"What do you think the plantation owner's arguments were about the rising price of cotton? ;)"
Something like " can you imagine what that would do to my profit margin?"
Why I would die, it would mean a lesser gross for me in the end.
If we were playing at a flat table, our ideas would square up entirely. Unfortunately, the evil, faceless, amorphous (sarcasm) agribusiness lobby gets things like tariffs and import quotas while simultaneously complaining about "having" to hire illegals.
It's contemporary farm policy, which affects a lot of Washington DC. Think of the average school district, for instance.
truth bump