Explaining the Relative Efficiency of Slave Agriculture in the Antebellum South: A Reply to Fogel-Engerman

Abstract

Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman's (hereafter, F-E) recent article on the relative efficiency of slave agriculture is intended to be a defense of Time on the Cross, yet in it the authors silently abandon the central theme of that book. From the outset what seemed most dubious to me and to other critics was F-E's use of the efficiency calculation as a basis for quite literal-minded inferences about the quality of plantation labor.' In their latest statement I find far less to disagree with because the dubious inferences have disappeared. If we are entitled to judge from what they now omit to say, Fogel and Engerman have changed their minds and thereby silently concede a great deal to their critics. The crux of the matter is the source of efficiency. In both their book and their recent article, F-E locate one major source in the foresight, rationality, and energy with which plantation managers organized and disciplined their work force. But in the book the authors were equally enthusiasticmore so, in fact--about the slave's own personal contribution to plantation efficiency. The authors originally attributed the superior efficiency of plantations to ... the combination of the superior management of planters and the superior quality of black labor... In a certain sense, all, or nearly all of the advantage is attributable to the high quality of slave labor, for the main thrust of management was directed at improving the quality of labor. How much of the success of the effort was due to the management, and how much to the responsiveness of workers is an imperative question, but its resolution lies beyond the range of current techniques and available data. [1974, p. 210, emphasis added]

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