Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery

by Stanley L. Engerman and Robert William Fogel

Book Overview

In an Afterword added in 1989, the authors assess their findings in the light of recent scholarship and debate.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393306208
• ISBN13: 9780393306200
• Release Date: January 1989
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 306 Pages
• Weight: 0.72 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

Fascinating; sweeps away insidious prejudice

Fogel and Engerman's work turns to primary sources to figure out exactly what the economics of slavery in the American South were like. It turns out that the predominant views are wrong: slavery wasn't unprofitable, slaves were well-nourished and lived almost as long as free laborers, slave families were rarely split up, resistance to slave-owners was rare, and on and on. Farms worked by slaves were 1/3 more efficient that farms worked by free laborers, and slaves received on average more of that higher income than free laborers did. A small proportion of slaves worked as skilled workers in management, engineering, or various crafts. Some of these earned higher incomes than their free counterparts. Since this is only a book on the economics of slavery (as the book's subtitle says), it cannot examine the psychological or ethical damage that slavery caused, as the authors acknowledge. They do acknowledge that while slaves received a higher proportion of the pecuniary income they produced as wages, food, clothing, housing, and medical care than free laborers did, they also acknowledge that the non-pecuniary costs of slavery to the slaves themselves was enormous. The higher productivity of slave-worked farms was made possible, obviously enough, by forcing the slaves to do what free laborers could not be paid to do: work longer hours in a more regulated, larger farm. Interestingly enough, the gain in productivity this resulted in, while conveyed in small part to the slaves themselves in the form of higher income, did not accrue entirely or even in the most part to the planters. Rather, about half of it accrued to the consumers of cotton. Since most of cotton was exported (primarily to Britain, where most of the cotton was made into clothing), the primary beneficiaries of American slavery were people who bought cotton goods. This is because producing and selling cotton was a competitive industry, where real profits tend toward zero. Thus, while the planters exploited the slaves in reality by whipping them and forcing them to work in ways free laborers would not, the resultant pecuniary exploitation of slaves was accomplished by capitalism. But perhaps the most interesting thing the book discusses is how the myth of unproductive slaves has contributed to contemporary racism. According to the contemporary racist view, blacks are lazy, morally degenerate, and immature. Fogel and Engerman show that, under slavery, blacks were none of these things. In fact, the evidence shows that they were harder working and more sexually circumspect on average than their free white counterparts. What the authors point out as a reason there were not more slave revolts is that, given the fact that both Northerners and Southerners were racists, free blacks had little economic, social, or political opportunity. Free blacks in the North were not permitted to do all kinds of things. It would seem that many blacks rationally decided they were better off as s

Still a Classic

One of the all-time classics in the genre of economic history, there have been very few more controversial books in the past half-century. There are still those today who call Fogel a racist or (as one other commentator did) an apologist for slavery. These people more than miss the point of this work. The profitability of slavery has nothing to do with the morality of it, as the authors point out. This is a survey and analysis of previously unresearched data. Fogel and Engerman take the first systematic look at data on slave movement, working conditions, life expectancy, and the economies of scale in both free labor and slave labor in the South. Fogel and Engerman attack the thesis that slavery was impeding the economic progress of the South and would ultimately collapse under its own inefficiencies. Instead, they show investment in slaves was even more profitable than investments in free labor, and that owners had developed a wide system of incentives to induce quality labor from their slaves. Some claim that this means that Fogel and Engerman support slavery or that somehow this makes slavery palateable; to the contrary, their conclusion lends weight to the idea that only a Civil War would be able to end the evil practice, contrary to the hopes of many abolitionists who claimed slavery would fall apart due to its inherent weaknesses. This work was originally shunned, but the force of its evidence and arguments has led it to become the mainstream interpretation in economic discussions of the Civil War period. Fogel recieved the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1993 (not solely for this work of course) and his most famous book is still the standard for excellence in his field.

Shatters old myths!

This is an excellent study of the economics of chattel slavery, and shatters a number of cherished liberal myths.While I'm on the subject, I'd like to ask Brad Fuller a question:If the author's methodolgy is so flawed, why is he a Nobel laureate in economics, principally for his work on this book?

Any Study of the Subject of Slavery Should Start Here

It explodes every myth, and there are scores, about slavery. Using the raw data lying dormant and too cumbersome prior to the appearance of high speed computers the Nobel Laureate Economist from the University of Chicago applied the then new technology to census,plantation, and other records with results no one could have anticipated. Among the myths dismantled by this scholarly but readable book; sexual exploitation was rare, familys were rarely broken up by sale and "breeding" plantations simply did not exist. This book,if made mandatory reading at all universities could even restore some sanity to discussions on race, something that has been missing in ths country for 30 years.

Time on the Cross shatters myths about slavery in America

This is one of the best books I've ever read on American negro slavery. What makes it a valuable edition to the academic literature is that the authors did not go into this with any ideological axes to grind. Indeed, both are political liberals who thoroughly deprecate the institution of slavery as a social and moral evil. They simply wanted to attain a better understanding of the actual economics of slavery in the Old South by analyzing the Plantation Books (i.e. the financial logs of Southern planters) and other relevant statistical resources so as to be able to accurately assess what slavery was like and how it affected the slave, the master and Southern society as a whole.Much to their surprise, the authors concluded that slavery, as it was, bore little resemblance to the fictional, fever-swamp, nonsense that is peddled by the NAACP, the liberal media, Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey and left-wing academics. They found that slaves had a better diet and better housing conditions than their wage-slave, immigrant counterparts in the North. They also found that slave families were rarely broken up and that miscagenation between masters and slaves was exceeedingly rare -- indeed, almost nonexistant. They also found that many slaves earned substantial incomes - a fact that surprises many people who believe that slaves did not earn money for their labour. I could go on and on but that would give away the book and ruin the joy of reading a text that absolutely blows away virtually all the "conventional wisdom" you've ever heard repeated about slavery in the Old South.Anyone who really wants to learn the truth about slavery owes it to themselves to buy and read this book.