AHC: Industrialise the American South

Seeing as though the main problem is the actual yearly supply of purchaseable slaves being a relative constant, I should probably do a graph or something here, with the industrialists getting about 10-35% of that available slave market, due to some of the plantation owners being industrialists and the boom and bust cycle of cash crops, we would need to either:

A: Increase the slave supply. This can be done through an increase in domestic slave population growth, although that probably won't do much in the grand scheme of things, or an increase in the success and volume of the illegal slave importation, which can be done through a weakening of the West Africa Squadron or better relations with other major slaveholder places like the Caribbean or Brazil.

B: A lesser number of cotton booms leading to the other slaveholders getting a chance at the slave markets. This could perhaps be caused by a worsening of trade relations between the USA and the European markets with crises like the Aroostook War getting worse than OTL in the background. Anybody up for tariff wars?

C: Increasing the success of indentured servitude. This one is kinda hard what with the racial caste system in place and the ban on persecuting people for debts, but you could probably get by with getting poor Sicilians and Neapolitans or any other sub white poor Europeans as the indentured servants. Well, Italians were pretty much treated like blacks during Reconstruction, so yeah.

D: All of the above.
 
Read contemporary accounts on slavery like Cairnes or Olmsted. Olmsted for instance:

"I am here shown tools that no man in his senses, with us, would allow a labourcr, for whom he was paying wages, to be encumbered with; and the excessive weight and clumsiness of which, I would judge, would make work at least ten per cent greater than with those ordinarily used with us. And I am assured that, in the careless and clumsy way they must be used by the slaves, anything lighter or less rude could not be furnished them with good economy, and that such tools as we constantly give our labourers and find our profit in giving them, would not last out a day in a Virginia cornfield – much lighter and more free from stones though it be than ours. So, too, when I ask why mules are so universally substituted for horses on the farm, the first reason given, and confessedly the most conclusive one, is that horses cannot bear the treatment that they always must get from negroes; horses are always soon foundered or crippled by them, while mules will bear cudgelling, or lose a meal or two now and then, and not be materially injured, and they do not take cold or get sick, if neglected or overworked. But I do not need to go further than to the window of the room in which I am writing, to see at almost any time, treatment of cattle that would ensure the immediate discharge of the driver by almost any farmer owning them in the North."

They suggest production by slave labor is wasteful because slaves have no incentive to not ground down beasts of burden or tools (in fact the mere fact of being slaves kind of gives incentive to do so), that's why slave-industrialization could only work as a kludge.
 
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TFSmith121

Banned
True that...

TFSmith121 provided plenty of reasons, but here are a few more.
Part of the reason for slave labour becoming increasingly expensive was that after 1805 (?) the (British) Royal Navy was trying to end the slave trade from Africa.
The Royal Navy had no great moral objection to slavery, just that slavery under- cut labour costs in British textile mills
While we are discussing the cost of labour, consider the much shorter growing season in New England made it difficult for subsistence farmers to survive. Since casual labourers could not earn enough cash to feed themselves all year, they often sought work in mills or mines over the winter. Meanwhile labourers in Quebec had to chose between lumber camps or factories in Massachusetts for winter work.

True that...

The southern US did not industrialize until after the war for multiple and deep reasons of geography, demographics, economics, and governance, which could not have been changed by policy, even if there was a government in place that could do so...

Which there was not, of course.

Best,
 
And there are plenty of other contemporary analyses of the southern slave economy that would contradict Olmsted. I'll not argue whichever side is right or wrong because I don't have the right to judge. Point of view is everything, after all.

As for the boll weevil, whoever asked about that, it could theoretically come at any time as long as there is adequate biological interaction with, presumably, the ecosystems of Central America.
 
Yeah, but without large scale banking and finance sector, it's very unlikely capital could be secured through borrowing or bond sales to finance the internal improvements - railways, dredging of rivers, canals, etc - to sustain an industrialization effort, much less even finance sain effort at industrialization.

Thing is, like I said, they did have a large scale banking and financial sector. Not as large as that in some of the Northern states, but present and effective.

The problem wasn't the lack of a banking industry, it was that so much in terms of the economy was tied up in slavery and the slave trade. The banking in the antebellum South was about the financing of new purchases of slaves, of the goods to aid slaves in production, of the movement of the produce of slaves, etc etc. It was all waaaay more profitable than the things banks lent into in the North.

