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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (9743)	5/25/1999 1:02:00 AM
From: D. Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

<<So why was such an inefficient system perpetuated? I can't answer this except to say people don't always act in accordance with their rational self-interest.>> Im at a loss to explain it myself. From all the anectodal evidence I have read, the plantations were a shaky enterprise, very dependent upon the price of cotton and tobacco, and rarely made much profit. Im not in the cotton business, so I dont know the cost of such an enterprise. But it seems to me it may have been cheaper to employ field hands or at least engage in some form of sharecropping. I suppose it comes down to inertia and the clinging to a lifestyle irregardless of its costs.

To: Brumar89 who wrote (9743)	5/25/1999 1:10:00 AM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 17770

So why was such an inefficient system perpetuated? Because it was the only way to perpetuate large plantations, and the aristocratic pretensions they allowed among the gentry. Free white labor would not have worked under those conditions. In fact, there was a de facto waning of slavery in the Upper South, where plantations were not as important and the climate was not as terrible, and there were far more farms of middling size. Many slaves were allowed to go to cities like Richmond to ply trades, as long as they made a remittance to their masters. Many of them were allowed to buy their freedom in the end. It has been estimated that the black populations of Richmond and Baltimore were roughly half freedmen, and many of the rest were not living under supervision..."Our way of life" really meant the way of life of the grandees... However, less wealthy whites were often sufficiently afraid of the competition of black labor, and sufficiently racist to fear the commingling of the races, that their support could be enlisted by the gentry...