M&D Deep Duck Where are all the children?

[Joseph Tracy]

I heard a piece on the radio recently about indentured servitude. A very common and miserable status at the time.

 In New York State most land was owned by large holders and those who worked on this land had great difficulty both legally and financially escaping a condition of impoverished renters. Slavery was a common feature of successful ventures.

The farms had to be very large to sustain families and the unsustainability of these practices eventually led directly to the violent seizure of western lands. 

Some places were better than others, opportunities were many, but it is my sense that you seem to be mythologizing the situation a bit.




On Jan 23, 2015, at 4:42 AM, alice malice wrote:

> Though these Americans do carry with them some of the European Myths
> of Destruction, that they have come to a Virgin Land, to a Promised
> Land, to a New World, to a land of Savages, who must be Exterminated
> or made Noble, to a place that Providence had Promised their brave
> predecessors and so on, by now, they have new Myths, and they have a
> reality that is not European, not what Britannia Dreamed, but what
> they know. The streets are not paved with gold, their are no fountains
> of youth, but america is a place of incredible opportunity. The family
> is big because America can support big families. They can marry
> younger, get land and a home, prosper, be fruitful and multiply. And
> they do.
> 
> On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 5:40 PM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:
>> If P wants to show us what might have been, what was possible, if only
>> the Americans had...he has to begin with prosperity and success, and
>> that is the case in Christmastide 1778. There were no serious economic
>> reasons, not even taxes, or taxes on Tea even, fro the colonies to
>> rebel. Things were mighty fine. But they had other reasons to get rid
>> of the English. The had money and power and people and prosperity and
>> they didn't need England so why not get rid of the then and make start
>> their own country? And this where it began with so much promise,
>> though there are dark and bloody hauntings, the murder of the Indians,
>> the enslaving of Africans, the destruction of the Earth etc.
>> 
>> On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 5:33 PM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> in 1775, the 13 colonies has a population of apx. 2.6mm, 2.1mm white,
>>> 540000 blacks, 50,000 or fewer Native American; 21% of the people
>>> lived in Virginia and 22% were in Penn. and Mass., 11% each. In
>>> Philadelphia there were 35,000. The 13 colonies were not dependent,
>>> for anything, on England, Europe, or anyplace else. Still the case in
>>> the US, where trade comprises a relatively small percentage of the
>>> Economy.   In 1775, the Colonies had 1/3 as many inhabitants as the
>>> mother country, and more than 30% of her economic output. As
>>> Franklin's famous demographic publications, though flawed, as were
>>> Malthusian Theories all, predicted, the colonies would, in a few
>>> generations, far outnumber the inhabitants in England.  This because
>>> the average family had 8 children in the colonies but only 4 in
>>> England. It was not the poor who, in their ignorance and poverty,
>>> living on the 1% of the wealth of the nation that were supporting
>>> large families, for other than the enslaved population, where family
>>> size was also 8 children, America was not 19th century industrial or
>>> urban Europe, the black poverty of Pip or  Blake's Chimney Sweeper did
>>> not exist in America, as it was only the 18th century, but more so
>>> because America was prosperous and people married younger and
>>> sustained large families on the land and wealth, not on poverty and
>>> infant mortality and abuse.
>>> 
>>> On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 11:37 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>>>> a valid point  but the large families may not have been the ones cashing in on economic growth.
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l

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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l