Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Articles, Letters to the Editors, etc. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource THE EXPENSE AND STERILITY OF SLAVE LABOR Description An account of the resource There is not an aspect in which slavery can be considered that does not show a deleterious working of the system upon the best interests of the southern States. We have already dwelt at length upon some of these features. There is one to which all honest-minded men of those States, who have visited the North, must be fully sensible. This is the sterility of the slave labor system in the matter of home comforts and convenience. To our mind, it is astonishing that southern planters and farmers can be willing to receive back so little for their money. There are thousands and thousands of journeymen mechanics in New England whose houses are palaces compared with the dwellings of hundreds of slave-holders in the South. During our recent tour in that section of the Union, we saw and heard enough to justify this statement. We were assured that many a planter, with fifty and sometimes with a hundred slaves, still lived in a low log house, without any of the little elegancies and comforts which fill and surround the homes of northern artisans. A gentleman whom we visited on his estate, a man of refined taste, education and manners, and who owned seventy or eighty slaves, dwelt with much feeling upon this difference. He had sojourned for awhile during the previous summer in a small, busy manufacturing town in one of the most sterile of the New England States, and had been deeply impressed with the appearance of wealth and competence which the homes of the farmers presented to his view. In every direction from the centre, or village part of the town, he saw their large white houses, with green windowblinds, generally embowered in graceful shrubbery, festooned with flowers and shaded by rows of maple or elm trees--all looking like the abodes of elegant luxury, thrift and wealth. And these establishments were often facing each other from opposite sides of the same road. It seemed a marvel to him that so many homes of such a character could be sustained on so small a space. Here were a dozen all in sight, occupying, in the aggregate, hardly a thousand acres; yet the smallest and poorest of them quite equalled his own in convenience and comfort, though he owned about two thousand acres in the South, and nearly one hundred negroes. There was the bright, white school-house, in which the children of these farmers, and every child in the district, recived an education that fitted them for all the ordinary occupations of life. What an agricultural community this to be planted upon a thousand acres of naturally thin-soiled land! What a yeomanry to stand up, in all the strength and sterling attributes of intelligence, virtue and independence, in a space half the size of his own plantation! What a crop of large two-story houses, capacious and well filled barns and out-houses, cattle, sheep and swine, horses, carriages, and properties real and personal, for such an area! What a growth of mind, genius, vritue and human individuality to be spread over such a small compass of territory! No one better than a southern planter could appreciate the difference between such a district and one of equal size occupied by a single white family and one hundred slaves. We believe from the observations of the gentleman to whom we have alluded, that Southern men of intelligence, who visit the northern States, carry back with them the impressions which he received. If these lines should, perchance, reach a few of their number, we would earnestly and respectfully invite them to review with us two or three points of difference between the working of the slave labor system and that industrial economy which produces results so surprising to them in the Northern States. Let us look together more closely at the elements of that thrift, prosperity and comfort which seems to surround and fill the home of the free-labor farmer of New England. Perhaps he owns one hundred acres of mountain, meadow, arable and pasture land. The winters are long and cold, and large stocks of fuel for his house and fodder for his cattle must be provided. He may owe a few hundred dollars for his farm, and its whole value be $3000. He is a man perhaps of forty years of age, with a family of half a dozen children; the oldest son being sixteen. His yoke of bright-eyed Devonshire steers, and horse of all work, constitute the rest of his labor-material. For six months of the year, his own hands, and those of this boy, and the strength of this "three cattle team," perform unaided all the work bestowed on his one-hundred-acre farm. They plow and cross-plow the land for all the grain-crops in fall and spring. The axes of father and son keep stroke at the root of the mountain oak or maple, in winter, and they convey it home, compactly corded on the ox-sled, down the winding path of beaten snow. All the work of winter, early fall and spring, they themselves perform. No expenditure, of any account, is incurred for hired labor during this period; while, for at least three months, all the children are at school. About the first of May, perhaps, the farmer engages an industrious, able bodied man to work for him for six months--to plant, hoe, mow and reap. Probably he is a young, unmarried man, who is taken into the farmer's house as one of the family; he sits with them at the same table, rides to church in the same carriage, and sits in the same pew on the Sabbath. He is perhaps training himself and laying up money for owning and tilling a farm. He is practising the most rigid economy; and endeavors to take up as little of his wages as possible during the term for which he is engaged, that he may have it all in a lump at the end, to deposite in the savings-bank, or to loan out on interest. Perhaps he will not draw more than $10 for the whole period of six months. If he is unwell, and loses a few days, the loss is deducted from his wages. Thus the farmer has all the value of his labor for the best half of the year, with but very little expenditure during that period. He realises its full results before he is called to pay the stipulated wages. He "turns over" the value of that labor once or twice, before the full pay-day. He sells all he can spare of the crops sown, planted, and gathered by the aid of his hired man, before this disbursement. So far from paying for his labor in advance, as does the southern planter, his hired man virtually lends it to him for several months without interest. And this is the best agricultural labor in the world. It is the intelligent, faithful, trusty industry of a man who intends to cultivate a farm of his own some time or other. The farmer works with him. Their hoes keep stroke with each other in the cornfield; their scythes in the meadow, their sickles in harvest. This parity and fellowship gives a dignity to agricultural labor in New England, and in the Free States generally, which it wears in no other country, in no other occupation on the face of the earth. The broad blue sky of heaven seems to look down with its blandest smile and blessing upon this copartnership; and Heaven grant it may never be dissolved; that none of the heartless artificialities that are slowly introducing the castes of European civilization, may mar the pure beauty of this New England