CHAPTER IV.THE ECONOMY OF VIRGINIA.An Englishman will cross three thousand miles of sea, and, landing in our Free States, find, under a different sky and climate, a people speaking the same language, influenced by the same literature, giving allegiance to the same common law, and with not very dissimilar tastes, manners, or opinions, on the whole, to those of his own people. What most strikes him is an apparent indifference to conditions of living which he would at home call shabby. He will find men, however, at whose homes he will hardly see anything, either of substance, custom, or manner, by which he would know that he was out of England, and if he asks how these manage to get waiters who do not smell of the stable; and grooms who keep stirrups bright; roofs which do not leak; lawns which are better than stubble fields; walks which are not grassy; fences which do not need shoreing up; staunch dogs; clean guns; strong boots and clothes that will go whole through a thicket; the true answer will be, by taking double the pains and paying double as much as would be necessary to secure the same results in England, and that few men are willing or able to do this.I make half a day’s journey southward here, and I find, with an equal resemblance between the people and those I left, an indifference to conditions of living, which Mrs. Stowe’s Ophelia describes as “shiftless,” and which makes the samesort of impression on my mind, as the state of things at the North does upon an Englishman’s. But, in this case, there has been no change in the skies; I wear the same clothing, or if I come from the low sea-board and, going in-land, gain elevation, I need some better protection against cold. I also find exceptions; how are they to be accounted for? The first step does not seem difficult. In this well-provided, hospitable, and most agreeable household, for instance, there are four times as many servants as in one which would otherwise be as similar as possible to it at the North; to say nothing of the governess, or of the New York plumber, who has been at work here for a month; or of the doctor, who, having come fifteen miles to lance the baby’s gums, stays of course to dine with us; or of the German, who I am told—such is the value of railroads even at a distance—left Richmond only at nine o’clock last night, and having tuned the piano, will return in time for his classes there to-morrow; or of the patent chain-pump pedlar, whose horses have been knocked up in crossing the swamp; or of the weekly mail-carrier, who cannot go on till the logs which have floated off the bridge are restored. Mr. T. means soon, he tells me, to build a substantial bridge there, because his nearest respectable neighbors are in that direction. His nearest neighbours on this side of the creek, by the way, he seems to regard with suspicion. They live in solitary cabins, and he don’t think they do a day’s work in a year; but they somehow manage to always have corn enough to keep themselves from starving, and as they certainly don’t raise half enough for this, the supposition is that his negroes steal it and supply it in exchange for whisky. Clearly the negroes do get whisky, somewhere; for even their preacher, who has been a capital blacksmith, and but for this vice would be worth $2500, was taken with delirium tremens last Sunday night, and set one of the outhouses on fire, sothat the energetic Mr. T., who will have things right about his “place,” has determined to get rid of him, and will have him sold for what he will fetch at the sheriff’s sale at the County House to-morrow; and Prior, the overseer, must go to Richmond immediately, to see about a new blacksmith, for the plumber says that until one is got he must stand idle, and the ploughs are all needing repair. A less energetic man would keep old Joe, in spite of his vice, on account of his old wife and many children, and out of regard to the spiritual interests of his flock, for when not very drunk, old Joe is reckoned the best preacher in five counties. But Mr. T. is determined to live like a gentleman; he is not going to have the hoofs of his thorough-breds spoiled; and he will have hot and cold water laid on; and he tells Prior that if he can find a first-rate shoer, young, healthy, active, and strong, and handy at anything in the way of his trade, not to lose him, if he has to go as high as $250, for the year; or, if necessary, he will buy such an one outright, at any fair price, if he can have him on trial for a month. If there is none in market, he must try to induce that Scotchman who hung the bells to come up again for a few days. “Treat him like a gentleman,” he says, “and tell him he will be paid whatever he asks, and make as if it were a frolic.”