Competition and Coercion: Blacks in the American Economy 1865-1914Competition and Coercion: Blacks in the American economy, 1865-1914 is a reinterpretation of black economic history in the half-century after Emancipation. Its central theme is that economic competition and racial coercion jointly determined the material condition of the blacks. The book identifies a number of competitive processes that played important roles in protecting blacks from the racial coercion to which they were peculiarly vulnerable. It also documents the substantial economic gains realized by the black population between 1865 and 1914. Professor Higgs's account is iconoclastic. It seeks to reorganize the present conceptualization of the period and to redirect future study of black economic history in the post-Emancipation period. It raises new questions and suggests new answers to old questions, asserting that some of the old questions are misleadingly framed or not worth pursuing at all. |
Contents
The people | 14 |
The people at work 18651880 | 37 |
The people at work 18801914 | 62 |
The fruits of their labors | 95 |
Overview and interpretation | 118 |
Vicious circles? | 128 |
Black participation in the merchant class | 142 |
| 175 | |
| 205 | |
Other editions - View all
Competition and Coercion: Blacks in the American Economy 1865-1914 Robert Higgs Limited preview - 1977 |
Common terms and phrases
39th Congress acreage acres Agricultural Labor Alabama American Economic Association Atlanta average black farmers black income black population black tenants black workers Bulletin Census child-woman ratio cities colored competition cotton counties crop crop-lien system DeBow's Review decline Department of Agriculture discriminatory earnings emancipation employers employment estimate evidence farm laborers fertility fixed-rent freedmen Freedmen's Bureau George Henry White Georgia growth half century housing ibid idem income per capita increase investment labor market landlords level of living ment merchant migration Mississippi mortality Negro American Family Negro Population nonagricultural North number of black occupations opportunities owners passim peonage percent period Philadelphia Negro plantations planters probably productive race racial differences racial discrimination Reconstruction relatively rent Report rural blacks share share-rent skilled slave slavery Social South Carolina Southern Agriculture Table tion U.S. Bureau U.S. Department U.S. Industrial Commission variables W. E. B. Du Bois Washington York