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

To: D. Long who wrote (9744)	5/25/1999 1:34:00 AM
From: Dayuhan	Respond to of 17770

The slave system in the south had its roots in the absence of an indigenous labor force (British cotton growers in Egypt and India never needed slaves). Hard to persuade anyone to import labor without paying them directly, and equally hard to persuade anyone to pay to have labor imported without having the laborers bound directly to them. By the time the poor white class, which might have taken over as hired labor, became numerous enough to satisfy the demand, the system was well entrenched. A few years back I spent time on the island of Negros, where sugar plantations dominate the economy. The plantation owners were in the process of eliminating the old system of tenancy, under which the tenants, desperately poor and eternally in debt, were slaves with another name. Under the new system they worked as hired hands, at starvation wages, during the half of the year when work was available. The rest of the year they were unemployed, and often homeless. The change was profitable for the hacienderos, but did little for the workers. Many starved during the sugar price drops in the early/mid '80's. The planters just stopped planting, as sugar could not be economically produced at the selling price, and there was no work at all. No safety nets either: no money, no food. You die. Of course you can always sell a few daughters to the Yakuza to tide you over.... Good ol' 3rd world realities. A single-crop economy is inherently unhealthy, whatever the labor base.