Abstract
T HE economic interpretation of labor systems offers a powerful explanation of the geography of slavery and free labor in antebellum Anglo-America.' Although the past decade has produced a crippling assault on this thesis, I shall contend that recent critics misapplied the economic model, erroneously concluded that slavery was the most efficient agrarian labor system in North America, and incorrectly inferred that the North rejected slavery for ideological-moral reasons rather than economic ones. When these critics assumed the comparability of slave-free-labor efficiencies during a yearly time span, they unwittingly placed wage labor in an untenable position. Wage labor was competitive for part of a year but never on an annual basis. Farmers who needed labor for a few days, weeks, or months found the use of hired labor decidedly cheaper and more efficient economically than slaves. The decisive factor in the farmer's choice of either slave or free labor came
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