It's worth pointing out that the South actually did invest in things like railroads and canals. However, rather than using these things as a way of facilitating internal trade, they were about improving access of slave-owners to foreign markets for their produce.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Yes, but then you have the reality that

Thing is, like I said, they did have a large scale banking and financial sector. Not as large as that in some of the Northern states, but present and effective.

The problem wasn't the lack of a banking industry, it was that so much in terms of the economy was tied up in slavery and the slave trade. The banking in the antebellum South was about the financing of new purchases of slaves, of the goods to aid slaves in production, of the movement of the produce of slaves, etc etc. It was all waaaay more profitable than the things banks lent into in the North.

It's worth pointing out that the South actually did invest in things like railroads and canals. However, rather than using these things as a way of facilitating internal trade, they were about improving access of slave-owners to foreign markets for their produce.

Yes, but then you have reality of New York and Philadelphia in terms of being centers of finance vis a vis nothing comparable in the South. New York State was able to finance the Erie Canal on its own, no federal help; the southern states could barely manage improvements with federal assistance, and fought said policies in Congress. The difference was real.

Best,
 
Yes, but then you have reality of New York and Philadelphia in terms of being centers of finance vis a vis nothing comparable in the South. New York State was able to finance the Erie Canal on its own, no federal help; the southern states could barely manage improvements with federal assistance, and fought said policies in Congress. The difference was real.

Best,

New Orleans was really the third city in the US as far as finance goes, especially prior to 1837.

As far as internal improvements, the Southern states self-financed a huge number of railroads throughout the antebellum period, either privately or as public-private consortia. In fact, many Southern states included the same bond-security mechanism in their bank charters and (for those few that had them) their free banking laws that were used in Northern and Western states to create large markets for state debts. This was, as in the North, primarily about being able to fund public projects such as railways.
 
Much of the mindset of the "Southern Gentleman" was that industrialization was more of a vice than a virtue. They were proud not have have industry, banking, etc in their states. Thomas Jefferson was the foremost example.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
3-1 in population and financial strength; 5-1 in factories; 10-1, industrial workers

npscw_facts-01.jpg


3-1 in population and financial strength; 5-1 in factories; 10-1, industrial workers ... there's no way "the south" can do anything about that, and since the southern elite didn't WANT to industrialize, seems rather unlikely they would, or that it would make a difference if they could...

Best,
 
3-1 in population and financial strength; 5-1 in factories; 10-1, industrial workers ... there's no way "the south" can do anything about that, and since the southern elite didn't WANT to industrialize, seems rather unlikely they would, or that it would make a difference if they could...

Best,

Jesus Christ man, you're tilting at windmills here. No one is arguing that the South was as well industrialized as the North. In fact, I've essentially been dancing around the argument that, in order to get the South to industrialize, you need to get rid of slavery. It was just too good at tying up capital and slaves are too hard to monetize (mortgaging their slave holdings was one of the things that left slave-owners in the South so over-extended going into the 1837 panic).

EDIT: Although the relevant portion of your info-graphic doesn't tell the whole story here. Bank capital is important, too, especially in a time when banks issued currency, not just deposits. Regardless, it's interesting to note that, with about a third of the free population of the Northern states, the South (as defined in the info-graphic) had about a third as much bank deposits and base money.
 
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TFSmith121

Banned
Yeah, but "who" in the South is going to industrialize?

Jesus Christ man, you're tilting at windmills here. No one is arguing that the South was as well industrialized as the North. In fact, I've essentially been dancing around the argument that, in order to get the South to industrialize, you need to get rid of slavery. It was just too good at tying up capital and slaves are too hard to monetize (mortgaging their slave holdings was one of the things that left slave-owners in the South so over-extended going into the 1837 panic).

EDIT: Although the relevant portion of your info-graphic doesn't tell the whole story here. Bank capital is important, too, especially in a time when banks issued currency, not just deposits. Regardless, it's interesting to note that, with about a third of the free population of the Northern states, the South (as defined in the info-graphic) had about a third as much bank deposits and base money.

Yeah, but "who" in the South is going to industrialize?

And why? And when?

Bottom line, there wasn't anyone with any power or capital to do any more than what happened historically, and we all know how that turned out.

Plus the fact the South was largely illiterate and had nothing compared to the education system available in New England.

Best,
 
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