Author: J. E. Cairnes

Publisher:

Published: 2015-07-13

Total Pages: 24

ISBN-13: 9781331302667

Excerpt from The Slave Power: Its Character, Career, and Probable Designs, Being an Attempt to Explain the Real Issues Involved in the American Contest "The vastness," he continues, "of the interests at stake in the American contest, regarded under this aspect, appears to me to be very inadequately conceived in this country, and the purpose of the present work is to bring forward this view of the case more prominently than has yet been done." Accordingly, in the first place, Mr. Cairnes expounds the economic necessities under which the Slave Power is placed by its fundamental institution. Slavery, as an industrial system, is not capable of being everywhere profitable. It requires peculiar conditions. Originally a common feature of all the Anglo-Saxon settlements in America, it took root and became permanent only in the Southern portion of them. What is the explanation of this fact? Several causes have been assigned. One is, diversity of character in the original founders of these communities; New England having been principally colonized by the middle and poorer classes, Virginia and Carolina by the higher. The fact was so, but it goes a very little way towards the explanation of the phenomenon, since "it is certain the New Englanders were not withheld from employing slaves by moral scruples;' and if slave labor had been found suitable for the requirements of the country, they would, without doubt, have adopted it in fact, as they actually did in principle. Another common explanation of the different fortune of slavery in the Northern and Southern States is, that the Southern climate is not adapted to white laborers, and that negroes will not work without slavery. The latter half of this statement is opposed to fact. Negroes are willing to work wherever they have the natural inducements to it, inducements equally indispensable to the white race. The climate theory is inapplicable to the Border Slave States, Kentucky, Virginia, and others, whose climate "is remarkably genial, any perfectly suited to the industry of Europeans.' Even in the Gulf States, the alleged fact is only true, as it is in all other parts of the world, of particular localities. The Southern States, it is observed by M.de Tocqueville, "are not hotter than the south of Italy and Spain." In Texas itself there is a nourishing colony of free Germans, who carry on all the occupations of the country, growth of cotton included, by white labor; and "nearly all the heavy out-door work in the city of New Orleans is performed by whites." What the success or failure of slavery as an industrial system depends on, is the adaptation of the productive industry of the country to the qualities and defects of slave labor. There are kinds of cultivation which even in tropical regions cannot advantageously be carried on by slaves; there are others in which, as a mere matter of profit, slave labor has the advantage over the only kind of free labor which Ah a matter of fact, comes into competition with it- the labor of peasant proprietors. The economic advantage of slave labor is, that it admits of complete organization: "it may be combined on an extensive scale, and directed by a controlling mind to a single end." Its defects are, that it is given reluctantly; it is unskilful; it is wanting in versatility. Being given reluctantly, it can only be depended on as long as the slave is watched; but the cost of watching is too great if the workmen are dispersed over a widely extended area; their concentration, or, in other words, the employment of many workmen at the same time and place, is a condition sine qua non of slavery as an industrial system; while, to enable it to compete successfully with the intense industry and thrift of workmen who enjoy the entire fruits of their own labor, this concentration and combination of labor must be not merely possible, but also economically preferable.