¹ Elkins, Stanley, Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (Chicago, 1959)Google Scholar; Stampp, Kenneth, The Peculiar Institution (New York, 1956)Google Scholar; Genovese, Eugene, The Political Economy of Slavery: Studies in the Economy and Society of the Slave South (New York, 1965)Google Scholar. See also by the same author, Roll, Jordan, Roll: Afro-American Slaves in the Making of the Modern World (New York, 1974)Google Scholar.

² Fogel, Robert W. and Engerman, Stanley L., Time on the Cross, Vol. I: The Economics of American Negro Slavery, Vol. II: Evidence and Methods: A Supplement (Boston, 1974)Google Scholar.

³ For a review of this evolution of images see: David, Paul A. and Temin, Peter, “Slavery: The Progressive Institution?” The Journal of economic History, XXXIV (September 1974), 740–748Google Scholar; and Lane, Ann J., The Debate over Slavery: Stanley Elkins and His Critics (Urbana, 1971)Google Scholar. See also Aufhauser, R. Keith, “Slavery and Scientific Management,” The Journal of Economic History XXIII (December 1973), 811–824CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ Time on the Cross, I, 107–126, 191–210.

⁵ An analysis using this approach is contained in: Berstrom, Theodore, “On the Existence and Optimality of Competitive Equilibrium in a Slave Economy,” Review of Economic Studies, XXXVIII (1971), 23–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶ A sufficient condition for the existence of codes which place some restrictions on the behavior of masters in a capitalist slave society is the belief that grossly abused slaves will escape from a brutal master and menace the lives and property of other free men.

⁷ Smith, Abbott Emerson, Colonists in Bondage (Chapel Hill, 1947)Google Scholar.

⁸ Fogel and Engerman infer the amount that slaves were exploited from wages paid free gang labor in 1865–1867. Given the heroic assumption that the intensity of free and slave labor was identical and the further assumption that a competitive labor market existed for free labor, this method could provide a crude estimate of the difference between the income of slaves and free men with similar marginal products. Since the slave condition involved far graver disabilities than merely working as gang laborer, however, exploitation defined in this manner is devoid of the welfare implications usually associated with this concept. Fogel and Engerman also ignore the nature of slavery when they discuss the reasons that slaves did not enter into self-purchase agreements which compensated owners for the loss of exploitation. It is sufficient in a racist society that such agreements were usually illegal and always unenforceable. For further discussion see: Time on the Cross, I, 236–238, 244–245; II, 160; and Ransom, Roger L., “Was It All that Great to Be a Slave,” Agricultural History, XLVIII (October 1974), 585Google Scholar.

⁹ The use of money payments as well as force in a system of slave management is well documented in the case of industrial slavery. See for example: Drew, Charles B., “Disciplining Slave Ironworkers in the Antebellum South: Coercion, Conciliation, and Accommodation,” The American Historical Review, LXXIX (April 1974), 393–418Google Scholar. Incidentally, the cover on that issue has a reproduction of an escaped slave notice that illustrates the significance of the capture costs of runaway slaves. The use of force and bribes has been discussed by Fogel and Engerman. Their main concern, however, is not with the individual slave firm but with society as a whole. See Time on the Cross, II, 155–158.

¹⁰ In the larger study of which this note is a part, we extend the model to include investment in slaves as well as changes in other parameters.

¹¹ To simplify this exposition, we assume that there are no interaction effects between force and bribes. It is possible that the existence of force in a slave incentive system enhances the response of slaves to small gifts and acts of kindness. We believe it unlikely that this effect is substantial or important in a system which incorporates significant positive incentives. The existence of this interaction effect depends on positive incentives being an exception in a system which otherwise relies on the more brutal aspects of coercion.

¹² Total labor services can be assumed to be L = G(F, B) S where S is the given stock of slaves. In a dynamic analysis, S is subject to change due to investment and demographic influences. In the context of static analysis, it may be assumed that S fixed at an optimal or desired level.

¹³ There is no evidence that slaves were systematically starved, abused or worked to death on Southern plantations. Accordingly, we have simplified the presentation by omitting this element. In cases where slave prices were low because capture was a joint product of war or political oppression, or where force costs were subsidized, this consideration should be included in the analysis.

¹⁴ This situation is an adaptation of the familiar proposition of the backward bending labor supply function. It should be noted that local laws and plantation rules required such restrictions on slave consumption activities as limitations on contact with nonplantation personnel, a pass system, and prohibition of consumption of alcoholic beverages.

¹⁵ The use of force and bribes in a slave incentive system creates expectations. Only force creates both expectations and externalities from the master's viewpoint. If the expectation set is to be maintained, bribes must be paid to all slaves who meet productivity norms. Incentive systems employing competition among slaves for a limited number of rewards do not create externalities. Slave attitudes toward risk will ultimately determine if payments to all slaves who meet known criteria is more efficient than a system involving competition for a limited number of rewards.

¹⁶ The reader may imagine the condition of slaves in a slave system which uses the techniques of coercion developed in this century and which do not necessarily injure the individual physically.

¹⁷ Time on the Cross, II, 116.