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The Self-Sufficiency of the Antebellum South: Estimates of the Food Supply

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

William. K. Hutchinson  and
Samuel Williamson
William. K. Hutchinson
Affiliation:
The University Of Iowa
Samuel Williamson
Affiliation:
The University Of Iowa
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Extract

In the past decade the question of the degree of mutual economic dependence among the three major regions of the antebellum United States—Northeast, South, and West—has received considerable discussion. Good indicators of the degree of dependence would be ratios of the interregional trade flows of particular commodities to the amounts of those commodities produced locally in each region. Trade data are available, however, only in limited series for major cities or commercial areas. Since comprehensive trade flows cannot be measured directly, various indirect approaches to the question have been employed.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , September 1971 , pp. 591 - 612
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1971

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References

The authors wish to express their gratitude to William N. Parker and Raymond Dacey for their comments and suggestions at various stages in the development of this paper and to the Graduate College at The University of Iowa for financial assistance. Any errors of fact or interpretation are our own.

1 The South is understood in this paper to include the seven following states: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The West is usually taken to be Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Midwest. Throughout the rest of this paper the West will mean only Kentucky and Tennessee since this is all we need to be concerned with here.

2 See Lindstrom, Diane, “Southern Dependence upon Interregional Grain Supplies: A Review of the Trade Flows, 1840–1860,” Parker, William N., editor, The Structure of the Cotton Economy of the Antebellum South (Washington, D. C: The Agricultural History Society, 1970), pp. 101–14.Google Scholar

3 Robert Fogel, “A Provisional View of the ‘New Economic History,’” and Fishlow, Albert, “Antebellum Interregional Trade Reconsidered,” Andreano, Ralph, editor, New Views on American Economic Development (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Schenkman Publishing Co., 1965), pp. 187–224Google Scholar; Gallman, Robert, “Self-Sufficiency in the Cotton Economy of the Antebellum South,” Parker, William N., editor, The Structure of the Cotton Economy of the Antebellum South (Washington, D. C: The Agricultural History Society., 1970), pp. 5–23.Google Scholar; North, Douglass, The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790–1860 (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1966)Google Scholar; Genovese, Eugene D., The Political Economy of Slavery (New York: Random House, Inc., 1965)Google Scholar, are all sources whose authors have attempted one type of indirect estimate or another.

4 Gates, Paul W., The Farmer's Age: Agriculture 1815–1860, Vol. Ill: The Economic History of the United States (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, Inc., 1962), pp. 215–16.Google Scholar

5 Genovese, The Political Economy of Slavery, pp. 113–15, as well as other writers on this period.

6 This is the technique used by both Genovese, The Political Economy of Slavery, and Gallman, “Self-Sufficiency in the Cotton Economy ….”. It makes use of plantation records, which’ are in their nature selective with. respect to establishment type.

7 Robert Gallman, “Self-Sufficiency in the Cotton Economy …,” pp. 5–23.

8 ‘That is, the requirement for the other stock and the human population as well.

9 Henry, W. A. and Morrison, F. B., Feeds and Feeding (Madison, Wisconsin: The Henry-Morrison Co., 1916).Google Scholar

10 These are averages of Table 3.1 from Raymond Battalio and John Kagel, “The Structure of Antebellum Southern Agriculture: South Carolina, A Case Study,” a paper prepared for the 8th Purdue Conference on the Application of Economic Theory and Quantitative Techniques to Problems of History, Lafayette, Indiana, 1968 (mimeographed), p. 20; and Report of the Commissioner of Patents for the Year 1851, Part II, Agriculture, pp. 275, 286, 315, 351, 356; Ibid., 1852, pp. 94, 98, 315.

11 Report of the Commissioner of Patents for the Year 1848, Part II, Agriculture, pp. 478, 482, 485, 495, and 500; Southern Cultivator, I (1843), p. 17. Rye and barley were used primarily in the production of alcoholic beverages. Seaman, Ezra C., Essays on the Progress of Nations (New York: Charles Scribner, 1852), p. 214Google Scholar, said of barley that, “its only use in the United States, is to malt and make into beer.”

12 The consumption estimates were gathered from the following sources: Cattle and sheep—Report of the Commissioner of Patents for the Year 1847, Part II, Agriculture, pp. 549–50; Horses and Mules—approximations of U. S. Department of Agriculture, Consumption of Feed by Livestock, 1909–1956, Production Research Report No. 21, Agriculture Research Service, 1958, and Ezra C. Seaman, Essays on the Progress of Nations, p. 276. Oats are used in substitution for corn to provide a total of 30 bushels to horses and 20 bushels to mules. The ratio of conversion used for oats to corn is one-to-one, Henry and Morrison, Feeds and Feeding, pp. 300–02.

