Collins Free Produce Association - it's advantages, &c. (Article)

Collins Free Produce Association - it's advantages, &c. (Article)

The people of Collins, are very much like the people elsewhere, being quite willing that a few of their number should do all the labor and have all the honor of a work of reform until it is nearly consummated, when they are equally willing to share in the triumph if anything is to be gained by it. This remark will apply politically although intended for another purpose.

For some years there have been in this vicinity two persons who are not content with the usual duties of the Abolitionist, in the common acceptation of that term. They have chosen to apply their labors in every direction calculated to cripple the energies of the slave power or hasten the overthrow of slavery. Accordingly they have singly and alone applied the abstinence principle to the products of slave-labor. More recently finding some to sympathise with them and a consequent increase in numbers, there has been an organization formed bearing the name of the heading of this article. The members of this organization calculate beforehand about how much sheeting, sugar, calico, &c., they will need respectively, and pay the estimated cost in advance, which is forwarded to New York or the American Free Produce Depot in Philadelphia, accompanied with the account of the kinds and amount of good wanted. They regard slave products the price of blood and oppression. The advantages as already to some extent witnessed are: 1st. A testimony against slavery that will ere long be felt and appreciated, and without which no Abolitionist can be consistent. 2nd. The removal of the sectarian bigotry and prejudice previously exhibited. 3d. A discouragement of the further multiplication of the Non-producers in the world. Aside from the subject of slavery then, there is this decided use: it prevents mercantile monopoly and saves the profits on the goods for the use of the consumer. When this system is perfected, there must of course be more producers and consequently less oppression.

It is to be hoped that the contemplated National League will incorporate the free produce principle into its constitution.

I would ask, that the readers of the North Star would seriously consider whether they are not losing much of the influence they possess by neglecting the scriptural injunction of "touch not, taste not, handle nor the unclean thing," the present use of which is rendering such aid to slaveholders. L.M.

COLLINS CENTER, 11th mo. 1849.

11.23.1849