This is right, except that I'd say that the lion's share of the surplus went to a very specific part of the north, i.e., to England. At 03:05 PM 5/25/99 -0700, you wrote: >Jim Devine's analysis would be correct if the surplus in the South would have >been confined to that region. Much of the wealth generated by the slave >economy migrated to the north. > >Jim Devine wrote: > >> My reading is that the slaves did a hell of a lot of work (and in hell) but >> that a lot of went wasted, because the Civil War destroyed the South. With >> Northern occupation preventing the normal process of rebuilding that takes >> place after wars (fixing the railways), with Southern white insistence on >> the most reactionary politics after Reconstruction, with an economy overly >> concentrated on cotton agriculture in an era with low cotton prices, the >> South became a backwater, so that most of the slave's contributions were >> for nought, allowing the slaveowners to live high on the hog for a few >> decades before the Civil War. The slaveowners mostly invested in owning >> more land and more slaves; they didn't do much in the way of capital >> investment, while they avoided educating the slaves. After the Civil War, >> they ended up with landholdings, a lot of desperate freedmen who became >> debt peons, and a stagnant economy. >> > >-- > >Michael Perelman >Economics Department >California State University >[EMAIL PROTECTED] >Chico, CA 95929 >530-898-5321 >fax 530-898-5901 > > Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html Bombing DESTROYS human rights. Ground troops make things worse. US/NATO out of Serbia!
