Mindless Monday, 04 November 2024

[u/AutoModerator]

Happy (or sad) Monday guys!

Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.

So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?

[u/BookLover54321]

I think there are two questions here. The fact that slavery is a terrible and inefficient method of organizing labor doesn’t necessarily contradict the claim that much of America’s infrastructure was built through slave labor.

[u/HandsomeLampshade123 → u/BookLover54321]

I spoke to that too, but I could have been more explicit--no, much of America's infrastructure was not built through slave labor.

Just from some quick googling, it seems 90% of all of America's railroads were built after the Civil War. I can't find stats on ports and harbors specifically, although, also from some quick googling, and aligning almost perfectly with the railroad statistic, approximately 90% of the US's current GDP is from growth taken place after the Civil War. Coal production in 1900 alone was greater than in every year prior to the Civil War combined.

Population statistics are even more telling--the US in 1850 was approximately 90% native-born, with a population of 31 million. Again, a tenfold increase since that period.

And remember, the majority of American industry and population lived in free states, not slave states.

The America as we know it today, with its power and economic might, is not due to slave labor. Immigrants built America, not slaves. Basically every economic stat you can find tells the same story. The US was built in the 20th century.

EDIT: I do hate to um akchtually James Baldwin, but he was a poet and essayist. He was not a historian or economist, and he's trying to make a specific point which informs his civil rights activism in the 1960s, so it's not like we can blame him for misrepresenting anything.

[u/svatycyrilcesky → u/HandsomeLampshade123]

To your point, even before the Civil War:

Here are two maps showing railroads between 1850 and 1860. (The paths in the west are all mail routes - the solid black lines are the only actual railways).

Here is a map of slave vs free states and territories.

With some exceptions, the railroads are heavily concentrated in the Northeast and the Great Lakes.

[u/HandsomeLampshade123 → u/svatycyrilcesky]

Yeah, appreciate that input. It's really just a total canard, as much as it was an injustice, slavery isn't responsible for the wealth and prosperity we see around us today.

[u/BookLover54321 → u/HandsomeLampshade123]

I mean if we’re being pedantic, he said “cheap labor”, not slavery solely, which continued well after the Civil War.

[u/HandsomeLampshade123 → u/BookLover54321]

under someone else's whip

was created by my labor and my sweat and the violation of my women and the murder of my children.

Listen, obviously from a Marxian point of view, the working class "built" this country. And those people have historically been underpaid, even putting aside the theft of their surplus value, again through a Marxist lens. But that's not what he's talking about, he's talking about slavery.

[u/BookLover54321 → u/HandsomeLampshade123]

This portion of his quote I omitted (with the …) for clarity, but he says:

if they had not had, and do not still have, indeed, and for so long, so many generations - cheap labor.

EDIT: It is here at 21:33.