But will they ford the river?

Came for the John Brown references. Leaving happy.

Did anybody see and try the Slavery Footprint calculator that was posted in an earlier thread some weeks ago now?

http://slaveryfootprint.org/

I did it today (very inaccurately because I don't really know what I should have entered for food consumption and my clothing counts were somewhat iffy).

It said I had 69 slaves working for me, which is presumably quite low considering the number of things I don't have.

My main area of slavery-subsidized activity was my closet on account of the enormous number of cotton socks, underwear and shirts. I am a modest consumer in most respects but those things pile up for years because I never wear them out. I expect I could have sharply reduced my responses for those three items seeing as many of the shirts are only partly cotton or are second hand, while the socks and underwear are often American or Canadian made and represent years of collecting rather than new purchases. Also, I have a fair number of items that are not made of cotton (bamboo, plastics, wool, etc.). These would reduce the number of field slaves by a considerable number.

I could probably get my number of slaves down to half or less of the tentative number, say 32 slaves.

Most of my "slaves" are working in China and probably textiles. The point is moot whether all of them are really slaves, but then that's true of a lot of non-slaves as well, so I can't really make an reductions without knowing what the defiinition used is.

It would be nice to think I was totally slave-free, but that's nearly impossible in a world where the supply chains circle the Earth several times for many products. Unless it's hand made with local wool by local hippies, you can never be sure what is in your purchases. Are hippies self-exploiting capitalists? They could be slaves to themselves unless they are charging outrageous prices for their product and counting it towards wages and not profits.

Still, it is useful to have a very rough idea what the size of the problem is, where it is located, and what you can do about it. The site allows you to write letters to companies that exploit developing and under-developed country labour. It's a step in the right direction, I guess.

Personally, I would mind giving up a few slaves for a good maid or housekeeper. I could afford to pay slave wages easily enough, just like people ten times as rich as I am.