Question

During industrialization, what were the attitudes toward the use of enslaved labor?

Calls for the abolition of slavery increased.
Even more enslaved persons were put to work in factories.
Factory owners refused to use enslaved persons as their workers.
Runaway enslaved persons were not prosecuted.

Answer 1

Factory owners refused to use enslaved persons as their workers.

Industrialists favored free (wage) labor — it was more flexible, required less upfront capital tied up in human “property,” fit the free-labor ideology of industrial capitalism, and Northern factories typically employed free immigrants and wage workers rather than enslaved people.