Free Products
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Title
Free Products
Description
MR. EDITOR:—It is under a most solemn sense of duty and the love of God, that one, who has passed through great personal and family trials, for pleading the cause of the slave, and who may have still greater ones in store , now addresses you, earnestly desiring to strike one blow more, (may God make it effectual!) to subserve the all-important cause of crushed and bleeding humanity. For your serious and prayerful consideration, I shall make the following inquiries or suggestions.
1. If sugar, molasses, rice, cotton, and tobacco were produced by free or compensated labor alone in these United States, (or, if you choose, to estimate throughout the world,) what would be now, or have been, for the last 10, 20, or 50 years in these New-England States, the prices in market for these commodities?
2. As it has been, and is now, in point of fact, for a specified time, what is and has been the cost of the productions to New Englanders, on an average?
3. Will not the result show conclusively, how much, if any, we are actually in debt to the slave who have used these articles made cheaper by tears and blood, than they would otherwise have been?
4. If we have bought these articles, because we thought it more convenient than to obtain them by compensated labor, or to dispense with them entirely—however unintentional or unconscious of it, we may have been—are we not justly chargeable with the most direct and gross injustice to the slave, (in so far,)—and does it not become us most solemnly to confess, especially to God and the slaveholder, this our error and our sin, and henceforth to lay out or lay by, or let upon usury for the slave all the profits of slavery that we are conscious of now or hereafter possessing; praying the slaveholder to go and do likewise—not only rendering the slave himself, but his stolen goods, the property of his own acquiring.
The foregoing was written some weeks since with the expectation of sending it then to the editor of the Liberator; but, since that time, I have read several accounts of attempts being made to establish a free labor system among the anti-slavery ranks from the National Anti-Slavery Standard. I am one of those who desire to purchase or use only the products of free labor, so far as I can know or obtain them hereafter; and, at the present, I am not quite sure that slave produce can be obtained at a less price than free labor produce, under the same or similar circumstances.
Perhaps these items may be worth reviewing, though the reader may discover nothing new or striking to his own mind; and he is at liberty to use them as he sees fit.
Yours for universal liberty,
J.C.C.
1. If sugar, molasses, rice, cotton, and tobacco were produced by free or compensated labor alone in these United States, (or, if you choose, to estimate throughout the world,) what would be now, or have been, for the last 10, 20, or 50 years in these New-England States, the prices in market for these commodities?
2. As it has been, and is now, in point of fact, for a specified time, what is and has been the cost of the productions to New Englanders, on an average?
3. Will not the result show conclusively, how much, if any, we are actually in debt to the slave who have used these articles made cheaper by tears and blood, than they would otherwise have been?
4. If we have bought these articles, because we thought it more convenient than to obtain them by compensated labor, or to dispense with them entirely—however unintentional or unconscious of it, we may have been—are we not justly chargeable with the most direct and gross injustice to the slave, (in so far,)—and does it not become us most solemnly to confess, especially to God and the slaveholder, this our error and our sin, and henceforth to lay out or lay by, or let upon usury for the slave all the profits of slavery that we are conscious of now or hereafter possessing; praying the slaveholder to go and do likewise—not only rendering the slave himself, but his stolen goods, the property of his own acquiring.
The foregoing was written some weeks since with the expectation of sending it then to the editor of the Liberator; but, since that time, I have read several accounts of attempts being made to establish a free labor system among the anti-slavery ranks from the National Anti-Slavery Standard. I am one of those who desire to purchase or use only the products of free labor, so far as I can know or obtain them hereafter; and, at the present, I am not quite sure that slave produce can be obtained at a less price than free labor produce, under the same or similar circumstances.
Perhaps these items may be worth reviewing, though the reader may discover nothing new or striking to his own mind; and he is at liberty to use them as he sees fit.
Yours for universal liberty,
J.C.C.
Creator
J.C.C.
Source
The Liberator 11:19, p. 2
Date
5.7.1841
Collection
Citation
J.C.C., “Free Products,” No Stain of Tears and Blood, accessed October 22, 2026, https://productsoffreelabor.com/items/show/150.
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