New York; 6.1.1853 (Meeting)

New York; 6.1.1853 (Meeting)

From the N.Y. Tribune. Free Produce.

MEETING OF THE "FREE PRODUCE ASSOCIATION OF FRIENDS OF NEW YORK, YEARLY MEETING."

To the Editor of the N.Y. Tribune

This association wes its existence to a belief entertained by its members in the doctrine: "Who gives the motive makes his brother's sin his own"; and under this belief they feel bound to withold the money patronage that operates as such a powerful motive to the slaveholder to retain his hold upon the slave, regardless of the remonstrances so frequently addressed to him. They believe that it is equally correct to say "the demand is parent of the supply," when applied to the commercial intercourse existing between the slave holder and the consumers of slave-grown productions as in the most familiar illustration of that maxim--"that Cotton growing and Slavery are cause and effect, and that the growth of the latter has been coincident with the consumption of the former." And in these resolutions they are strengthened by a part of the discipline of their own religious body, viz: "Friends are advised to avoid any act by which the right of Slavery is acknowledged."

Under these convictions they are seeking for opportunities to supply themselves with such dry-goods and groceries, the produce of free labor, that are generally the result of slave labor.

They do not flatter themselves that the few hundred dollars they are employing in this way will do much toward overturning the gigantic institution they desire to see abolished, but if by these means they can enable some others as well as themselves to dissolve the guilty partnership existing between the producrs and consumers of slave-grown productions, their labor will note be in vain.

The meeting was held at the Friends meeting-house, Orchard-st. on the evening of the 1st. inst., and attended by Lewis Tappan of this City and Samuel Rhoades of Philadelphia, both of whom addressed the meeting and furnished information of a highly interesting character, confirming the statements, in The Tribune of the 30th. and other papers, relative to the favorable views entertained by Prof. and Mrs. Stowe, of this place, of carrying out the resolution to have "No union with slaveholders."

The members of the Association are no friends to coercive measures, but they claim the right of refusing to purchase the mutton of stolen sheep, and of exercising the same privilege when the blood-stained cotton of Slavery is offered to them, and of supplying their wardrobe and their tables with the cotton, sugar, or rice, the result of paid labor. In their humble effort to make their practices agree with their protestations against Slavery, they are cheered by the favorable reception the plan is receiving in England and in many parts of the United States.

The annual report of the Association contains some interesting details, which the limits of a newspaper will probably exclude.

If the friends of the slave is in earnest in his resolution to have "No union with slaveholders," let him touch not, taste not, handle not the productions of slave labor.

H. Miles

Henry Miles

The Anti-Slavery Bugle
8:39, p. 1

6.18.1853