$250 a year, and a man’s board and clothing, with iron, coal, and, possibly, doctor’s bills to be added, is certainly a high price to pay for the blacksmith’s work of a single farm. This exceptional condition, then, it is obvious on the face of things, is maintained at an enormous expense, not only of money, but of nerve, time, temper, if not of humanity, or the world’s judgment of humanity. There is much inherited wealth, a cotton plantation or two in Mississippi and a few slips of paper in a broker’s office in Wall Street, that account for the comfort of this Virginia farmer, as, with something ofthe pride which apes humility, he likes to style himself. And after all he has no road on which he can drive his fine horses; his physician supposes the use of chloric ether, as an anasthetic agent, to be a novel and interesting subject of after-dinner eloquence; he has no church within twenty miles, but one of logs, attendance on which is sure to bring on an attack of neuralgia with his wife, and where only an ignorant ranter of a different faith from his own preaches at irregular intervals; there is no school which he is willing that his children should attend; his daily papers come weekly, and he sees no books except such as he has especially ordered from Norton or Stevens.This being the exception, how is it with the community as a whole?As a whole, the community makes shift to live, some part tolerably, the most part wretchedly enough, with arrangements such as one might expect to find in a country in stress of war. Nothing which can be postponed or overlooked, without immediate serious inconvenience, gets attended to. One soon neglects to inquire why this is not done or that; the answer is so certain to be that there is no proper person to be got to do it without more trouble (or expense) than it is thought to be worth. Evidently habit reconciles the people to do without much, the permanent want of which would seem likely to be intolerable to those who had it in possession. Nevertheless, they complain a good deal, showing that the evil is an increasing one. Verbal statements to the same effect as the following, written by a Virginian to the ‘Journal of Commerce,’ are often heard.“Hundreds of farmers and planters, mill owners, tobacconists, cotton factories, iron works, steam-boat owners, master builders, contractors, carpenters, stage proprietors, canal boat owners, railroad companies, and others, are, and have been short of hands these five years past, in Maryland,Virginia, and the Carolinas. They pay $150 or $200 a year each hand, and his board, and stealing, and if that hand be present or absent, sick or well, it is all the same. His clothes cost say $30 more, and in many cases the hirer has to pay his policy of life insurance.”For all that, labourers are being constantly sent away. I have not been on or seen a railroad train, departing southward, that it did not convey a considerable number of the best class of negro labourers, in charge of a trader who was intending to sell them to cotton-planters. Thus it is evident that, great as is the need for more labourers here, there is a still greater demand for them to raise cotton; and in order to supply this demand, the Virginians suffer the most extreme inconvenience. The wonder is, that their own demand for labour is not supplied by free labourers. But it appears that where negro slavery has long existed, certain occupations are, by custom, assigned to the slaves, and a white man is not only reluctant to engage himself in those occupations, but is greatly disinclined to employ other whites in them. I have often asked: “Why do you not employ white men?” (for this or that purpose for which slaves could not be procured;) and, almost always, the reply has been given in a tone which indicated a little feeling, which, if I do not misapprehend it, means that the employment of whites in duties upon which slaves are ordinarily employed is felt to be not only humiliating to the whites employed, but also to the employer.Nor is this difficulty merely a matter of sentiment. I have been answered: “Our poor white men will not do such work if they can very well help it, and they will do no more of it than they are obliged to. They will do a few days’ work when it is necessary to provide themselves with the necessaries of life, but they are not used to steady labour; they work reluctantly, and will not bear driving; they cannot beworked to advantage with slaves, and it is inconvenient to look after them, if you work them separately.” And then, when I push the inquiries by asking, why not send North and get some of our labourers? “Well—the truth is, I have been used to driving niggers, and I don’t think I could drive white men. I should not know how to manage them.” So far as I understand the matter, then, Virginia is in this position: there are slaves enough in most of the country to mainly exclude white labourers from labouring men’s occupations and to make the white people dependent on slave-labour for certain things; but the slaves being drawn off almost as fast as they grow up to grow cotton in the more Southern States, and those which remain being managed with almost as much regard for this demand as for the local demand for labour, this local demand is not systematically provided for; and even if there were the intention to provide for it, there are no sufficient means to do so, as the white population increases in number much more rapidly than the slave.