Robert E. Gallman

Slaves as Fixed Capital: Slave Labor and Southern Economic Development

ACCORDING to Eugene D. Genovese: Slavery requires all hands to be occupied at all times.1 The statement implies that the requirement is peculiar to slavery, differentiating it from other forms of labor organization. If Genovese is right, then slave-owners were subject to a constraint on their operations that may have affected their choice of economic activities and systems of production. The economic decisions of individual slaveholders, in turn, presumably influenced the character of the economies in which slavery figured. Thus, the requirement to keep slaves occupied at all times may have had wide ramifications, perhaps of an important nature. While these ideas are by no means novel, they have not yet been given their full due. This essay considers first the reasons why slavery required all hands to be occupied at all times. The analysis is general and rests on the assumption that slaveholders typically preferred more income to less, and less trouble to more, other things being equal, and that they had a rough idea of the relationship between actions and their results. The analysis does not assume that slaveholders were moved exclusively by economic considerations, nor that they adjusted perfectly to the conditions that confronted them. But economics lies at the heart of what can be called Genoveses rule and it is the focus of this paper. Second, the essay considers a few historical illustrations of the operation of Genoveses rule. The primary concern of this essay, however, is the effect of the rule on the organization of southern slave plantations in the nineteenth century and the consequences of plantation organization for southern economic performance and development.

Professor Pessen on the “Egalitarian Myth”

Professor Pessen’s recent work on antebellum wealth holding and social structure has been devoted to deflating the “egalitarian myth.” On the basis of data gathered in an extensive study of the rich of four large northeastern cities in the antebellum period, Pessen concludes that the egalitarian hypothesis is not sustained. Wealth was unequally distributed and economic mobility was very limited, in the sense that the rich had rich forbears. Although the origins of great fortunes lay with entrepreneurial types, their descendents gradually withdrew from active business life, maintaining general oversight of wealth that grew almost automatically as the result of fortunate early investments, profitable marriages, and the advantages of membership in a small elite.

Influences on the Distribution of Landholdings in Early Colonial North Carolina

The economy of North Carolina in the early colonial period was agrarian. Land was a central element in the wealth stock and it was distributed unevenly among households. This paper analyzes the distribution of land by means of multiple regression models employing measures of the principal life events of households. This paper analyzes the distribution of land by means of multiple regression models employing measures of the principal life events of households. The data are drawn from an eastern community, Perquimans County, and refer to the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century.

Changes in the Level of Literacy in a New Community of Early America

When arrayed in time series, the rates of signature literacy of free persons in colonial Perquimans County, North Carolina, exhibit the ∪-shaped pattern found in the records of many other new communities of early America. In Perquimans, the pattern was due to coincident movements in the literacy rates of immigrants and natives of the county. The initial drop was associated with pronounced political and social disorder; the rise, with improved political stability and with demographic and economic growth.

The “Egalitarian Myth,” Once Again

In the winter of 1978 Social Science History published a short note by me (Gallman, 1978) that questioned certain features of Professor Edward Pessens critique of the egalitarian hypothesis. In the winter of 1979 Professor Pessen (1979) responded to me, at great length. The editors have kindly offered me the opportunity to reply. The space limitations they have imposed upon the debate do not permit me to comment on each issue raised by Professor Pessen, nor do I think that that is necessary. I plan only to repeat the main points of my orginal note and to indicate how far I think Professor Pessens paper has affected them. As will appear, I believe my note has survived Professor Pessens critique well, and has gained strength from research done since it was written.

Some Notes on the New Social History

Some time ago I picked up a magazine that contained an article by Red Smith, a man whose work I try not to miss. The article was about the job of sports writer for a metropolitan newspaper and it opened with an account of an overnight journey from New York to a Worlds Series game in St. Louis. This was an eon or so ago, when Smith was a young man and I was a boy, and people travelled in sensible conveyances, such as railroad trains. The trip was a merry one, the activities including, among other things, much pleasurable and instructive chat. Smith didnt report the latter in any detail. But the point was that it was pleasurable and instructive and it lasted the whole night. Smith went on to say that sports writers are not paid much, in money, but that if you threw in the psychic income of pleasant afternoons in the sun and nights spent in the company of affable and intelligent eccentrics, they did pretty well.

Professor Blumin on Age and Inequality

In his essay in this issue, Stuart Blumin attempts to sort out the debate between Edward Pessen and me. Professor Blumin begins: Gallman advances the view that inequality between generations-the association between age and wealth-does explain nearly all of the very striking differences in personal fortune that Pessen and others have discovered. This is not the view I had intended to advance and is certainly not a view I hold. Many factors bore on the wealth distribution of the United States in the age of the common man. The age structure of population surely did not account for nearly all of the observed wealth differences. (See, for example, my treatment of this subjectbased on manuscript census data for 1860-in Davis et al., 1972: 31-32. This discussion treats the influences on wealth holding of age, sex, nativity, color, occupation, and inheritance.) How Professor Blumin came to misunderstand me so badly I cannot say, but I suspect he was misled by my ill-advised comparison of the results drawn from my model with the actual distribution of wealth in 1860 (Gallman, 1978: 198). However, I introduced that paragraph with the following sentences, intended to describe the nature and purpose of the model: It is possible to illustrate the effect of population structure on the distribution of wealth holding by use of a simple life cycle model of income and savings [1978: 196].... For purposes of illustration let us assume the . . . following patterns of annual receipts, consumption and savings (1978: 197) and followed it with these statements, intended to appraise the