“In 1776 the British philosopher and economist Adam Smith declared in
his classic economic study, The Wealth
of Nations, that slavery was uneconomical because the plantation system
was a wasteful use of land and because slaves cost more to maintain than free
laborers.”
Adam Smith After 1776
By the 1780s, slavery was being attacked, directly and indirectly, from several sources. Evangelicals condemned it on the grounds of Christian charity and the assumption of a natural law of common humanity. Economists opposed slavery because it wasted valuable resources. Political philosophers saw it as the basis of unjust privilege and unequal distribution of social and corporate responsibility. In 1787 Thomas Clarkson, an English cleric, joined Granville Sharp and Josiah Wedgwood, the famous English potter, to form a society for the abolition of the slave trade. The society recruited William Wilberforce as its parliamentary spokesman and in 1788 succeeded in getting Prime Minister William Pitt to set up a select committee of the Privy Council to investigate the slave trade. The year before, the society had established Sierra Leone in West Africa as a refuge for the "London black poor," and it achieved other successes.
Adam
Smith was heeded in the Caribbean and Brazil altho’ slowly when profits started
to drop. Britain and France outlawed the Slave-traffic from Africa circa 1800 but not
Slavery in the New World. Slavery was finally belatedly recognized as a
colossal blunder as defined by Adam Smith’s interpretations and observations
and looked upon as a long-time losing venture.
The USA SOUTH cast aside the inherent flaws of the Slavery system pointed out by Adam Smith and ignored the failed history with sub-Sahara Slave-traffic and Slavery of the Caribbean and Brazil. The same identical syndrome that slowed down and failed in the Caribbean and Brazil preceded the South’s ill-advised massive plantation sub-Sahara Slave system. The USA started ambitiously to produce cotton in earnest AFTER 1800 while the Caribbean and Brazil for the most part could ill-afford to continue importing more Slaves from sub-Sahara Africa as sugar and coffee profits dwindled. Portugal and Spain who were the high roller hatchet-men of the Slave trade hjad become impoverished. “Damn the tropical diseases! Damn the high death rate!” Said the investment brokers of Europe. “We now have a new cotton gin invention, a land with a benign climate with produce that doesn’t spoil governed by a smarter more intelligent more industrious north European people. Adam Smith was all-wrong! COTTON IS KING.” They said, “Everything is now new and blessed with more favorable conditions.
The USA
during 1800-1860 imported Slaves from Africa and the Caribbean financed by the
cotton-brokers of England and France and ultimately before Slavery was outlawed
in the USA fifty (50) yrs later had imported estimate of a low of four-hundred
thirty (430) thousand to a high estimate of seven (7) hundred thousand out
of a low total estimate of ten (10) million to a high total estimate of
fifteen (15) million or approximately four (4%) percent 4/100 to
seven (7%) percent 7/100 in aggregate of the total brought to the New World.
The Slaves were brought to the USA in large proportions all done most
profitably because of and after the invention of Eli Whitney’s cotton
gin.
Canada
who never had Black Slavery did well as per Adam Smith’s prediction.
Meanwhile
the American NORTH “free laborers” grew at a rapid rate when they accepted the
European immigrant poor en masse in the same little over fifty (50) yrs
(1800-1860) and was 9x larger in GDP in an INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION market economy
than the SOUTH “Gentleman Farmer”
slave States during the Civil War. Slavery as a cost-cutting institution
to serve “KING COTTON” circa 1800 was an ultimate failure on every front except
for the investment houses of Europe and the plantation owners who were
interested in a short-term quick profit. Slavery brought poor 3rd
world Black people to an alien country to do menial work. Slaves didn’t want to
be stoop-labor automatons. Slaves were never paid, never schooled and rebelled
at the slightest chance.
This
was the same failed three (3) hundred yr Slave tradition that had existed in
Brazil and the Caribbean centuries before only NOW after the yr 1800-1865
Slavery was not “in fashion.” World opinion in and out of the USA remained
negative towards Slavery and cited Adam Smith, Karl Marx and the dignity and humanity
of all people regardless of Race. Meanwhile child labor, menial wages, long
working hours and poor working conditions with mediocre quality of manufactured
goods manufactured were the norm for the North and northern Europe. It was the
poor immigrants from Europe who were the victims now of the Robber Barons. Karl Marx became the
new many cliché poetic Prophet. Altho’ Adam Smith had flaws on the matter of SURPLUS
VALUE Karl Marx not only had more serious flaws in the concept of surplus
value but Marx’s errors included repressing human talent with poor monetary
incentives.
The
North continued to outpace the South for one (1) hundred yrs after the Civil
War in high-paying jobs until after WW II. High taxation, Unions and later the World economy
after 1977 made “free-laborers” too expensive in the North to compete
worldwide. After 1990 reducing the cost of labor through high technology seemed
to be the answer. Today 2004 “exporting jobs” to countries that can produce similar
high-quality goods cheaply with “free laborers” from low-wage countries is the
key to success in a WORLD
ECONOMY for both the consumer country and the low-wage “free laborers”
worker country. We can see that the Adam Smith prognostication has held true to
the present while Karl Marx lives only in China. Running out of fossil fuel now
is seen as the big future problem.
Slaves
were brought to the Caribbean and Brazil in large proportions because of sugar
and coffee. In the USA it was cotton. Slavery generated in the USA, Caribbean
and Brazil future generations of people in a sub-culture of self-hating,
subsistence living and anti-authority malcontents spreading extreme poverty and
lackluster performance to the population nationwide. In the USA the large poor
Black families grew doubling every ten (10) yrs after 1800 in the USA under
Slavery to enormous
levels. The Caribbean and Brazil on the other had decreased in their
Slave population with consistent high mortality high-cost low-yield low-produce
low-return dwindling profits becoming poorer and poorer progressively along
with Spain and Portugal since circa 1700 for the next close to four hundred
(400) yrs.
THE WEALTH OF NATIONS search “slaves”