[17]I do not mean that no whites are employed in the ordinary occupations of slaves in Virginia. In some parts there are few or no slaves, and the white people who live in these parts, of course do not live without having work done; but even in these districts it is hardly possible to find men or women, who are willing and able to serve others well and faithfully, on wages. In some parts white working men also drift in slowly from the Free States, but they are too few and scattered to perceptibly affect the habits of the people and customs of the country,while they rapidly adapt themselves to these habits and customs. Thus it is questionable if as yet they do not add more to the general demand for labour than they supply to reduce it.Still, it is where slaves remain in the greatest numbers, proportionately to the whites, that the scarcity of labourers, or what is practically the same thing, the cost of getting desirable work done, is most obvious. Schools, churches, roads, bridges, fences, houses, stables, are all more frequent, and in better repair, where the proportion of whites to slaves is large, than in the “negro counties,” as some are popularly designated, from the preponderance of the slave population in them. I find this observation confirmed by an examination of the Census returns and other documents.In the North-western counties, Cabell, Mason, Brooke, and Tyler, in or adjoining which there are no large towns, but a free labouring population, with slaves in ratio to the freemen as one to fifteen only, the value of land is over seven dollars and three quarters an acre.In Southampton, Surrey, James Town and New Kent, in which the slave population is as 1 to 2·2, the value of land is but little more than half as much—$4.50 an acre.The value of land of course rises with its availability to contribute to the wants of men, and it can only be made available as labour can be applied to it.In Surrey, Prince George, Charles City, and James, adjoining counties on James River, and originally having some of the most productive soil in the State, and now supplied with the public conveniences which have accrued in two hundred years of occupation by a civilized and Christian community, the number of slaves being at present, to that of whites as 1 to 1·9, the value of land is but $6 an acre.In Fairfax, another of the first settled counties, and inwhich, twenty-years ago, land was even less in value than in the James River counties, it is now become worth twice as much.The slave population, once greater than that of whites, has been reduced by emigration and sale, till there are now less than half as many slaves as whites. In the place of slaves has come another sort of people. The change which has taken place, and the cause of it, is thus simply described in the Agricultural Report of the County to the Commissioner of Patents.[18]“In appearance, the county is so changed in many parts, that a traveller who passed over it ten years ago would not now recognize it. Thousands and thousands of acres had been cultivated in tobacco by the former proprietors, would not pay the cost, and were abandoned as worthless, and became covered with a wilderness of pines. These lands have been purchased by Northern emigrants; the large tracts divided and subdivided and cleared of pines; and neat farm-houses and barns, with smiling fields of grain and grass in the season, salute the delighted gaze of the beholder. Ten years ago it was a mooted question whether Fairfax lands could be made productive; and if so, would they pay the cost? This problem has been satisfactorily solved by many, and in consequence of the above altered state of things school-houses and churches have doubled in number.”The following substantiates what I have said of the inavailability of the native whites for supplying the place of the negroes exported to the cotton plantations.From the Patent Office Report for 1847.“As to the price of labour, our mechanics charge from one to two dollars a day. As to agricultural labour, we have none. Our poor are poor becausethey will not work, therefore are seldom employed.“Chas. Yancey,“Buckingham Co., Virginia.”The sentence, “As to agricultural labour, we have none,” must mean no free labour, the number of slaves in this county being according to the Census 8,161, or nearly 3,000 morethan the whole white population. There are also 250 free negroes in the county.From a Correspondent of the ‘American Agriculturist,’ Feb. 14, 1855.“As to labourers, we work chiefly slaves, not because they are cheaper, but rather because they are the onlyreliablelabour we can get. The whites here engage to work forless price than the blackscan be got for; yet they will not work well, andrarely work out the time specified. If any of your friends come here and wish to work whites, I would advise them by all means to bring them with them; for our white labourers are far inferior to our blacks, and our black labour is far inferior to what we read and hear of your labourers.“C. G. G.