[thaumasiotes]

That's wrong; much of it is wages. Sometimes those wages are paid in cash, but in the more common case where they aren't, the slaves still get paid in food, clothing, and housing. Each of those is a direct transfer of value to the slave.

[dragonwriter]

> the slaves still get paid in food, clothing, and housing.

If those are in the form of earned compensation to which the slave is entitled (which, sure, along with actual wages is common in some historical forms of slavery, but not really the norm in chattel slavery), they are benefits, not wages. If they are (as is typically the case with chattel slavery) discretionary items given at the pleasure of the employer based on the perceived future value to the employer of the worker having them now, they are just maintenance costs of the slave as an industrial machine.

[thaumasiotes]

> If those are in the form of earned compensation to which the slave is entitled (which, sure, along with actual wages is common in some historical forms of slavery, but not really the norm in chattel slavery), they are benefits, not wages.

Pure sophistry. There is no reason to call the same thing by two different names. Ask the IRS whether the food and housing your employer gives you count as wages.

> If they are (as is typically the case with chattel slavery) discretionary items given at the pleasure of the employer based on the perceived future value to the employer of the worker having them now, they are just maintenance costs of the slave as an industrial machine.

Not much better. The transfer of valuable goods to a slave is a maintenance cost in exactly the same way that the transfer of valuable goods to an employee is a maintenance cost. Nobody's paying salaries out of the goodness of their hearts; they pay salaries because that's what it costs to have work done.

[dragonwriter]

> Ask the IRS whether the food and housing your employer gives you count as wages.

Ok, but, that works against you, because it is never counted as wages.

If it is provided to attract or retain employees it is treated as a taxable fringe benefit.

If it is provided on the employer’s business premises, for the employer’s convenience, as a condition of employment, it is not taxed for the employee at all.

[DoreenMichele]

I don't know where you get that idea. In the historical Deep South of the US, slaves had to work the plantation all day without pay, then go home and grow their own food on the worst strips of land not deemed worth cultivating by their owners.

Traditional African American foods, like hog jowls and chitterlings, were based on the discards that White slave owners would not eat.

[thaumasiotes]

> In the historical Deep South of the US, slaves had to work the plantation all day without pay, then go home and grow their own food on the worst strips of land not deemed worth cultivating by their owners.

This is fairly thoughtless modern propaganda, not a description of the historical Deep South.

Some quotes from Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery:

> "Marriage is to be encouraged," wrote James H. Hammond to his overseer, "as it adds to the comfort, happiness, and health of those entering upon it, besides insuring a greater increase." The economic inducements for marriage generally included a house, a private plot of land which the family could work on its own, and, frequently, a bounty either in cash or in household goods.

> about 6 percent of slaves worked in towns, and 20 percent of those living on plantations were employed as artisans and semiskilled workers of various sorts.

> The belief that the typical slave was poorly fed is without foundation in fact.

> More careful reading of plantation documents shows that the slave diet included many foods in addition to corn and pork. Among the other plantation products which slaves consumed were beef, mutton, chickens, milk, turnips, peas, squashes, sweet potatoes, apples, plums, oranges, pumpkins, and peaches. Certain foods not produced on most plantations were frequently purchased for slave consumption, including salt, sugar, and molasses. Less frequent, but not uncommon, purchases for slaves included fish, coffee, and whiskey.

> the average daily diet of slaves was quite substantial. The energy value of their diet exceeded that of free men in 1879 by more than 10 percent. There was no deficiency in the amount of meat allotted to slaves. On average, they consumed six ounces of meat per day, just an ounce lower than the average quantity of meat consumed by the free population.

> The high slave consumption of meat, sweet potatoes, and peas goes a long way toward explaining the astounding results shown in figure 34. The slave diet was not only adequate, it actually exceeded modern (1964) recommended daily levels of the chief nutrients.

> The most systematic housing information comes from the census of 1860, which included a count of slave houses. These census data show that on average there were 5.2 slaves per house on large plantations. The number of persons per free household in 1860 was 5.3. Thus, like free men, most slaves lived in single-family households.

> Descriptions in plantation records and travelers' accounts are fragmentary. They suggest a considerable range in the quality of housing. The best were three- or four-room cottages, of wood frame, brick, or stone construction, with up to eight hundred square feet of space on the inside, and large porches on the outside. Such cottages had brick or stone chimneys and glazed windows. At the other pole were single-room log cabins without windows. Chimneys were constructed of twigs and clay; floors were either earthen or made of planks resting directly on the earth.

> the houses of slaves compared well with the housing of free workers in the antebellum era. It must be remembered that much of rural America still lived in log cabins in the 1850s. And urban workers lived in crowded, filthy tenements.

> When slaves worked at times normally set aside for rest, they received extra pay -- usually in cash and at the rate prevailing in the region for hired labor. Slaves who were performing well were permitted to work on their own account after normal hours at such tasks as making shingles or weaving baskets, articles which they could sell either to their masters or to farmers in the neighborhood.

> Year-end bonuses, given either in goods or cash, were frequently quite substantial. Bennet Barrow, for example, distributed gifts averaging between $15 and $20 per slave family in both 1839 and 1840. The amounts received by particular slaves were proportional to their performance. It should be noted that $20 was about a fifth of national per capita income in 1840.

> Masters also rewarded slaves who performed well with patches of land ranging up to a few acres for each family. Slaves grew marketable crops on these lands, the proceeds of which accrued to them. On the Texas plantation of Julian S. Devereux, slaves operating such land produced as much as two bales of cotton per patch. Devereux marketed their crop along with his own. In a good year some of the slaves earned in excess of $100 per annum for their families. Devereux set up accounts to which he credited the proceeds of the sales. Slaves drew on these accounts when they wanted cash or when they wanted Devereux to purchase clothing, pots, pans, tobacco, or similar goods for them.

[DoreenMichele]

I'm sure it varied considerably. I'm certainly no subject matter expert.

I know there was a historical uprising someplace where slaves objected to plans to set them free. I'm unfamiliar with the details.

There is also the fact in some of the Caribbean islands, slavery was so harsh that average life expectancy was 3 years at one point, IIRC. They outlawed the importation of slaves well before they outlawed slavery and during that period the slave population shrank. They were not reproducing fast enough to hit replacement levels.

I read two or three books on the situation in the island or islands in question. Scholars speculate that slaves must have been using some means of herbal birth control as a protest to bringing children into such harsh conditions.

[Ancapistani]

> I'm sure it varied considerably. I'm certainly no subject matter expert.

It did, and I readily admit that I’m not either.

As I understand it, with a few exceptions, the further south an enslaved person lived the worse off they generally were. Further south meant a more agriculture-based economy, with higher labor demands and less “civilization”. More isolation means more opportunity for enslavers to literally work their slaves to death.

I think not recognizing this does a disservice to the people that actually lived through that era.