Slave Labor and Free Labor
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996
From: Brian Kelly
Subject: slave labor and free labor
Can anyone suggest a list of secondary materials that might shed some light on the attempts (successful or otherwise) of antebellum southern manufacturers/industrialists to pit slave labor against free white workers? Is there a single source that might be a good place to start?
Brian Kelly
Brandeis University
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996
From: Eric G. Tscheschlok
Subject: Re: slave labor and free labor
You might wish to look at Charles B. Dew's BOND OF IRON: MASTER AND SLAVE AT BUFFALO FORGE (1994). In operating his Virginia foundry (Buffalo Forge)William Weaver seems to have preferred using slave labor to using white wage laborers, whom he considered shiftless and indolent. I wish I could be of greater assistance, but perhaps this is a place to start.
Eric Tscheschlok
Auburn University
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996
From: Michael Gagnon
Subject: Re: slave labor and free labor
Another great source for comparing the use of slave and free white labor in an industrial setting in the old South is Allen Stokes' masterful dissertation, "Black and White Labor and the Development of the Southern Textile Industry 1800-1920" (University of South Carolina, 1977). Stokes unfortunately never published his dissertation as a book, but the dissertation is available through UMI (if you want your library to purchase it) and can readily be obtained through interlibrary loan. I have assigned it to grad students as part of their review of the historiography of industrial slavery.
There is also an article published two or three years ago in the _Journal of Southern History_ about free white, slave, and free black labor used in the chemical industries of antebellum Baltimore.
You might also look at a documentary history of non-agricultural slavery edited by James E. Newton & Ronald L. Lewis, _The Other Slaves: Mechanics, Artisans and Craftsmen (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1978). Like Starobin's _Industrial Slavery_, _The Other Slaves_ is encyclopedic in its approach, and as such includes much of an artisan or craft nature that I would not include as "industrial".
All through the 1950s and the 1960s, there were periodic articles on industrial slavery. For examples see: Ernest Lander, Slave Labor in South Carolina Cotton Mills," _Journal of Negro History_ 38 (1953) pp. 161-173; S. Sydney Bradford, "The Negro Ironworker in Ante Bellum Virgina, _Journal of Southern History_ 25 (1959), pp. 194-206; Norris Preyer, "The Historian, The Slave, and The Ante-Bellum Textile Industry", _Journal of Negro History_ 46 (April 1961), pp. 67-82. Also intermixed in general articles about the antebellum textile industry were occassional notices of slave labor. Look at the articles of Ernest Lander on SC industrialization and at any of the multitude of articles by Richard Griffin. Or go to the sources: Lander is emeritus at Clemson and Griffin's papers ar located at Wake Forest. Good Luck.
Michael Gagnon
mgagnon@emory.edu
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996
From: Gregg Kimball
Subject: Re: slave labor and free labor
<<-- can anyone suggest a list of secondary materials that might shed some light on the attempts (successful or otherwise) of antebellum southern manufacturers/industrialists to pit slave labor against free white workers. is there a single source that might be a good place to start?
brian kelly
brandeis university-->>
Hello to Brian Kelly and other H-Southers (Southerners?) from a new subscriber!
Someone has already mentioned Charles Dew's Bond of Iron. I would also look at his earlier book, Ironmaker to the Confederacy: Joseph R. Anderson and the Tredegar Iron Works, as well as an old but interesting book, Kathleen Bruce, Virginia Iron Manufacture in the Slave Era. The story of the 1847 strike of white workers over the introduction of slave workers into certain skilled positions is told in these works, and reiterated in a recent article in Labor History. It's been awhile since I have looked at Robert Starobin's Industrial Slavery in the Old South, but it might be of use, as well as works on urban slavery, such as Richard Wade's Slavery in the Cities might and Claudia Dale Goldin's book Urban Slavery in the American South. I also remember an article by Herbert Gutman and Ira Berlin in the American Historical Review around 1983 which asserted the importance of white (especially enthic) workingmen in Southern cities, and contained statistical information on urban workforces by race and skill.
Gregg D. Kimball Phone: 804-786-2312 Assistant Director of Publications Fax: 804-786-7250 Division of Publications and E-mail: gkimball@leo.vsla.edu Cultural Affairs Library of Virginia 11th Street at Capitol Square Richmond, VA 23219-3491
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996
From: Alan Willis
Subject: Re: slave labor and free labor
If you haven't yet seen Charles C. Bolton _Poor Whites of the Antebellum South_. It is a good place to look for the agricultural sector.
Alan Willis, Syracuse Univeristy
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996
From: Randolph F. Scully
Subject: Re: slave labor and free labor
In addition to Charles Dew's work, another person to consult on the use of free labor and slave labor in southern industry is recently minted Penn Ph.D. John Bezis-Selfa, now at Wheaton College (Mass.). I do not recall the exact title, but his dissertation was a comparison of labor practices in the iron industry in Virginia and the Mid-Atlantic (PA, NJ) from about 1760 into the mid nineteenth century, with specific attention to how and why their labor systems diverged.
Randolph Scully
Graduate Student, Dept. of History
University of Pennsylvania
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