“Albemarle Co., Virginia.”In Albemarle there are over thirteen thousand slaves to less than twelve thousand whites.Among the native Virginians I find most intelligent men, very ready to assert that slavery is no disadvantage to Virginia, and, as necessary to the maintenance of this assertion, that slave-labour is no clearer than free-labour, that is, than free-labour would be, if slavery did not exist. It is even said—and, as I have shown, it is practically true, at least wherever slavery has not in a great measure withdrawn from the field—that white labour cannot live in competition with slave-labour. In other words, the holder of slave-labour controls the local market for labour, and the cost of slave-labour fixes the cost of everything which is produced by slave-labour. But it is a mistake which the Virginians generally make, when they jump from this to the conclusion that slave-labour is therefore cheaper under all circumstances than free-labour. It is evident that slaves are valuable for another purpose than to supply the local demand for their labour, namely, to supply the demand of the cotton planter; consequently those slaves which are employed to supply the local demand, must be employed either at a loss, or at what they are worth to the cotton planter. Whether this is more or less than free-labourwould cost if the field were open, can only be ascertained by comparing the cost of slave-labour in Virginia with the cost of free-labour in the Free States.An exact comparison on a large scale I cannot find the means of making, but I have taken a great many notes which lead me with confidence to a few important general conclusions.Wages.—Many thousand slaves have been hired in Eastern Virginia during the time of my visit. The wages paid for able working men—sound, healthy, in good condition, and with no especial vices, from twenty to thirty years old—are from $110 to $140; the average, as nearly as I can ascertain, from very extended inquiry, being $120 per year, with board and lodging, and certain other expenses. These wages must represent exactly the cost of slave-labour, because any considerations which would prevent the owner of a slave disposing of his labour for those wages, when the labour for his own purposes would not be worth as much, are so many hindrances upon the free disposal of his property, and thereby deduct from its actual value, as measured with money.As the large majority of slaves are employed in agricultural labour, and many of those, hired at the prices I have mentioned, are taken directly from the labour of the farm, and are skilled in no other, these wages represent the cost of agricultural labour in Eastern Virginia.In New York, the usual wages for similar men, if Americans, white or black, are exactly the same in the money part; for Irish or German labourers the most common wages are $10 per month, for summer, and $8 per month, for winter, or from $96 to $120 a year, the average being about $108.The hirer has, in addition to paying wages for the slave, to feed and to clothe him; the free labourer requires also to beboarded, but not to be clothed by his employer. The opinion is universal in Virginia, that the slaves are better fed than the Northern labourers. This is, however, a mistake, and we must consider that the board of the Northern labourer would cost at least as much more as the additional cost of clothing to the slave. Comparing man with man, with reference simply to equality of muscular power and endurance, my final judgment is, that the wages for common labourers are twenty-five per cent. higher in Virginia than in New York.Loss from disability of the labourer.—This to the employer of free labourers need be nothing. To the slave-master it is of varying consequence: sometimes small, often excessively embarrassing, and always a subject of anxiety and suspicion. I have not yet made the inquiry on any plantation where as many as twenty negroes are employed together, that I have not found one or more of the field-hands not at work, on account of some illness, strain, bruise, or wound, of which he or she was complaining; and in such cases the proprietor or overseer has, I think, never failed to express his suspicion that the invalid was really as well able to work as anyone else on the plantation. It is said to be nearly as difficult to form a satisfactory diagnosis of negroes’ disorders as it is of infants’, because their imagination of symptoms is so vivid, and because not the smallest reliance is to be placed on their accounts of what they have felt or done. If a man is really ill, he fears lest he should be thought to be simulating, and therefore exaggerates all his pains, and locates them in whatever he supposes to be the most vital parts of his system.Frequently the invalid slaves neglect or refuse to use the remedies prescribed for their recovery. They conceal pills, for instance, under their tongue, and declare that they have swallowed them, when, from their producing no effect, it willbe afterwards evident that they have not. This general custom I heard ascribed to habit, acquired when they were not very ill, and were loth to be made quite well enough to have to go to work again.Amusing incidents, illustrating this difficulty, I have heard narrated, showing that the slave rather enjoys getting a severe wound that lays him up:—he has his hand crushed by the fall of a piece of timber, and after the pain is alleviated, is heard to exclaim, “Bress der Lord—der haan b’long to masser—don’t reckon dis chile got no more corn to hoe dis yaar, no how.”Mr. H., of North Carolina, observed to me, in relation to this difficulty, that a man who had had much experience with negroes could generally tell, with a good deal of certainty, by their tongue, and their pulse, and their general aspect, whether they were really ill or not.