ercent. Olsen says that even though these percentages might not appear large as an isolated ownership statistic they are huge if slavery is viewed as the economic foundation of an entire social system and the supply of slaves is compared to parallel factors in a free society. He makes these comparisons using two of his own studies. In these studies Olsen compares the percentages of slaveholders in 1860 to the percentages of first, investors and then employers in the mid 1900s. In the first instance he chooses the year 1949 and uses what he calls “a very modest estimate of $5,000” as an investment comparable to the investment of one slave in 1860. From this he discovers that “in 1949 only 2 percent of the spending units (families) in the United States held stock worth $5,000 or more.” The author then makes his point by saying, “If one is concerned with estimating the extent of a direct personal interest in the profits of a particular labor system it would then seem appropriate to compare this figure of 2 percent with the 31 percent of the white families in the Confederacy who owned slaves…In this respect the proportion of whites who invested in and profited from slavery far exceeds the proportion of the total population investing in our own free labor system.” The second of these examinations is a comparison of the opportunity extended to white citizens of the slave South to achieve an employer status with the same opportunity afforded citizens in the twentieth century Untied States. Olsen says that the results are similar to those of the first argument. He says that in 1940 the number of employers in the nation was less than 10 percent of the number of households. Pointing out the comparison the author says, “even the figure of 10 percent hardly equals the 31 percent of white families holding slaves in the Confederate South who may be classed as employers.” Olsen makes good points in...
