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Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Slavery
https://www.jggscivilwartalk.online...oks-movies-and-documentaries.28/create-thread
Amazon summary seems a little scared of the book...
First published in 1974, Fogel and Engerman's groundbreaking book reexamined the economic foundations of American slavery, marking "the start of a new period of slavery scholarship and some searching revisions of a national tradition" (C. Vann Woodward, New York Review of Books).
In an Afterword added in 1989, the authors assess their findings in the light of recent scholarship and debate.
Reviews...
“It takes a licking, but keeps on ticking.” John Cameron Swayze
Perhaps equally rare is the book that could have withstood the onslaught of unrelenting, withering criticism directed at Time on the Cross. The book was described as “simply shot through with egregious errors” (David, et al, 1976, p.339). It was “vulnerable not only to attack — but to dismissal.” Some thought the book should be consigned “to the outermost ring of the scholar’s hell, obscurity” (Haskell, 1975, p. 35). Richard Sutch could only conclude that “Time on the Cross is a failure” (1975, p. 339).
Snip...
Yet here it stands among those books that still attract attention, a classic in the field. And it was recognized as such by many at the time, especially in the first wave of reviews. Peter Passell, for example, said, “If a more important book about American history has been published in the last decade, I don’t know about it” (1974, p. 4). Even after the first barrage of criticism appeared, Gary Walton ventured to say that “Time on the Cross was destined to become a classic” (1975, p. 333).
Snip...
All the painstaking details of scholarship were relegated to a second volume, subtitled Evidence and Methods, so that anyone interested in ‘checking the facts’ or the methods of estimation had to go through a process of cross-referencing. That cross-referencing could be done only after one made sense of the condensed presentation in volume II, which itself relied on extensive cross-referencing. Consider the following simple example from Volume II that supports five pages of textual presentation in volume I regarding the decrease in the slave population of cities.
Snip...
The traditional interpretation of the economics of slavery is obviously long and complex, as was brought out by Stampp in his critique of the book. That complexity has influenced the subsequent writings of Fogel and Engerman but in Time on the Cross they summarized it in five main propositions. “1, …slavery was generally an unprofitable investment …; 2, … slavery was economically moribund; 3, … slave labor, and agricultural production based on slave labor, was economically inefficient; 4, … slavery caused the economy of the South to stagnate, or at least retarded its growth …; 5, … slavery provided extremely harsh material conditions of life for the typical slave” (p. 226).
Snip...
Their chief conclusions were also neatly summarized in a list of 10 “principal corrections of the traditional characterization of the slave economy” (pp. 4-6).
1. Slavery was not a system irrationally kept in existence by owners who failed to perceive or were indifferent to their best economic interests. The purchase of a slave was generally a highly profitable investment which yielded rates of return that compared favorably with the most outstanding investment opportunities in manufacturing.
2. The slave system was not economically moribund on the eve of the Civil War. There is no evidence that economic forces alone would have soon brought slavery to an end without the necessity of a war or other form of political intervention. Quite the contrary; as the Civil War approached, slavery as an economic system was never stronger and the trend was toward even further entrenchment.
3. Slaveowners were not becoming pessimistic about the future of their system during the decade that preceded the Civil War. The rise of the secessionist movement coincided with a wave of optimism. On the eve of the Civil War, slaveholders anticipated an era of unprecedented prosperity.
4. Slave agriculture was not inefficient compared with free agriculture. Economies of large-scale operation, effective management, and intensive utilization of labor and capital made southern slave agriculture 35 percent more efficient than the northern system of family farming.
5. The typical slave field hand was not lazy, inept, and unproductive. On average he was harder-working and more efficient than his white counterpart.
6. The course of slavery in the cities does not prove that slavery was incompatible with an industrial system or that slaves were unable to cope with an industrial regimen. Slaves employed in industry compared favorably with free workers in diligence and efficiency. Far from declining, the demand for slaves was actually increasing more rapidly in urban areas than in the countryside.
7. The belief that slave-breeding, sexual exploitation, and promiscuity destroyed the black family is a myth. The family was the basic unit of social organization under slavery. It was to the economic interest of planters to encourage the stability of slave families and most of them did so. Most slave sales were either of whole families or of individuals who were at an age when it would have been normal for them to have left the family.
8. The material (not psychological) conditions of the lives of slaves compared favorably with those of free industrial workers. This is not to say that they were good by modern standards. It merely emphasizes the hard lot of all workers, free or slave, during the first half of the nineteenth century.
9. Slaves were exploited in the sense that part of the income which they produced was expropriated by their owners. However, the rate of expropriation was much lower than has generally been presumed. Over the course of his lifetime, the typical slave field hand received about 90 percent of the income he produced.
10. Far from stagnating, the economy of the antebellum South grew quite rapidly. Between 1840 and 1860, per capita income increased more rapidly in the south than in the rest of the nation. By 1860 the south attained a level of per capita income which was high by the standards of the time. Indeed, a country as advanced as Italy did not achieve the same level of per capita income until the eve of World War II.
There is more of the reviews... https://eh.net/book_reviews/time-on-the-cross-the-economics-of-american-negro-slavery/
I see why this book is kept hidden from the world....
https://www.jggscivilwartalk.online...oks-movies-and-documentaries.28/create-thread
Amazon summary seems a little scared of the book...