“Last year,” said he, “I hired out one of my negroes to a railroad contractor. I suppose that he found he had to work harder than he would on the plantation, and became discontented, and one night he left the camp without asking leave. The next day he stopped at a public-house, and told the people he had fallen sick working on the railroad, and was going home to his master. They suspected he had run away, and, as he had no pass, they arrested him and sent him to the jail. In the night the sheriff sent me word that there was a boy, who said he belonged to me, in the jail, and he was very sick indeed, and I had better come and take care of him. I suspected how it was, and, as I was particularly engaged, I did not go near him till towards night, the next day. When I came to look at him, and heard his story, I felt quite sure that he was not sick; but, as he pretended to be suffering very much, I told the sheriff to give him plenty of salts and senna, and to be careful that he did not get muchof anything to eat. The next day I got a letter from the contractor, telling me that my nigger had run away, without any cause. So I rode over to the jail again, and told them to continue the same treatment until the boy got a good deal worse or a good deal better. Well, the rascal kept it up for a week, all the time groaning so, you’d think he couldn’t live many hours longer; but, after he had been in seven days, he all of a sudden said he’d got well, and wanted something to eat. As soon as I heard of it, I sent them word to give him a good paddling,[19]and handcuff him, and send him back to the railroad. I had to pay them for taking up a runaway, besides the sheriff’s fees, and a week’s board of the boy to the county.”But the same gentleman admitted that he had sometimes been mistaken, and had made men go to work when they afterwards proved to be really ill; therefore, when one of his people told him he was not able to work, he usually thought, “Very likely he’ll be all the better for a day’s rest, whether he’s really ill or not,” and would let him off without being particular in his examination. Lately he had been getting a new overseer, and when he was engaging him, he told him that this was his way. The overseer replied, “It’s my way, too, now; it didn’t use to be, but I had a lesson. There was a nigger one day at Mr. ——’s who was sulky and complaining; he said he couldn’t work. I looked at his tongue, and it was right clean, and I thought it was nothing but damned sulkiness, so I paddled him, and made him go to work; but, two days after, he was under ground. He was a good eight hundred dollar nigger, and it was a lesson to me about taming possums, that I ain’t agoing to forget in a hurry.”The liability of women, especially, to disorders and irregularities which cannot be detected by exterior symptoms, butwhich may be easily aggravated into serious complaints, renders many of them nearly valueless for work, because of the ease with which they can impose upon their owners. “The women on a plantation,” said one extensive Virginian slaveowner to me, “will hardly earn their salt, after they come to the breeding age: they don’t come to the field, and you go to the quarters, and ask the old nurse what’s the matter, and she says, ‘Oh, she’s not well, master; she not fit to work, sir;’ and what can you do? You have to take her word for it that something or other is the matter with her, and you dare not set her to work; and so she lay up till she feels like taking the air again, and plays the lady at your expense.”I was on a plantation where a woman had been excused from any sort of labour for more than two years, on the supposition that she was dying of phthisis. At last the overseer discovered that she was employed as a milliner and dressmaker by all the other coloured ladies of the vicinity; and upon taking her to the house, it was found that she had acquired a remarkable skill in these vocations. She was hired out the next year to a fashionable dress-maker in town, at handsome wages; and as, after that, she did not again “raise blood,” it was supposed that when she had done so before, it had been by artificial means. Such tricks every army and navy surgeon is familiar with.The interruption and disarrangement of operations of labour, occasioned by slaves “running away,” frequently causes great inconvenience and loss to those who employ them. It is said to often occur when no immediate motive can be