Before the abolition of slavery, smart slave owners provided adequate food, clothing, shelter, and medical care for their slaves, did not physically or sexually abuse them, organized or allowed dances, retirements, and fun parties, judged them fairly, and , in general, encouraged spirituality. None of these adaptations eliminated the inherent injustice of slavery, but kind treatment reduced escape attempts, improved economic productivity, fostered large slave families, and created a loyalty that is hard for modern people to believe. Respectable slave owners rebuked cruel slave owners saying they “didn’t use their people well.” Slave owners were genuinely interested in treating slaves well, although, as Charles Dickens said in this context, a man is not interested in getting drunk, stealing, gambling and indulging in vice, but men still did those things, and cruelty and irresponsible abuse of power were evil passions of human nature.
The profit motive generally resulted in pre-war slave owners treating their slaves well and protecting them from alcohol, violence, gambling, and other vices. Before 1861, African Americans were much less likely to commit serious crimes than whites. Former slaves most commonly remembered the plantation mistress nursing them back to health when they were sick.
We may never know the percentage of slave owners who were cruel and stupid. According to former slaves, alcoholic masters were the worst, probably followed by mentally ill slavers. Cruel slave owners were more often driven out of business or retarded in their financial progress.
To this day, many Southerners take solace in slavery by noting the fairly clear connection between kind or at least fair treatment and antebellum business success. One of the least appreciated aspects of prewar slavery was full employment among African Americans. Physically able slaves invariably worked hard, and this was not all bad for them. The slaves were kept in excellent physical condition, and many remembered very few illnesses on the plantation.
Okay, fast forward 150 years – many now condemn New Age slavery and New Jim Crow, our modern American regimes that imprison 1,000,000 African Americans and sentence many more ex-offenders to severe discrimination in employment, government benefits , educational opportunities and marriage prospects. . While the comparison between antebellum slavery and modern incarceration is not perfect, the striking similarities warrant closer examination. Leftist thinkers often make this comparison, but the analogy reveals even more when viewed from a conservative, business-oriented perspective. When viewed from the perspective of someone with a legal right to slave or prison labor, condemnation of modern American correctional systems on the basis of stupidity is inevitable. American citizens in the form of the US government now own 2,300,000 slaves and are entitled to 100% of their labor, without payment if necessary or desirable. Unfortunately, the dumbest slave owners of all time are modern American citizens, taxpayers, and voters.
In modern times, slaves do not earn money, instead costing slave owners about $50,000 per prisoner per year. Direct expenditures per inmate are only about $25,000 per inmate per year, but the lost opportunity costs, social fallout, increased welfare costs, and total economic impact can be around double the direct outlays. In other words, it costs us anywhere from $57,500,000,000 in direct costs to $115,000,000,000 in total costs each year for the average American prisoner to laze or sleep most of the day, plan gang activities, suffer, get sick, worry, feel lonely, despair and too often commits suicide. These prodigious social and financial costs are not a necessary consequence of mass incarceration. Before special interests passed laws against prison industries, prisons made money. A famous prison in New York generated profits four times greater than the cost of running the entire institution.
Southern slave owners generally knew their slaves well; modern slave owners do not want to see their slaves. Prewar slaves invariably worked hard and drove economic output; New Age slaves generally do not work and are a drag on the entire American economy. Slaves generally didn’t get into trouble; prisoners are often left in trouble. The Slavs often respected or even loved their owners; prisoners never do. All slaves were legally free in 1865; very many New Age slaves of all races return to slavery after their first emancipation. Slaves of their families were sometimes sold; New Age slaves are always sold out of their families when they go to prison. Some former slaves looked back nostalgically on their lives as slaves; no ex-con does. Slaves formed families during slavery; New Age slaves cannot raise families. A slave child had a much better chance of growing up in an intact two-parent family than African-American children today.
When we Americans look for the dumbest slave owners, we will find ourselves. Prisoners deserve punishment, but we don’t.
