What do you mean by "who will pick the cotton"?

The Question

I don't know if it was common, but one of the questions that cotton plantation owners in the 1800s asked abolitionists was this:

If I free my slaves, who will pick the cotton?
To slave owners, it was a practical question. Picking cotton is hard work. If an owner had to actually pay people to pick cotton, he'd likely go out of business from the additional cost.

Image Credit: antislavery.org

From our viewpoint today, it was a ridiculous, and offensive question. However, keep in mind that by the standards of the early 1800s, slavery was accepted by the vast majority of humanity as a fact of life. It had always been, and it would always be.

Practical Answer:

What if you could travel back in time and answer the plantation owner? You might tell him:
In the future, we will use large harvester machines. The harvesters are guided by a single farmer down the cotton fields, and the machines drop nicely wrapped bales of clean, de-seeded, cotton, ready to be taken to the market. In one day, a harvester machine will harvest fields that are several times larger than your entire plantation.

Image Credit: texasfarmbureau.org 

Do you think that the plantation owner would accept that as a good argument? I think not. He'd probably call the constable to have you taken to a loony bin.

Moral Answer:

The answer that a plantation owner would not want to hear, is this:
It doesn't matter who picks the cotton. In God's eyes, you are no better than your slaves, and by the grace of God, you have been blessed with wealth over and above what you deserve. Free the slaves, because you can. Free the slaves because it is the right thing to do.

In essence, this is the same sort of answer that I prefer to give to those who ask questions such as; "what is the best way that the government can provide us with service x"? The government can only provide such things by taxing (enslaving) its people.

Free the people to provide those services. Don't force anyone to pay for it. It's the right thing to do.

The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free.
Henry David Thoreau, in the essay, “Slavery in Massachusetts,” commenting on the Fugitive Slave Law, July 4, 1854

** Clif
2/14/2020