It is my contention that lower (or free) wages are less conducive to improving our standard of living through mutually beneficial trade.

Here is anecdotal evidence of that line of reasoning.

Not sure I understand you but I suppose if the prevailing wage for labor is so low that the population is reduce to merely surviving, little progress in living standards would be achieved. It would be analogous of the condition of the recently freed Russian serfs and the stagnant social conditions of the late Russian Empire. As long as the upper class retain enough police power to prevent uprisings I would think they would be loath to see any real change in conditions. Jim Crow in other words.

A lack of improvement in our overall standard of living would affect every participant in that political-economy.

Sources on the aridness of the southern great plains

Jefferson Davis,vol.III -Dunbar Rowland.

The official account for the camel experiment is The Reports upon the Purchase, Importation, and Use of Camels and Dromedaries to be Employed for Military Purposes, Senate Executive Document No.62, Thirty-fourth Congress, Third Session. Davis was Secretary of War from 1854 or so til about 1858. Besides the camel experiment, he tried drilling artesian wells, too. It was Davis who devised the U.S. military's approach to the Plains, basing it on the French strategy in Algiers, as the common methods of many small forts supported by local agriculture wasn't feasible on the Plains, except in a few areas. His conclusion was the government would have to fund the railroad, for military purposes; there was no way it could pay commercially.

The Great Plains, by Walter Prescott Webb, is my personal source. He has sections on the physical environment of the Great Plains, the Plains Indians, the Spanish efforts in the Southwest, the American efforts, 'the Cattle Kingdom', the Cotton Belt and its limits, transportation and fencing, the search for water in the Great Plains, and many sections on the Homestead Act, land and water laws. It's a standard text on the subject, and most libraries have it on their shelves, or you can order a paperback copy if you wish; it's been reprinted many times since it first appeared in 1931.

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"The real question of life after death isn't whether or not it exists, but even if it does, what problems this really solves." - Ludwig Wittgenstein

"A day without sunshine is, you know, night."- Shannon

I agree, but then there are few financiers and businessmen who ever practiced that line of reasoning in their businesses, either in the past or the present. They like Red China's labor costs and a totalitarian police state to keep their labor cheap.

Even today neither Party will raise the Federal minimum wage to where it really should be adjusted for inflation, and most wages in general are running about half of what they were in 1973, before the oil shocks and the global food shortage hit.

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"The real question of life after death isn't whether or not it exists, but even if it does, what problems this really solves." - Ludwig Wittgenstein

"A day without sunshine is, you know, night."- Shannon

Providing for the general welfare of the republic is a federal responsibility not a private sector responsibility. We already have wars on crime, drugs, poverty and terror. Those socio-economic conditions are still with us. We can eliminate poverty when due to a simply lack of income.

One question that has always occurred to me is why didn't they just invent a mechanical cotton picker, indeed, if the human labor of cleaning the cotton was the bottleneck, why didn't they bring in slaves to do that?

It is true that mechanical cotton pickers weren't really perfected or much used until the 1950's, but the first ones, developed in the 1850's could replace up to 40 laborers, so it seems the problem was not that cotton picking was inherently hard to mechanize.

Slavery was a dying institution in nearly every type of human activity by the 1800's. It seems contradictory that the mechanising of cleaning cotton would preserve slavery in all other aspects of this lone field of endeavor

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Alizee Jacotay, the reason god invented hips

Many thanks, I will enjoy this reading.

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"It Happens"
Forrest Gump

I don't believe the plantations owned the gin's. The burden of cleaning the cotton resided with the mill which alleviated the inhibitive part of the cost of producing the cotton from the plantations point of view. I would have to trust that had it been more cost efficient that they would have done it.

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"It Happens"
Forrest Gump

The early pickers weren't any good, a decent one wasn't invented until 1944. The terrain of the South didn't lend itself to a mechanization revolution like the prairies of Illinois and other states in the Midwest and the near plains states.

As a side note, the invention of a usable picker caused massive unemployment among blacks in the South and led directly to the Civil Rights acts starting with Harry Truman and the Civil Rights Movement itself.

It greatly increased the amount of cotton that could be sold. I don't see why this is so hard to see; it also came along with the boom in textile producing machinery and steam powered mills in Britain, the main customer for southern cotton and demand began exploding as production capabilities increased; it's also related to the types of cotton that grew well in the South. The only other major sources were India, and, after the Civil War created a shortage, Egypt began to divert land into cotton; neither of those two sources produced decent quality, and created a financial disaster for Egypt and European banks in a few years.