13 Peas and beans are part of the supplementary diet described in Table 3 and are therefore also considered as part of the 1840 and 1850 feed in the construction of Table 4.

14 Wheat is converted to corn in the human diet at a ratio 1:1.125. Seaman, Essays on the Progress of Nations, p. 275.

15 Hutchinson, William K., “An Examination of Southern Ante-Bellum Interregional Trade: The Case of Pork,” Unpublished Masters Thesis, The University of Iowa, June, 1969.Google Scholar

16 According to U. S. Department of Agriculture, Consumption of Feed by Livestock, 1909–1956, Production Research Report No. 21, Agricultural Research Service, 1958, p. 82, swine in the United States in 1909 consumed between 3.5 and 4.0 pounds per day. Our estimate of 2.5 pounds is therefore probably a lower bound.

17 Woll, F. W., Productive Feeding of Farm Animals in Lippincott's Farm Manuals, Davis, D. C., editor (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1916), p. 211.Google Scholar Woll cites a Tuskegee, Alabama, Experimental Station Report, where this result emerged from an experiment in feeding swine acorns, slops, and then peas before slaughter.

18 The 6:1 ratio is justified on the basis of: (1) the statement that “a few weeks” of cowpeas before slaughter would correct any adverse effects caused by acorns; and (2) the equal time periods of a 300-day year are 100 days for each of the three feeds. If a “few” is approximately two weeks, then the time given to cowpeas is oneseventh of the Autumn period.

19 Seventy-five percent of the live weight of each swine is of edible quality. This is the percentage used by Gallman, “Self-Sufficiency in the Cotton Economy …,” p. 15, and it is in agreement with the literature of the period. For example, see Commissioner of Patents Report for the Year 1849, Part II, Agriculture, p. 142.

20 The general estimate for pork, even when an estimate was provided for beef, was 180 pounds for slave and freeman alike. Report of the Commissioner of Patents for the Year 1851, Part II, Agriculture, p. 325; Report of the Commissioner of Patents for the Year 1848, Part II, Agriculture, pp. 478, 482, 485, 495, 500, and 522; Southern Cultivator, IX (1851), p. 243; and The American Farmer's Magazine, I (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: R. C. Thompson, Publishers, 1848), p. 243.Google Scholar

21 Gallman, “Self-Sufficiency in the Cotton Economy …,” p. 18.

22 This was found for the states of Virginia, Georgia, and Tennessee in the Report of the Commissioner of Patents for the Year 1848, Part II, Agriculture, pp. 482, 500, and 522.

23 The general estimate for pork, even when an estimate was provided for beef was 180 pounds for slave and freeman alike. See note 20 above for sources.

24 The Report of the Commissioner of Patents for the Years 1848, 1850, and 1851 and J. D. Legare, editor, The Southern Agriculturist and Register of Rural Affairs, I (1830), p. 434. Gallman, “Self-Sufficiency in the Cotton Economy …,” pp. 12, 19, uses 500 pounds as the average slaughter weight and 55 percent as edible.

25 The census data for 1840 are not broken down in a manner that allows for the calculation of the ratio of milch cows to the total stock of cattle.

26 Department of Commerce and Labor, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1908 (Washington, D. C: Government Printing Office, 1909), pp. 64–65.Google Scholar

27 Albert Fishlow, “Antebellum Interregional Trade Reconsidered,” p. 189.

28 Diane Lindstrom, see note 2 above for citation.

29 This is the figure used by Gallman, Robert, “Self-Sufficiency in the Cotton Economy of the Antebellum South,” Parker, William N., editor, The Structure of the Cotton Economy of the Antebellum South (Washington, D. C: The Agricultural History Society, 1970), p. 14Google Scholar, and is in agreement with or less than the figures found by this writer in the antebellum literature.

30 See Table 3 of the body of this paper.

31 See as examples Battalio, Raymond C. and Kagel, John, “The Structure of Antebellum Southern Agriculture: South Carolina, A Case Study,” Parker, William N., editor, The Structure of the Cotton Economy of the Antebellum South (Washington, D. C: The Agricultural History Society, 1970), pp. 25–38Google Scholar, particularly Appendix B, p. 36, and Robert Gallman, “Self-Sufficiency in the Cotton Economy …,” p. 14.