peter at baileynm.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
> In article <y6u31xr16o.fsf at tweedledumb.cygnus.com>,
> Craig Burley <burley at tweedledumb.cygnus.com> wrote:
> >(It's my impression that it's fairly easy to eliminate slavery,
> >especially my legislative fiat, once the major task of building
> >is completed, the population is relatively stabilized, and the
> >available land relatively well-colonized. Otherwise I'd assume
> >there'd be difficulty convincing people to stay and work on
> >building infrastructure or doing the hard work of feeding those
> >who did, when freedom permitted them to find their fortunes
> >elsewhere.)
>> It's my impression that most of the infrastructure building was done
> by free men in the course of their finding their fortunes. The main
> reason slavery hung on was because cotton production was so labor
> intensive, and too many people were running off finding their fortunes
> in the process of extending the infrastructure.
Well, I guess "African slaves built this nation" was another one of those
lies my teachers taught me. (Not that I entirely believed it anyway.)
(Note I did say "...or doing the hard work of feeding those who did",
by which I meant to include farming and, I guess, cotten production.)
--
"Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful."
James Craig Burley, Software Craftsperson burley at gnu.org