would slavery have been abolished if it had not been replaced by machines?

Question

I feel that machines and particularly the petrol engine have replaced our slaves

Answer 1

It would have. People still had to pick cotton by hand, etc. So machines didn't replace that work.

Answer 2

Yes, slavery would have been abolished and WAS abolished without machines to replace the workers.

The abolishment of slavery was accomplished because the majority of people felt it was degrading and WRONG. People were still needed to do the work, but local workers were available without importing slaves.

There were also economic reasons for turning to local workers. The number of unemployed Englishmen and/or Americans or American immigrants made it essential to create more jobs. Unemployed people often have to turn to crime to live. Employing them and paying them wages reduced the crime rate. That was one of the reasons the nothern United States was so against slavery and the South was still for it. The north had this huge pool of unemployed people to draw from.

Ending the importation of new slaves was the first step in abolishing slavery. It was followed by the outright ending of a institution that was no longer needed.

Answer 3

I suppose it all hinges on what a slave actually is. For example are we slaves if we work for somebody? If indeed that is the case then most people in the world at this moment (me included) are slaves. However most of those folk who are employed by someone else get properly rewarded for their duties by their employers ie paid.
I have always been of the impression that slaves were people who were forced into a labour situation and had to exist on the bearest minimum in food, clothing etc and probably no money at all. I realise that this still happens in the world today but is not as widely known about as say the slave trading in the 18thC.
I believe that slave trading had to be abolished because of mans guilty conscience, not because of mechanical replacements. Machinery by and large has and is replacing a legitimate workforce of people who were/are properly rewarded for their contributions to their employers.

Answer 4

Although large scale plantation owners used slaves in the fields doing mainly menial work, many small scale farmers trained slaves in trades such as carpentry and as black smiths. This was done because it was cheaper to buy a slave and train him/her in a trade than it was hire tradesmen. These small scale farmers often employed itinerant white labourers to do the more menial tasks such as cotton picking.
With this in mind it is hard to believe that the machinery would have had much of an affect on slavery.

Answer 5

..... Industrial revolution, england, early XVII century.
People working 16-18 hours a day, without conditions, food neither rights.
..... Few asian countries 2007
People working 16-18 hours a day, without conditions, food neither rights.
.... Recent Post abolitionary period
..... Several farmers still with same plantation methods after abolition - then, industrialization had no impact.

Slavery wasn't abolished only due machines, but another reasons like Humanity and less cost with employees. Industrialization means that you do not need feed neither provide houses to your "employees like". You just hire their service by such miserable price that your profit is imense, without situations like : Keeping slaves healthy is expensive. Dismiss sick employee and hire another one wihtout responsability are really great thing.

We talk about global situations here. There still slaves everywhere. Within developed mostly doing underlayer services (kitchen, cleaning, conffectioning clothes, construction, etc). Keeping proportions, rich people has such difference than others 10-12 hours like labourers (considering transport from home to work). Humans today live to to htier lives, but to the work. They must learn until 35 yeears old and after, they are too old and can not get good jobs. Just a small circle are able to do it. Slavery in another level. There is no really freedom. your choices are linked to your job and to provide enough future to your kids in order to give chances tom them get good jobs... job,job,job. Unless you belongs to a minory.

Answer 6

Yes, machinery was not in the question when slavery was abolished. Machines had nothing to do with it, machinery cannot "replace" a human (which has a soul) which was the whole reason it was abolished

Answer 7

if machines had replaced slavery there would be nothing to abolish, no?

Machinery had no impact at all on slavery, workers were still needed regardless, why bother paying them when you could just smack 'em on the head and drag them off from Africa?

To allow slavery would be a moral question not a logistical one.


..john

Answer 8

yes. the abolisionist movement was a big feature of the Victorian age (as the suffrogette movement in early 20th century), and governments across the world were under pressure to change from the public. the defence for slavery....being that slaves were animals and not people....was torn apart, and so it was no longer morally acceptable to treat slaves as such.

Answer 9

When you say 'our slaves' do think everybody had them?The answer to your question is no.The vast majority of slaves at the time of abolition worked on plantations in the Americas and there was no machinery to replace them at the time.You may not believe it but there were some people who cared.

Answer 10

Did they really abolish it? Think of all the poor factory drones trapped in dead-end jobs.

It's been said the educational system of today is aimed at creating independent thinkers but cogs that fit into the mechanised military machine.

Answer 11

probably not, slavery only got obolished based on economical reasons; only when the price of industrial machines cost less to maintain and did a quicker job than a certain amount of slaves (during that period a gallon of petrol was much cheaper compared to food and housing for ten slaves )