guessed at for it—when the slave has been well treated, well fed, and not over-worked; and when he will be sure to suffer hardship from it, and be subject to severe punishment on his return, or if he is caught.This is often mentioned to illustrate the ingratitude andespecial depravity of the African race. I should suspect it to be, if it cannot be otherwise accounted for, the natural instinct of freedom in a man, working out capriciously, as the wild instincts of domesticated beasts and birds sometimes do.But the learned Dr. Cartwright, of the University of Louisiana, believes that slaves are subject to a peculiar form of mental disease, termed by himDrapetomania, which, like a malady that cats are liable to, manifests itself by an irrestrainable propensity torun away; and in a work on the diseases of negroes, highly esteemed at the South for its patriotism and erudition, he advises planters of the proper preventive and curative measures to be taken for it.He asserts that, “with the advantage of proper medical advice, strictly followed, this troublesome practice of running away, that many negroes have, can be almost entirely prevented.” Its symptoms and the usual empirical practice on the plantations are described: “Before negroes run away, unless they are frightened or panic-struck, they become sulky and dissatisfied. The cause of this sulkiness and dissatisfaction should be inquired into and removed, or they are apt to run away or fall into the negro consumption.” When sulky or dissatisfied without cause, the experience of those having most practice withdrapetomania, the Doctor thinks, has been in favour of “whipping themout of it.” It is vulgarly called, “whipping the devilout of them,” he afterwards informs us.Another droll sort of “indisposition,” thought to be peculiar to the slaves, and which must greatly affect their value, as compared with free labourers, is described by Dr. Cartwright, as follows:—“Dysæsthesia Æthiopica, or Hebetude of Mind and Obtuse Sensibility of Body. * * * From the careless movements of the individuals affected with this complaint, they are apt to do much mischief, which appears as if intentional, but is mostly owing to the stupidness of mind and insensibilityof the nerves induced by the disease. Thus they break, waste, and destroy everything they handle—abuse horses and cattle—tear, burn, or rend their own clothing, and, paying no attention to the rights of property, steal others to replace what they have destroyed. They wander about at night, and keep in a half-nodding state by day. They slight their work—cut up corn, cane, cotton, and tobacco, when hoeing it, as if for pure mischief. They raise disturbances with their overseers, and among their fellow-servants, without cause or motive, and seem to be insensible to pain when subjected to punishment. * * *“When left to himself, the negro indulges in his natural disposition to idleness and sloth, and does not take exercise enough to expand his lungs and vitalize his blood, but dozes out a miserable existence in the midst of filth and uncleanliness, being too indolent, and having too little energy of mind, to provide for himself proper food and comfortable clothing and lodging. The consequence is, that the blood becomes so highly carbonized and deprived of oxygen that it not only becomes unfit to stimulate the brain to energy, but unfit to stimulate the nerves of sensation distributed to the body. * * *“This is the disease calledDysæsthesia(a Greek term expressing the dull or obtuse sensation that always attends the complaint). When roused from sloth by the stimulus of hunger, he takes anything he can lay his hands on, and tramples on the rights as well as on the property of others, with perfect indifference. When driven to labour by the compulsive power of the white man, he performs the task assigned to him in a headlong, careless manner, treading down with his feet or cutting with his hoe the plants he is put to cultivate—breaking the tools he works with, and spoiling everything he touches that can be injured by careless handling. Hence the overseers call it ‘rascality,’ supposing that the mischief is intentionally done. * * *“The term, ‘rascality,’ given to this disease by overseers, is founded on an erroneous hypothesis, and leads to an incorrect empirical treatment, which seldom or never cures it.”There are many complaints described in Dr. Cartwright’s treatise, to which the negroes, in slavery, seem to be peculiarly subject.