syste. This is the first jewel of her glory; and long as her green hills look the blue firmament in the face, may they wear each around its brow this peculiar coronet of human industry. May this glory never, never depart from her. May she guard it as the apple of her eye. If our voice could reach the men of her hills, we would implore them to hold to this old Puritan democracy or labor as the peculiar jewel of the New World. They cannot conceive how it thrills and swells the heart of a New Englander with emotions of gladness and virtuous pride, while travelling through the agricultural districts of Europe, to turn away in thought from the caste condition of labor which he sees in every field, to that noble fellowship of industry that sows and reaps the harvests of his native land. Whatever changes and habits increasing wealth and its appetite for luxuries may introduce into the large sea-board towns of the North, far-reaching back among the virtuous hills and green vallies, Heaven grant that this old Pilgrim-father democracy of toil may exist unchanged. There may the labor which Providence demands as its copartner in feeding, clothing and blessing man--may that labor never be out-housed or side-tabled or badged with any caste-mark by those who employ it.  We believe our southern readers will excuse this parenthetical digression from the argument to which we had intended to confine our observations. They may easily conceive that the Free-Labor Farming system of the North may inspire such sentiments of admiration in those who have grown up in daily view of its working and results. We have adverted to the impressions which a cotton planter received from a glance at the condition of a dozen homesteads planted upon half the space of his own estate. Almost in his own words, we have expressed the surprise he felt on seeing such a society of intelligent families, with children enough to fill a district school, living in a state of comfort and elegance unknown to himself, and all deriving their support and competence from a farm not exceeding, in the aggregate, a thousand acres of land. We have endeavored to show that this remarkable production of human sustenance and comfort must be ascribed, not to the superior nature of the soil, but to the character of the labor applied to its cultivation. This, we are confident, they will clearly see and freely admit, and deduce from the fact that inference which should be so useful to themselves. If, for a moment, they entertain a doubt in reference to the real cause of the contrast between the results of their industrial economy and that of the Free States, let them imagine their own system applied to New England agriculture. Suppose that each of the dozen farmers to whom we have adverted, were obliged to buy an able-bodied slave to begin with, and pay in advance a thousand dollars for him; that is, to pay down on the spot, at the out-set, for labor to be performed twenty or thirty years hence, if the man lived so long--to buy a precarious human life, which might terminate in a month, at such a price! Not one of those farmers, if the law permitted it, could afford to till his land in this way. Under slavery, few one-hundred-acre homsteads could be sustained in the North. The system would decimate the agriculturists; so that there would not be families enough in a space of ten square miles to fill a district school. Look at its inevitable working for a moment. Here is a man who has purchased or inherited a farm in New Hampshire or Connecticut, worth, say, $3000. Assume that his house, barn and agricultural implements are in satisfactory condition for the first year, that he has provisions enough to carry his family on to the next harvest, and sufficient fodder for his cattle. The spring opens, and planting time is at hand. With $50 ready money in hand, he may safely commence operations. With this small sum, and a credit to the same amount at the village store, he may hire an able-bodied young man to labor for him until his crops are gathered in the autumn. A few dollars, perhaps, on an average, $3 per month, are all that he may be asked to pay for wages until these crops are sold. How small the capital invested in labor under this system! Now change it for that of the South, and see what would become of that farmer. You bring him a human being, subject to all the sudden and fatal ills which flesh is heir to, and say: "Buy this man, and pay $1000 down for him, before he has struck a blow or earned a cent for you. He is strong and sound, and may live to work on your farm many years; but it is true he may sicken and die next week, or run away to-morrow. Inasmuch as he is not to have a farthing of his purchase-price himself, or any compensation for his toil, you must extort with the scourge what hope of reward would induce him to perform." Is it not easy to conceive how a New England farmer would reply to this proposition? Would he not be likely to say, "It is impossible for me to invest so much money in labor in advance of its performance, even if the law or my own conscience would allow me to purchase and hold a man as a slave. A thousand dollars to be paid down for labor spread over a space of twenty or thirty years, if the man lives, and to terminate in a month if he should then die or run away! It is impossible. I cannot raise the money, nor run such a risk if I had the means. I would sell my farm before I would undertake to cultivate it at such an outlay and hazard." And doubtless he and thousands like him would sell their farms rather than till under such a system. We are confident that one-third of all the farmers in New England would change their occupations, if each were obliged to pay in advance on the first of May the wages of one hired man for six months; not that each could not raise $200 for such a purpose, but from the repugnance which they would feel to the principle, and from the great inconvenience in carrying it out. The difference between Southern and Northern Agriculture, and the difference between the two sections in almost every fact and feature, should be ascribed to the labor employed in each, and not to difference of sun and soil. There is no reason on earth why ten cotton farms may not be planted on a space of one thousand acres in Georgi and Alabama, supporting ten white families with children enough to fill a district school. There is no more necessity for planters living in log houses, in either of those States, than there is for the farmers of Massachusetts or Vermont doing the same. There never can be an intelligent yeomanry, or an agricultural population of sufficient compactness of residence in the Southern States to form a coherent society, support schools, churches, &c., until the Free Labor system is fully adopted. Under Slavery the whole agricultural territory of those States will be occupied by a few great planters, being hardly within telescopic sight of each other, and a few miserably poor and ignorant white families, supporting themselves by hunting, fishing, and growing vegetables on their small patches of land. Free Labor would change all this, and cover all the South with those homesteads which make the glory and greatness of New England. Burrit's Citizen of the World Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Reprinted from Burrit's Citizen of the World Friends' Intelligencer 14:43, p. 680 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1.9.1858