous strength of the agricultural sector in the South, whose relentless demand for labour undermined the development of Southern industry. While this appears to a feasible explanation for the phenomenon at hand, it also marks one of rare times in which Fogel actually makes the distinction between economic growth, measured in per capita output, and economic development in areas such as urbanization, literacy and industrialization. In this way, Without Consent or Contract (1989) shares much of its historical naiveté with its precursor, Time on the Cross …show more content…
It can be concluded that slavery was profitable to plantation owners as well as the entire South. Assuming that the typical slave owner was irrationally minded and did not act in accordance with their best economic interests is an erroneous standpoint. The acquisition of a slave was most often a very worthwhile investment, which borne rates of return that measured up to the most lucrative investment opportunities in other sectors of the economy. It was these fantastic returns on investment along with slavers’ exhaustive utilization of capital and labour that made a slave farm 35% more efficient than a free farm in the same period and gave the South the most rapid per capita income growth of its