First published in 1974, Fogel and Engerman's groundbreaking book reexamined the economic foundations of American slavery, marking "the start of a new period of slavery scholarship and some searching revisions of a national tradition" (C. Vann Woodward, New York Review of Books).
In an Afterword added in 1989, the authors assess their findings in the light of recent scholarship and debate.
Reviews...
“It takes a licking, but keeps on ticking.” John Cameron Swayze
Perhaps equally rare is the book that could have withstood the onslaught of unrelenting, withering criticism directed at Time on the Cross. The book was described as “simply shot through with egregious errors” (David, et al, 1976, p.339). It was “vulnerable not only to attack — but to dismissal.” Some thought the book should be consigned “to the outermost ring of the scholar’s hell, obscurity” (Haskell, 1975, p. 35). Richard Sutch could only conclude that “Time on the Cross is a failure” (1975, p. 339).
Snip...
Yet here it stands among those books that still attract attention, a classic in the field. And it was recognized as such by many at the time, especially in the first wave of reviews. Peter Passell, for example, said, “If a more important book about American history has been published in the last decade, I don’t know about it” (1974, p. 4). Even after the first barrage of criticism appeared, Gary Walton ventured to say that “Time on the Cross was destined to become a classic” (1975, p. 333).
Snip...
All the painstaking details of scholarship were relegated to a second volume, subtitled Evidence and Methods, so that anyone interested in ‘checking the facts’ or the methods of estimation had to go through a process of cross-referencing. That cross-referencing could be done only after one made sense of the condensed presentation in volume II, which itself relied on extensive cross-referencing. Consider the following simple example from Volume II that supports five pages of textual presentation in volume I regarding the decrease in the slave population of cities.
Snip...
The traditional interpretation of the economics of slavery is obviously long and complex, as was brought out by Stampp in his critique of the book. That complexity has influenced the subsequent writings of Fogel and Engerman but in Time on the Cross they summarized it in five main propositions. “1, …slavery was generally an unprofitable investment …; 2, … slavery was economically moribund; 3, … slave labor, and agricultural production based on slave labor, was economically inefficient; 4, … slavery caused the economy of the South to stagnate, or at least retarded its growth …; 5, … slavery provided extremely harsh material conditions of life for the typical slave” (p. 226).
Snip...
Their chief conclusions were also neatly summarized in a list of 10 “principal corrections of the traditional characterization of the slave economy” (pp. 4-6).
1. Slavery was not a system irrationally kept in existence by owners who failed to perceive or were indifferent to their best economic interests. The purchase of a slave was generally a highly profitable investment which yielded rates of return that compared favorably with the most outstanding investment opportunities in manufacturing.
2. The slave system was not economically moribund on the eve of the Civil War. There is no evidence that economic forces alone would have soon brought slavery to an end without the necessity of a war or other form of political intervention. Quite the contrary; as the Civil War approached, slavery as an economic system was never stronger and the trend was toward even further entrenchment.
3. Slaveowners were not becoming pessimistic about the future of their system during the decade that preceded the Civil War. The rise of the secessionist movement coincided with a wave of optimism. On the eve of the Civil War, slaveholders anticipated an era of unprecedented prosperity.
4. Slave agriculture was not inefficient compared with free agriculture. Economies of large-scale operation, effective management, and intensive utilization of labor and capital made southern slave agriculture 35 percent more efficient than the northern system of family farming.
5. The typical slave field hand was not lazy, inept, and unproductive. On average he was harder-working and more efficient than his white counterpart.
6. The course of slavery in the cities does not prove that slavery was incompatible with an industrial system or that slaves were unable to cope with an industrial regimen. Slaves employed in industry compared favorably with free workers in diligence and efficiency. Far from declining, the demand for slaves was actually increasing more rapidly in urban areas than in the countryside.
7. The belief that slave-breeding, sexual exploitation, and promiscuity destroyed the black family is a myth. The family was the basic unit of social organization under slavery. It was to the economic interest of planters to encourage the stability of slave families and most of them did so. Most slave sales were either of whole families or of individuals who were at an age when it would have been normal for them to have left the family.
8. The material (not psychological) conditions of the lives of slaves compared favorably with those of free industrial workers. This is not to say that they were good by modern standards. It merely emphasizes the hard lot of all workers, free or slave, during the first half of the nineteenth century.
9. Slaves were exploited in the sense that part of the income which they produced was expropriated by their owners. However, the rate of expropriation was much lower than has generally been presumed. Over the course of his lifetime, the typical slave field hand received about 90 percent of the income he produced.
10. Far from stagnating, the economy of the antebellum South grew quite rapidly. Between 1840 and 1860, per capita income increased more rapidly in the south than in the rest of the nation. By 1860 the south attained a level of per capita income which was high by the standards of the time. Indeed, a country as advanced as Italy did not achieve the same level of per capita income until the eve of World War II.
There is more of the reviews... https://eh.net/book_reviews/time-on-the-cross-the-economics-of-american-negro-slavery/
I see why this book is kept hidden from the world....
