Now, unfortunately, we have slavery to credit card and mortgage companies, slavery of hookers to their pimps, and slavery to our masters the federal government. Do you support the revolution that happened Tuesday and will continue over the next few years? Are you a rebel?
Automation was coming on strong - the cotton gin, steam engines and soon to come combustion engines.
You do realize that the advent of the cotton gin heightened the interest in, and the utilization of slaves, not diminished it, right?
Now, unfortunately, we have slavery to credit card and mortgage companies, slavery of hookers to their pimps, and slavery to our masters the federal government. Do you support the revolution that happened Tuesday and will continue over the next few years? Are you a rebel?
This is irrelevant to the conversation, but as you answered my question, I will answer yours. I reject your characterization of the use of the term "slavery" in these contexts as I believe them inappropriate (except, perhaps, or the hooker & pimp although I fail to see the propriety of including that!). Did I support the electing of conservatives? Absolutely. Am I a rebel? In some ways, yes.
So it wasn't practical, but it was competitive?
Automation was coming on strong - the cotton gin, steam engines and soon to come combustion engines.
Cotton was a hand labor-intensive crop, and it wasn't automated until the 1940s, when the first practical cotton picking machines came onto the market and when herbicides developed as a by-product of WW2 research ended the need for hand chopping and weeding. Would slavery have persisted until until then? Coincidentally, that was about the time that sharecropping, the labor system that replaced bond slavery with debt peonage, faded away.
Moreoever, not every slave was working on a plantation. Many were household help in the towns and cities. Why would automation make owning your housekeeper less attractive?
I'm sorry but that whole paragraph is flat out ridiculous.