Michael, you are taxing my aging memory. I don't recall that particular detail, but it
sounds plausible.
BTW, I had heard that Starobin committed suicide shortly after writing this book. A
depressing topic indeed....
Peter
Michael Perelman wrote:
> Does he tell how Irish workers were used when the work was too dangerous, since their
> lives were worth less than the slaves?
>
> Peter Dorman wrote:
>
> > The whole point of the book, as I recall, was to rebut the claim (most famously
> > voiced by the young Frederick Law Olmsted) that slavery was incompatible with the
> > transition to mechanized production. Starobin pointed out that there were at
> > least isolated instances of industrial production in the South employing slavery
> > that were comparable to methods used in the North. He went into some detail to
> > explain how the requisite labor flexibility was engineered. I can't remember if
> > it was in this book that I first learned about the role of slave labor in building
> > the rail links across the South.
> >
> > So you could say that the deeper question was whether slavery confined the South
> > to a plantation-based economy, whether cotton or sugar or tobacco.
> >
> > Peter
