Page 42 - 1619 Project Curriculum

The 1619 Project

fine-tuning of the system, violence
Fabric of Modernity: lurked. Plantation owners used a constantly going.’’ Unrestrained
capitalism holds no monopoly on

How Southern cotton combination of incentives and pun- violence, but in making possible the

ishments to squeeze as much as pos- pursuit of near limitless personal

became the cornerstone sible out of enslaved workers. Some fortunes, often at someone else’s

beaten workers passed out from the expense, it does put a cash value
of a new global pain and woke up vomiting. Some on our moral commitments.

‘‘danced’’ or ‘‘trembled’’ with every Slavery did supplement white
commodities trade. hit. An 1829 first-person account workers with what W. E. B. Du Bois

from Alabama recorded an over- called a ‘‘public and psychological

seer's shoving the faces of women wage,’’ which allowed them to roam

By Mehrsa Baradaran he thought had picked too slow into freely and feel a sense of entitle-

their cotton baskets and opening up ment. But this, too, served the inter-

their backs. To the historian Edward ests of money. Slavery pulled down
Baptist, before the Civil War, Amer- all workers’ wages. Both in the cit-

icans ‘‘lived in an economy whose ies and countryside, employers had

bottom gear was torture.’’ access to a large and flexible labor

There is some comfort, I think, pool made up of enslaved and free

in attributing the sheer brutality of people. Just as in today’s gig econ-

slavery to dumb racism. We imag- omy, day laborers during slavery’s

Cotton produced under misunderstanding between ine pain being inflicted somewhat reign often lived under conditions

slavery created a worldwide two parties on time of deliv- at random, doled out by the ste- of scarcity and uncertainty, and

market that brought togeth- ery? Legal concepts we still reotypical white overseer, free but jobs meant to be worked for a few

er the Old World and the have to this day, like ‘‘mutu- poor. But a good many overseers months were worked for lifetimes.

New: the industrial textile al mistake’’ (the notion that weren’t allowed to whip at will. Labor power had little chance when

mills of the Northern states contracts can be voided Punishments were authorized by the bosses could choose between

and England, on the one if both parties relied on the higher-ups. It was not so much buying people, renting them, con-

hand, and the cotton planta- a mistaken assumption), the rage of the poor white South- tracting indentured servants, taking

tions of the American South were developed to deal erner but the greed of the rich on apprentices or hiring children

on the other. Textile mills in with these issues. Textile white planter that drove the lash. and prisoners.
industrial centers like Lan- merchants needed to pur- The violence was neither arbitrary This not only created a stark-

cashire, England, purchased chase cotton in advance of nor gratuitous. It was rational, cap- ly uneven playing field, dividing

a majority of cotton exports, their own production, which italistic, all part of the plantation’s workers from themselves; it also

which created worldwide meant that farmers need- design. ‘‘Each individual having a made ‘‘all nonslavery appear as

way to sell goods they
trade hubs in London and ed a stated number of pounds of cot- freedom,’’ as the economic histo-

New York where merchants had not yet grown; this led ton to pick,’’ a formerly enslaved rian Stanley Engerman has written.

could trade in, invest in, to the invention of futures worker, Henry Watson, wrote in Witnessing the horrors of slavery

insure and speculate on the contracts and, arguably, the 1848, ‘‘the deficit of which was drilled into poor white workers

cotton- commodity market. commodities markets still in made up by as many lashes being that things could be worse. So they

Though trade in other com- use today. applied to the poor slave’s back.’’ generally accepted their lot, and

modities existed, it was cot- From the first decades Because overseers closely moni- American freedom became broadly

ton (and the earlier trade in of the 1800s, during the tored enslaved workers’ picking defined as the opposite of bondage.
slave-produced sugar from height of the trans-Atlantic abilities, they assigned each work- It was a freedom that understood

the Caribbean) that accel- cotton trade, the sheer size er a unique quota. Falling short of what it

was against but not what it
erated worldwide com- of the market and the esca- that quota could get you beaten, was for; a malnourished and mean

mercial markets in the 19th lating number of disputes but overshooting your target could kind of freedom that kept you out

century, creating demand between counterparties bring misery the next day, because of chains but did not provide bread

for innovative contracts, was such that courts and the master might respond by rais- or shelter. It was a freedom far too

novel financial products and lawyers began to articulate ing your picking rate. easily pleased.

o
modern forms f insurance and codify the common-law Profits from heightened pro-
and credit. standards regarding con- ductivity were harnessed through In recent decades, America has

Like all agricultural goods, tracts. This allowed inves- the anguish of the enslaved. This experienced the financialization

cotton is prone to fluctua- tors and traders to mit- was why the fastest cotton pick- of its economy. In 1980, Congress

tions in quality depending igate their risk through ers were often whipped the most. repealed regulations that had been

on crop type, location and contractual arrangement, It was why punishments rose and in place since the 1933 Glass-Steagall

environmental conditions. which smoothed the flow fell with global market fluctuations. Act, allowing banks to merge and

Treating it as a commodi- of goods and money. Today Speaking of cotton in 1854, the fugi- charge their customers higher inter-

ty led to unique problems: law students still study tive slave John Brown remembered, est rates. Since then, increasingly

How would damages be some of these pivotal cases ‘‘When the price rises in the English profits have accrued not by trading

calculated if the wrong as they learn doctrines like market, the poor slaves immediate- and producing goods and services

crop was sent? How would forseeability, mutual mis- ly feel the eff ects, for they are harder but through financial instruments.

you assure that there was no take and damages. driven, and the whip is kept more Between 1980 and 2008, more
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