Rearing Wolves To Our Own Destruction: Slavery In Richmond Virginia, 1782–1865 - Plot & Excerpts
Monetary consideration did motivate some employers, but a sizable number believed slaves to be more efficient than free labor because they produced a higher output under noncoercive conditions than free workers. In fact, so many employers believed this that they hired 60.9 percent (4,929) of all slave working men and women in 1860 for their factories and workshops. In the employers' minds the efficiency of slave workers offset the high labor costs. Moreover, employers remained convinced that they could "squeeze every ounce of [slaves'] productiveness" and could make them work harder than free laborers. These intangible factors motivated employers most to maintain slave workers as the "better" of the two labor forces. 29 Indicative of such sentiments, one proponent of slave labor argued that slave workers were "cheaper, can be kept under better discipline, worked both in summer and winter, and the planter be relieved from those annoyances which always accompany the introduction among our plantations of contractors with hireling white labor from the north and foreign parts."30 For this employer the merits of rigid social relations between employer and bondmen convinced him of the superiority of slave over free labor.
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