“More fatal than any other is congestion of the lungs,peripneumonia notha, often called cold plague, etc. * * *“TheFrambæsia, Piam, or Yaws, is acontagiousdisease, communicable by contact among those who greatly neglect cleanliness. It is supposed to be communicable, in a modified form, to the white race, among whom it resembles pseudo syphilis, or some disease of the nose, throat, or larynx. * * *“Negro-consumption, a disease almost unknown to medical men of theNorthern States and of Europe, is also sometimes fearfully prevalent among the slaves. ‘It is of importance,’ says the Doctor, ‘to know the pathognomic signs in its early stages, not only in regard to its treatment, but to detect impositions, as negroes afflicted with this complaint are often for sale; the acceleration of the pulse, on exercise, incapacitates them for labour, as they quickly give out, and have to leave their work. This induces their owners to sell them, although they may not know the cause of their inability to labour. Many of the negroes brought South, for sale, are in the incipient stages of this disease; they are found to be inefficient labourers, and are sold in consequence thereof. The effect of superstition—a firm belief that he is poisoned or conjured—upon the patient’s mind, already in a morbid state (dysæsthesia), and his health affected from hard usage, over-tasking or exposure, want of wholesome food, good clothing, warm, comfortable lodging, with the distressing idea (sometimes) that he is an object of hatred or dislike, both to his master or fellow-servants, and has no one to befriend him, tends directly to generate that erythism of mind which is the essential cause of negro-consumption.’ * * * ‘Remedies should be assisted by removing theoriginal causeof the dissatisfaction or trouble of mind, and by using every means to make the patient comfortable, satisfied, and happy.’”Longing for home generates a distinct malady, known to physicians asNostalgia, and there is a suggestive analogy between the treatment commonly employed to cure it and that recommended in this last advice of Dr. Cartwright.Discipline.—Under the slave system of labour, discipline must always be maintained by physical power. A lady of New York, spending a winter in a Southern city, had a hired slave-servant, who, one day, refused outright to perform some ordinary light domestic duty required of her. On the lady’s gently remonstrating with her, she immediately replied: “You can’t make me do it, and I won’t do it: I aint afeard of you whippin’ me.” The servant was right; the lady could not whip her, and was too tender-hearted to call in a man, or to send her to the guard-house to be whipped, as is the custom with Southern ladies, when their patience is exhausted, under such circumstances. She endeavoured, by kindness and by appeals to the girl’s good sense, to obtain a moralcontrol over her; but, after suffering continual annoyance and inconvenience, and after an intense trial of her feelings, for some time, she was at length obliged to go to her owner, and beg him to come and take her away from the house, on any terms. It was no better than having a lunatic or a mischievous and pilfering monomaniac quartered on her.[20]But often when courage and physical power, with the strength of the militia force and the army of the United States, if required, at the back of the master, are not wanting, there are a great variety of circumstances that make a resort to punishment inconvenient, if not impossible.Really well-trained, accomplished, and docile house-servants are seldom to be purchased or hired at the South, though they are found in old wealthy families rather oftener than first-rate English or French servants are at the North. It is, doubtless, a convenience to have even moderately good servants who cannot, at any time of their improved value or your necessity, demand to have their pay increased, or who cannot be drawn away from you by prospect of smaller demands and kinder treatment at your neighbour’s; but I believe few of those who are incessantly murmuring against this healthy operation of God’s good law of supply and demand would be willing to purchase exemption from it, at the price with which the masters and mistresses of the South do. They would pay, to get a certain amount of work done, three or four times as much, to the owner of the best sort of hired slaves, as they do to the commonest, stupidest Irish domestic drudges at the North, though the nominal wages by the week or year, in Virginia, are but little more than in New York.The number of servants usually found in a Southern family, of any pretension, always amazes a Northern lady. In one that I have visited, there are exactly three negroes to each white, the negroes being employed solely in the house.(A Southern lady, of an old and wealthy family, who had been for some time visiting a friend of mine in New York, said to her, as she was preparing to return home: “I cannot tell you how much, after being in your house so long, I dread to go home, and to have to take care of our servants again. We have a much smaller family of whites than you, but we have twelve servants, and your two accomplish a great deal more, and do their work a great deal better than our twelve. You think your girls are very stupid, and that they give you much trouble: but it is as nothing. There is hardly one of our servants that can be trusted to do the simplest work without being stood over. If I order a room to be cleaned, or a fire to be made in a distant chamber, I never can be sure I am obeyed unless I go there and see for myself. If I send a girl out to get anything I want for preparing the dinner, she is as likely as not to forget what is wanted, and not to come back till after the time at which dinner should be ready. A hand-organ in the street will draw all my girls out of the house; and while it remains near us I have no more command over them than over so many monkeys. The parade of a military company has sometimes entirely prevented me from having any dinner cooked; and when the servants, standing in the square looking at the soldiers, see my husband coming after them, they only laugh, and run away to the other side, like playful children.