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. |
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Contents
The people | 14 |
The people at work 18651880 | 37 |
The people at work 18801914 | 62 |
The fruits of their labors | 95 |
Housing | 108 |
Improvements in the level of living | 117 |
Vicious circles? | 128 |
Black participation in the merchant class | 142 |
175 | |
205 | |
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acres Agriculture American areas associated average better black farmers black population Bois Bureau Census century changes cities competition considerably contracts cotton crop decline Department differences difficult earnings economic Economic History effect employed employers employment equal estimate evidence fact farm farmers fertility figure follows force freedmen Georgia greater growth half higher housing implied improvement income income per capita increase individual Industrial labor labor force land landlords less living means merchant migration mortality Negro North obtained occupations occurred operators opportunities owners paid percent perhaps period plantations planters present probably productive question race racial discrimination received relation relatively remained rent Report result rooms rural Senate share skilled slave slavery Source South Southern Table tenants tion United urban wage Washington workers York