[Non-Sequitur]

A paycheck. These jobs here are why I don't understand your belief that slavery was a benefit to all white southernor's. Slavery deprived poor whites of these menial jobs, along with bricklayer,carpenter and other jobs that slaves did.

I'm not aware that there was such a hue and cry from poor southern whites to do the work that slaves were doing before slavery ended. Can you point me to somewhere that details the plight of the poor white cottonpicker in 1850? Or the southern maiden who yearned for a job as a plantation cook but was kept out because of discrimination? Work done by blacks in the south carried a stigma for decades afterwards. Whites weren't interested in competing with blacks for jobs as maids or cooks or field hands and we all know it.

[Vietnam Vet From New Mexico]

Have you never heard of sharecroppers? Do you think they were all black?

Sounds like instead of mechanization, you want Mexicanation, doing the jobs poor whites won't do.

[Non-Sequitur]

There are a number of books out there but I confess I haven't read any that specifically deal with the subject so I can't recommend a particular one.

[lentulusgracchus]

Work done by blacks in the south carried a stigma for decades afterwards.

Sure. It was slave work. Like rowing a galley, or guarding the sultan's seraglio. Honest people didn't do it.

Whites weren't interested in competing with blacks for jobs as maids or cooks or field hands and we all know it.

That "and we all know it" crack gives you away. You're letting your spleen show again.

Whites weren't interested in competing with indentured servants as henchboys and scullery-maids, either. So what?

You keep wanting to do it, so just go ahead and do it: "It was all about race because you Southerners are all racists and everybody who's better than you are knows it, nyah, nyah, nyah!" Go ahead, put it up there. You know you want to.