Communications: Free Productions

COMMUNICATIONS.

Excellent—excellent.

FREE PRODUCTIONS.

To the Editor of the Liberator .

SIR— I am a plain hardworking farmer, who like to live as well as I can for my means. Now you must know that my wife and grown up daughters have got a notion out of some tract they have been reading, that we ought not to eat rice, nor sugar, nor anything that is raised by the labor of slaves. Sometime ago, my daughter Jane brought me the Liberator, and shewed me a string of questions as long as a rope of onions.

'There, father,' says she, looking quite pleased, 'when all these questions are answered, I am sure you will think just as we do, and will not be willing to use any more of the slave articles.'

'Well, well, child, wait till the answers come, and if there is anything in them to bring people round to your way of thinking, like enough I may join, if we can get the free things as cheap; but it stands to reason there is no use in just two or three beginning.'

I saw she did not look satisfied, and, a day or two afterwards, I found that John and I were the only ones at table eating sugar, for they had contrived, somehow or other, to coax all the little ones into the plot. And not a sign of a rice pudding has whitened our board since that pamphlet came into the house.

'Why, wife,' said I 'what does all this mean?'

Now my wife is a very reasonable woman, and no way apt to be freakish, and I saw she looked worried.

'My dear,' said she, 'I have thought a good deal about this, and I can't see but what the people here encourage the keeping just as many slaves, as it takes to raise what we use, and therefore it seems to me that no one, who thinks slavery wrong, ought to encourage it by eating the produce of it.'

'Why, wife,' said I, 'I think it is just as wrong to keep slaves, as you do, and I would starve to death, before I would have one; but it will do no good for just one family to make themselves uncomfortable only to be laughed at; but to humor you and the girls, I'll buy some free sugar, as you call it, for your eating, but as to getting sugar for all the hired folks, it's what I can't afford, and they must use molasses for their sweetening, slave or free.'

So, the next time I went to town with my wagon, I had a great many notions to get for the family.

'Mind, father,' said the girls, 'that you get free labor articles.'

Well, sir, I brought home a bag of East India sugar, a barrel of flour, half a bag of coffee, and 14 lbs. of the whitest New-York flour I could find, for my wife is pretty particular to have her cake, for company, look white.

'I hope they are all free,' said my eldest girl.

'Free, child? I suppose so, it's good Porto Rico coffee.'

'Why, that is slave coffee,' said she, 'from one of the West India Islands.'

So, sir, that's the good of geography in my family; and as my boy, that's going to college, says, it needs a good deal of learning to know justly about everything, whether it is slave or free; more learning than I care to have; I got the coffee because it was the cheapest.'

'Why, yes,' said one of my pert daughters, 'it will be the cheapest, for only you and the hired men will drink it. What flour is it?'

'Good Baltimore flour.'

'Why, father, then it's from one of the slave states.'

'Pooh! pooh!' said I, 'I'm not going to give half a dollar a barrel more for flour, just for a whim.'

'My dear,' said my wife, 'we need not spend any more for the flour, it is only to put a little more indian, or a few more potatoes, into the bread, and in this way, we may make the wheat last enough longer to make up for the difference in the price, and so we may manage about many other things.'

So they had always some such come off, when I was for reasoning with them. Then they are always talking about their substitutes, as they call them, for the slave articles; but I don't want such nonsense, when I can afford to feed my family with comfortable food. I will give you the history of one of these substitutes. It has always been my wife's fashion, when we have a boiled dinner, to make a good mess of rice broth, which always looked white enough to do anybody's heart good, and it is good wholesome food, and a proper piece of economy for a large family, like mine. Well, the other day, when I was seeing to my barn, one of the girls came and said she wanted some of the coarse ground corn. I did not think to ask what it was for, but at dinner time I found they had made it into what they called broth, and there was the whole set of little ones feeding on it. I scolded out, plain enough, to see my children eating swine's victuals so. I should not care to write just what I said, as you might not care to print it. I don't suppose the children understood what I said, but the broth was somehow connected, in their minds, with the pitiful stories they had heard of the slaves, and my little Nancy looked up in my face and said, 'Father, I wish all the poor little slave children had such a nice dinner,' I declare, sir, I never had the whole set of half-starved, miserable slaves brought so before my mind before, and it made me feel all over, I can't tell how, a sort of choky; and I thought then, I could have lived on bread and water, all the rest of my days, to do them good. The little creature kept watching me, as if she understood just how I felt, and called out, before the whole table, hired men and all, 'Father is crying about the poor black people.' I can't tell what happened next, nor how I came by it, but I had eaten up half a bowl of broth before I knew what I was about, and, I can tell you, it is really better eating than the rice broth, for there is more taste in it. I did not care to say so, because it might have seemed like encouraging my family in their notions, for there is no way that will keep folks thinking and talking about the slaves, so much as the having them brought so to our minds at every meal. There's one of my men that I've watched ever since that day I was so overtaken, and I see he always passes the sweetening along, very sly, without pouring out a drop. I can't say but what I've liked the poor fellow the better, because it looks so pitiful in him, but I know it is all nonsense, as it can't possibly do any good to the slaves; and besides, it is none of our business to meddle with what does not belong to us. But to go back to the point I set out with, about those questions; my folks won't be satisfied till they are answered. Upon recollection, I believe the girls said one of them had been answered, much to their minds; and that, I suppose, is what is carrying John over to their side. He is now just between hay and grass, willing to give the preference to the free articles, when he can get them, but not willing to give up the others. But when a full answer to the whole comes out, I expect the tables to be turned, for I can't think there will be anything to uphold them in such delusion, seeing they have never got much out of your paper to favor their doctrine; only I wonder that you put the questions in at all, for a question without an answer seems pretty much like a cart without a horse. But I suppose, in some things, an editor's business is like a farmer's— you can't always spend time to look after things just us you want them, but must take them as they come to hand; and that you are waiting till a real good horse comes along, to put to your cart, and you are right to be particular. But this, sir is what my college boy calls figuring language, and as I never got so far as that, in my arithmetic book, I had better write plain English, and say, that I suppose you are waiting for real good answers to those questions. After all, I sometimes can't help having a little misgiving that my wife and the girls may be right, but I shan't be ashamed; I'm for the truth any how, and I suppose I can understand a plain, fair argument; only, sir, I can tell you, it must be pretty smart reasoning, and none of your oh! and your ah! and your note of admiration arguments for me. I say again, it must be pretty smart reasoning that will convince me that all the folks in these Northern States have been acting, all this time, like a set of thief-helpers; but let the truth come out, and if it should prove so, we should have a stirring time among us.

I remain, sir, your humble servant,

ADAM ARATOR.