Our conclusion that the supply of labor offered by the black population after emancipation declined by something between one-fourth and one-third the level supplied under slavery is based on a comparison of the relative amounts of labor offered under each system. Obviously, such a comparison is a generalization of many diverse situations reported. Our estimates accordingly are presented as rather broad intervals rather than as precise point estimates. They are intended to illustrate the effects of emancipation by establishing the change in labor supply between the last decade of slavery and the first decade and a half of freedom.

The procedure we employed was to use contemporary sources to judge the relative change in three of the four basic parameters that govern the labor supplied by any population: the fraction of the population at work, the average number of days worked, and the average number of hours worked each day. We were unable to make any judgment of the decline in the fourth factor, the intensity of the work effort per hour. We do, however, account for the differences between men, women, and children in this regard. With the coercion of slavery removed, freed blacks sought to lower each of these four factors determining the supply of labor effort. Table C.1 presents the detailed estimates we have constructed for each of the three changes and calculates the cumulative effect freedom had on the supply of man-hours per capita.