There are a lot of excerpts on Fogel and Engerman's work on this. This site has some graphs of their data:

Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman's <i>Time on the Cross</i>

James Oberly

Bold added by me.

In any case, Googling Robert V. Fogel+ slavery will keep those interested in an economic perspective busy for a while. There are some 'con' arguments to their thesis out there, but the couple I've read weren't convincing, just ideological whining over a coveted meme being destroyed.

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"The real question of life after death isn't whether or not it exists, but even if it does, what problems this really solves." - Ludwig Wittgenstein

"A day without sunshine is, you know, night."- Shannon

Prior to WWII, Japanese citizens in the U.S. who had been born in Japan were not allowed to own property so the suggestion that freed slaves could not have owned property in the North would not be valid. To the best of my knowledge, freed slaves in the South were not prohibited from owning property, including slaves.

When General Sherman promised freed slaves in the South 40 acres of land and a mule it was clear he had no authority to do either. But, it wasn't corrected because it kept the blacks sitting in the South waiting for the land and mule. They're still waiting.

But, on the original question. Chattel slavery in the South was clearly less economically advantageous than the low wages in the North due to immigration. The issue was how to end it.

There is extensive research on 'Black Codes' prohibiting, or inhibiting blacks from buying land, and also in Illinois, where Lincoln himself supported such laws.

American Black Codes 1865-1866

Of course, the current fashion with modern History depts. is to keep the glare on the South and ignore the 'enlightened' North.

Northern Exclusion of Blacks

A Google search of Black Codes starts here:

Black Codes

It was in fact Northern racism that was part of the problem of what to do with freed blacks in the South for decades; most 'Abolitionists', were in the 'Ship Them Back To Africa' mold, like Lincoln. It was racism among recent immigrants that didn't want to allow blacks to homestead the prairies, and got Lincoln elected in the first place; most Americans and recent immigrants were ignorant of the nature of the Great Plains and didn't know the 'Southern system' couldn't be transplanted there, it was limited by geography and as Daniel Webster said, had already reached its natural limits by 1850; Webster was responding to criticisms of his not challenging the admission of New Mexico as a 'slave state', as it was a non-issue.

Re Sherman, he made extensive use of black slave labor himself in rebuilding destroyed railroad lines and other construction, and the Northern armies kept 'freed' slaves in what were called 'Property Camps', where hundreds of thousands of them died during the war, rather than let the 'free' blacks become refugees in the Northern states.

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"The real question of life after death isn't whether or not it exists, but even if it does, what problems this really solves." - Ludwig Wittgenstein

"A day without sunshine is, you know, night."- Shannon

For a different perspective on Lincoln, check out Forced To Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream:

Forced into Glory

More on Forced To Glory from Google:

Forced To Glory

I've never been a fan of Lincoln, myself, and don't get the Hero Worship of him.

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"The real question of life after death isn't whether or not it exists, but even if it does, what problems this really solves." - Ludwig Wittgenstein

"A day without sunshine is, you know, night."- Shannon

Prior to the War Between the States, the South had no pressing need to develop oil fields and a bigger steel industry. They weren't interested in competing with other states which had those resources and products. But, the South did need to sell cotton. Their two markets were New England and England. England often paid more than the thrifty New Englanders wanted to pay so Congress put a tariff on the export of cotton to force the price down. The northern states also manufactured machinery and farm implements but often England sold the same items cheaper. Enter, another tax to keep out the competition. The South became an economic colony of the North and had no way to compete except to secede. So, there was a war which the South lost.

I don't believe anything would have brought France or England actively into the war. If England had simply curtailed the exporting of Irishmen the war might have ended differently but they were delighted to get rid of them.

President Lincoln freed no slaves in the United States. That's why Delaware, Missouri, and Kentucky kept their slaves until the 14th Amendment was passed. Slavery wasn't the issue until well into the war. Economic subjugation of the South was the issue.

Lincoln was a product of his times. Slavery was an institution.

In my opinion, it was not that Lincoln had any prejudicial stereotypes of the time, but that in spite of those prejudices did what was necessary to preserve the Union.