Slavery, the Supply of Agricultural Labor, and the Industrialization of the South

Abstract

This article assumes that the only effect of slavery was the relief of a labor constraint facing individual farmers, and shows the conditions under which slavery would increase the share of agriculture in total output, reduce the size of the market for, and the incentive to invent and innovate, new farm machinery. Two farm models are developed, one with a fixed laborconstraint, the other with a rising labor supply-curve; these are contrasted with a third model of an unconstrained farm. The constrained (free labor) and unconstrained (slave labor) models successfully predict several salient differences between northern and southern agriculture and industry.