It is decades since I read Spartacus. I remember that a Roman was shown around a perfume factory where the work-force were free wage earners. These strange, silent, industrious and diligent men disturbed a slave-owner as well they might.
Slaves labouring at the time traveller Artorius' new blast furnaces are offered:
"Cash and the prospect of manumission..." (p. 88)
- on an unprecedented scale. A Roman general thinks:
"A bit disturbing. Though I couldn't say why, exactly." (ibid.)
We know why. A mass working class is about to enter history centuries ahead of schedule. The general dismisses "...his momentary unease..." (ibid.) because he is delighted at the prospect of increased productivity.
Workers no longer making iron by the old methods can grow more food or make other things. Artorius even envisages:
"'...many works bidding against each other for contracts.'" (p. 90)
A social revolution is under way with unpredictable consequences - although time travellers have some notion of some of the consequences.
19 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
You are reading too much into what Fronto felt--what he saw at Artorius' iron works was "disturbing" to him because it was strange and unfamiliar to him.
I like Artorius' strategy--instead of a frontal attack on slavery which would have provoked fierce opposition, he was giving the Romans good, solid, profitable reasons for letting it become unprofitable and useless. Nicholas van Rijn would approve of that!
Ad astra! Sean
"Fronto frowned. Cash and the prospect of manumission was often used to get highly skilled slaves like doctors or accountants working harder. But not on this scale, that he was aware of, and not for common laborers. It was...
"A bit disturbing. Though I couldn't sat why, exactly."
Kaor, Paul!
Exactly, disturbing because what Artorius was doing was on a scale strange and unfamiliar to Fronto.
Ad astra! Sean
Note that the ironworks is -much- more productive than the Roman types. It can -afford- to offer manumission to slaves, and to offer reasonable wages.
The Roman empire had a population of about 60-70 million and produced probably a bit less than 100,000 tons of iron. Steel was -really- expensive.
By comparison, in the 1770's the future-to-be-US produced around 35,000 tons of iron and a lot of steel, and Britain had a bigger iron industry.
So per-capita production was much greater, and steel was much cheaper. (Though comparatively still expensive compared to iron.)
That had knock-on effects all through the economy, because it made efficient metal hand tools much, much less expensive than they'd been in Roman times.
And hand tools were more efficient, too. Eg., the American "felling axe", invented in the 18th century, was about 3-4x more efficient than European axes at chopping down trees. It used more metal -- a balanced blade and poll -- to achieve that.
The Romans had saws, but not two-man saws.
They hadn't yet invented water-powered sawmills, though they would in the next century.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Love these informative essays!
Sometimes the History Channel gives viewers some interesting programs. One was about the technological changes needed for logging in virgin old growth forests with GIANT trees. Those improved axes and two-man saws were NEEDED.
Ad astra! Sean
Yeah.
Note that driving down prices -- for cloth and metals, to begin with -- has far-reaching and, in this context, unpredictable consequences.
Some things you can anticipate. More and cheaper iron and steel makes hand tools much more effective -- often an increase of 4x or 5x.
This is especially true since the Americans can 'invent' lots of basic stuff that the Romans didn't have.
Eg., double-furrow riding plows and disk harrows, which increase the speed of plowing (and harrowing) by up to 5x, and do it better.
Cradle scythes, which improve productivity over sickles during the harvest by 8-9x.
These are, once the costs of metal come down, instantly applicable -- any blacksmith can take a look at them and duplicate them.
This would be a powerful incentive to innovate, given that Roman agriculture was quasi-commercialized; there was a lot of subsistence farming, but also a lot of commercial grain and wine and oil production and long-distance trade in their products.
And they introduce cotton, of course. That makes cloth that can be -washed- much more easily than wool or linen, which has health implications.
One thing to note is that these innovations drastically cut the cost of military equipment. The Roman Empire spent about 75% of its tax revenue on the military -- that will come down a lot.
An sf writer needs to know his s.
Paul: oh, yeah. Economics sets the limits of the possible.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
The Roman Empire of your Antonine books got more than 18 centuries of accumulated knowledge/inventions cascading on it in one beneficently fell swoop.
If defense of the Empire no longer needs to eat up so much of annual taxes, maybe those taxes could be reduced?
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: Or spent on public works, like long-distance canals -- the Roman army actually did most of the big building projects of the Roman Empire, anyway.
The Americans have the advantage that they can tell ahead of time what will be profitable, because they have the benefit of 'hindsight'.
This is a great advantage, because it means you don't waste resources on projects that won't pan out.
And of course they introduce more efficient means of organization.
The iron-and-steel complexes are organized as companies, for example -- the government initially puts up most of the cash (they did that already for military iron production) but others can invest, and the plants compete with each other.
Transportation is usually a government responsibility -- building roads and canals, improving ports, regulating rivers. That's because it consumes a lot of territory and goes through a lot of jurisdictions.
Transportation infrastructure is inherently an oligopoly if not a monopoly. It's going to have all the drawbacks of that, so you might as well just accept that it is 'socialism' and have it run by government or at least strongly regulated to limit the exploitation of the customers by the owners of that infrastructure.
Cheap, frequent, public transport in a city makes its politicians popular.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
I can see really big and major civil engineering projects like roads, bridges, harbor improvements, and long-distance canal canals being legitimately paid for by taxes collected by the Empire. What bothers me is how tempting it will be for politicians to use gov't funds for anythng and everything that comes to mind, no matter how wasteful and counterproductive they are. That has notoriously been the case in the US since FDR's time, with the horrible Democrats squandering billions and trillions in failed initiatives. Untold billions lost due to fraud, corruption, sheer incompetence, etc. I would far rather funds released by lower costs of military defense be more usefully used by the private sector.
Paul: But only if there is enough LOCAL demand for light rail projects of that kind to succeed. In CA, the most incompetently governed state of the US, such a project has failed, has never been completed, and cost billions and billions in budget overruns. Just another corrupt boondoggle.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: Yeah, that's a problem.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And a huge reason, among many others, for why I detest the Democrats.
Thank you, I'll take King Log any day over King, President, or Commissar Stork!
Ad astra! Sean
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