Re the support offered by Michael Etchison for D'Souza's and Cox's claim that: > the culture forged in resistance to slavery becomes dysfunctional > in the industrial North. 1) There were industrial slaves in the ante-bellum south. They made lots of things in these slave factories. A literature exists that makes the point that slavery (and antebellum southern Black culture) did not make industry impossible. On my desk is now "Coal, Iron, and Slaves: Industrial Slavery in Maryland and Virginia, 1715-1865". Those who claim slavery and industry are incompatable are not aware of this large literature: this speaks badly for their historical research and knowledge. 2) Bateman and Weiss in "A Deplorable Scarcity: The Failure of the Industrialization of the Slave South" point, with econometric evidence, to SLAVEHOLDER culture as holding back investment in industry. There was a strong social backlash against WHITE SLAVEHOLDERS who invested in industry as this was considered to be an attack on the way of life of WHITE SLAVEHOLDER culture. I could go on and on about the lack of awareness of the historical record by those making blanket claims about the link between "Black culture" and later economic problems but I won't. One result of my study of industry in the ante-bellum US south is found in, there it comes another shameless plug -- two in one day --, "Empirical Evidence that the Social Relations of Production Matters: The case of the antebellum US South," CJE 1994. Eric Nilsson Department of Economics California State University San Bernardino, CA 92407 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
