244 / PARADOXES OF FORCED LABOR

more than ten days were guilty of a “high misdemeanor.”
Data in the 1850 census suggest that the economic condi-
tion of the average free northern Negro may have been
worse than that of the average free Negro in the South. A
comparison between New York and New Orleans reveals
that New York Negroes lived in more crowded housing, had
a lower proportion of craftsmen, and less wealth per capita
than free Negroes in New Orleans.

For blacks during the antebellum era, then, freedom and
slavery were not separated by a sharp dividing line. One
gradually shaded into the other. To some blacks, especially
among the talented whose opportunities were most con-
stricted by slavery, even quasi-freedom was worth nearly
any price — and they risked everything for it. But for the
average slave, who in any case expected his lot to be that of
a laborer, the costs of revolution, or even flight, were not
worth the gains of quasi-freedom — except under special
circumstances such as the separation of a man from his
wife or parents from their children.

That slaves received higher pecuniary incomes than they7
would have as free agricultural laborers does not mean that
their real incomes were higher. For, as previously noted,
there were large nonpecuniary disadvantages to the gang
system, equal to at least $75 per year per adult male hand.
Table 3 shows that for the southern slave population as a
whole, gang labor imposed a nonpecuniary loss of at least
$90,000,000. Against this Very large loss, slaves received a
relatively small pecuniary offset of $6,000,000. Thus theirj
net loss was $84,000,000.

Although it may be surprising to some readers, the main
gainers from the gang system were not slaveholders—'E1T
consumers of cotton. Since cotton plantations had the char-
acteristics ot a competitive industry, all gains in productivity
that did not go into the form of higher wages would
normally have been passed on to consumers in the form

  

PROPERTY RIGHTS IN MAN / 245

of lower prices of cotton. Indeed, under normal circum-
stances, the extra profits to slaveholders which arose from
the gang system would have been transitory. That they per-
sisted was not due to any special behavior on the part of
planters. It was due to the behavior of consumers of cotton
whose demand for the fiber increased more rapidly than the
labor force and total factor productivity. In this sense, even
the extra profit of slaveholders was due to the behavior of
consumers of cotton. Table 3 shows that of the total pecu-
niary gain from gang labor, consumers received nearly
half, or $14,000,000, while slaveowners received about
$10,000,000.

Table 3

Approximate Income Gains and Losses from Large-scale
Operations in 1850 (in millions of dollars 0! 1B50)*

1 ‘ 2 . 3

PECU- NON- NET GAIN

NIARY PECYJ- ,\ g “on LOSS

GAIN NIARY ‘ ' (c0L. 1 —

LOSS con 2)

Slaves 6 90 -84
Consumers of Cotton 14 O 14
Slaveholders 10 _0 10
TOTALS E 90 -60

* See appendix B for the method of computation.

Slaves as a class, therefore, sufiered a net loss in 1850 of
at least $84,000,000 so that the rest of the world could
benefit by $24,000,000. (The use of the term “rest of the
world” was deliberate. For most U.S. cotton was consumed