re: #61 sagehen

More to the point, northern factory workers and miners and farmhands knew they couldn’t get jobs to earn a decent living in any place where slaves would be doing that kind of work; and factory owners and mill owners and so on knew they couldn’t compete with companies that didn’t have to pay for labor.

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.

So, while the northern factory workers may have feared unfair labor competition, chances are there wouldn’t be as much competition as they thought. OTOH, in areas where cotton could not be easily grown, owners might well have used slave labor in the factories.

The book is What Hath God Wrought? amazon.com It covers the years 1815-1848 and it’s a pretty good read.