re: #63 wheat-dogg

Interestingly, the book I’m reading now argues that slaveowners were more likely to use slaves in jobs that had a high rate of return, namely, growing cotton, and to a lesser extent, growing tobacco and sugar cane. When cotton prices fell, which they did in the 1820s, slaveowners moved their slaves to textile work and other factory jobs, but once cotton prices rose, it was back to the fields for them.

Point is that the presence of a large slave population depressed wages.