Northern Bosses Versus Southern Bosses: Ask Their Slaves

Northern industrial bosses criticized the southern cotton bosses citing slavery as an inherent system of imorality, which included physical abuses such as beatings and whippings inflicted on the slaves. At least they paid their laborers for their labor. To counter this criticism from the northern bosses, the southern bosses argued that they took care of their slaves from cradle to grave providing them with food, shelter, and clothing all the days of their lives. Furthermore the southern bosses noted that the northern bosses cast out their injured and disabled workers onto their poverty ridden overcrowded, and diseased streets. Nowhere in the south would one find injured or disabled slaves begging and rotting in the gutters. They argued that the southern system was a more humane system than the northern system of "free labor" with its company script and meager unliveable wages. With all their criticizing back and forth over which system had more merit, the "free laborers" on both sides were getting fed up and taking action against the ill treatment they experienced first hand.



By 1850, according to Howard Zinn's research, "almost 200,000 women in the north worked in factories, and almost half of those worked in the textile mills." They were discontent, and began organizing and striking in 1828. Zinn notes several such strikes including the 1837 strike by the Lowell textile factory girls or mill girls as they were called. They protested poor working conditions, which included bad ventilation and lighting, unstable temperatures, the long work week (80hours), low wages, and prison like conditions of the boarding houses. One of the eleven year old mill girls recalled her immediate participation as she states, "when the girls in my room stood irresolute, uncertain what to do, I .....became impatient, and started on ahead, saying , with childish bravado, "I don't care what you do, I am going to turn out....and I marched out and was followed by the others."



The northern bosses had the support of the government via legislation and the militia to prevent strikes and provide enforcement when they arose. One examplet of this is when the Female Labor Reform Association that was formed by the mill girls in Lowell sent petitions to the Massachusetts legislature asking for a ten hour day. The legislative committee reported: "Your committee returned fully satisfied that the order, decorum, and general appearance of things in and around the mills could not be improved by any suggestion of theirs or by any act of the legislature."Even the newspapers sided with the factory bosses when workers became injured noting that they, meaning the workers, should be more careful not that the factory bosses should provide safer working conditions. The might of the military was used time and again. "Striking machinists and tailors were forced back to work by the army. Federal soldiers were sent to end a strike at a gun works where workers wanted a wage increase."



It's important to note that these northern factory bosses were for the most part from wealthy influential families with powerful connections. For example, Francis Cabot Lowell, the entrepreneur who established the first textile mill and factory operating system, came from quite an impressive elitest line, which included a statesman, a Harvard university president, and a civil war general. Lowell had money and connections to get his start in business, which provided jobs for many people. Happy workers that are taken care of work hard and are content. Had he treated his "free labor" force humanely, there would have been no need to organize and strike. The northern industrial bosses treated their "free labor" as expendable commodities. These bosses were not concerned that they cast out the injured, disabled, and disgruntled because a new crop would soon land in America from Ireland that could be exploited even further because they had even less than the current crop of "free laborers."

It's important to note that the southern cotton bosses were like their northern counterparts for the most part from wealthy influential families with powerful connections. These southern elites had the money to purchase large plantations and dozens upon dozens of slaves to man them. The southern bosses knew that cotton was king. It provided over 50% of the country's revenue. Without cotton, the entire economy of the country would collapse. That knowledge/fact provided the south with influence and power. However, the "free labor" system they depended upon was beginning to erode even before the Civil War.

Just as the northern "free laborers" organized and protested their ill treatment, the southern "free laborers" were discontent. One former slave named John Little wrote, "They say slaves are happy...I have received two hundred lashes in a day." Slaves died early. The University of North Carolina Archives, "lists the ages and cause of death of all those who died on the plantation between 1850-1855. Of those who died only four reached sixty, four reached fifty, seven died in their forties, and seven died in their thirties." Another abuse, which cut at the heart of the slave was the separation of families. Zinn notes that in 1858, a slave named Abream Scriven was sold by his master, and wrote his wife: "Give my love to my father and mother and tell them good bye for me, and if we shall not meet in this world I hope to meet in heaven."

Although slave revolts were fewer in number than the revolts in the north, they did occur. According to Zinn, " the largest slave revolt in the United States took place near New Orleans in 1811. Four to five hundred slaves gathered after a rising at the plantation of a Major Andry. They were attacked by the U.S. army and miltial forces; sixty- six slaves were killed on the spot, and sixteen were tried and shot by a firing squad." Other methods of rebellion according to Eugene Genoves, (in his comprehensive study of slavery) included, "stealing property, sabotage, and slowness, killing overseers and masters, burning down plantation buildings, and running away." Slaves also ran away from their southern bosses/masters. Infact, Zinn states that during the 1850's, "about a thousand slaves a year escaped into the North, Canada, and Mexico."

Where the northern "free laborers" organized in protest and marched striking out against their industrial bosses, the southern "free laborers" had somewhat more physically destsructive methods. Some might argue that the abuses incurred by the southern slaves were exponentially more inhumane than the abuses incurred by the northern "free laborers." Having no vote, no other rights, being treated like chattel, enduring whippings, and having their family ripped away from them at the bosses whim would seem to make their actions justifiable. The end result for the northern protestors was termination from employment and in some cases arrest, whereas the slave protestors of the south were instantly killed by gun shot or hanged.

The poet Thomas Moore summed up the subject of northern bosses versus southern bosses quite succinctly when he wrote the following:


Alas! My dear friend, what a state of affairs!
How unjustly we both are despoil'd of our rights!
Not a pound of black flesh shall I leave to my heirs,
Nor must you any more work to death little whites.
Both forced to submit to that general controller
Of Kings, Lords, and cotton-mills – Public Opinion;
Nor more shall you beat with a big billy-roller,
Nor I with the cart-whip assert my dominion.
Whereas, were we suffered to do as we please
With our Blacks and our Whites, as of yore we were let,
We might range them alternate, like harpsichord keys,
And between us thump out a good piebald duet.

With that final word, the subject is closed.



Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States

http://www.slaveryinamerica.org/history/hs_es_cotton.htm

Foner, Eric. Give Me Liberty

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Cabot_Lowell_(businessman)