[21]And, when I reprimand them, they only say they don’t mean to do anything wrong,or they won’t do it again, all the time laughing as though it was all a joke. They don’t mind it at all. They are just as playful and careless as any wilful child; and they never will do any work if you don’t compel them.”)The slave employer, if he finds he has been so unfortunate as to hire a sulky servant, who cannot be made to work to his advantage, has no remedy but to solicit from his owner a deduction from the price he has agreed to pay for his labour, on the same ground that one would from a livery-stable keeper, if he had engaged a horse to go a journey, but found that he was not strong or skilful enough to keep him upon the road. But, if the slave is the property of his employer, and becomes “rascally,” the usual remedy is that which the veterinary surgeon recommended when he was called upon for advice how to cure a jibing horse: “Sellhim, my lord.” “Rascals” are “sent South” from Virginia, for the cure or alleviation of their complaint, in much greater numbers than consumptives are from the more Northern States.“How do you manage, then, when a man misbehaves, or is sick?” I have been often asked by Southerners, in discussing this question.If he is sick, I simply charge against him every half day of the time he is off work, and deduct it from his wages. If he is careless, or refuses to do what in reason I demand of him, I discharge him, paying him wages to the time he leaves. With new men in whom I have not confidence, I make a written agreement, before witnesses, on engaging them, that will permit me to do this. As for “rascality,” I never had but one case of anything approaching to what you call so. A man insolently contradicted me in the field: I told him to leave his job and go to the house, took hold and finished it myself, then went to the house, made out a written statement of account, counted out the balance in money due tohim, gave him the statement and the money, and told him he must go. He knew that he had failed of his duty, and that the law would sustain me, and we parted in a friendly manner, he expressing regret that his temper had driven him from a situation which had been agreeable and satisfactory to him. The probability is, that this single experience educated him so far that his next employer would have no occasion to complain of his “rascality;” and I very much doubt if any amount of corporeal punishment would have improved his temper in the least.“Sogering.”—That slaves have to be “humoured” a great deal, and that they very frequently cannot be made to do their master’s will, I have seen much evidence. Not that they often directly refuse to obey an order, but when they are directed to do anything for which they have a disinclination, they undertake it in such a way that the desired result is sure not to be accomplished. They cannot be driven by fear of punishment to do that which the labourers in free communities do cheerfully from their sense of duty, self-respect, or regard for their reputation and standing with their employer. A gentleman who had some free men in his employment in Virginia, that he had procured in New York, told me that he had been astonished, when a dam that he had been building began to give way in a freshet, to see how much more readily than negroes they would obey his orders, and do their best without orders, running into the water waist-deep, in mid-winter, without any hesitation or grumbling.The manager of a large candle-factory in London, in which the labourers are treated with an unusual degree of confidence and generosity, writes thus in a report to his directors:—“The present year promises to be a very good one as regards profit, in consequence of the enormous increase in the demand for candles. Nomere driving of the men and boys, by ourselves and those in authority under us, would have produced the sudden and very great increase of manufacture, necessary for keeping pace with this demand. It has been effected only by the hearty good-will with which the factory has worked, the men and boys making the great extra exertion, which they saw to be necessary to prevent our getting hopelessly in arrears with the orders, as heartily as if the question had been, how to avert some difficulty threatening themselves personally. One of the foremen remarked with truth, a few days back: ‘To look on them, one would think each was engaged in a little business of his own, so as to have only himself affected by the results of his work.’”A farmer in Lincolnshire, England, told me that once, during an extraordinary harvest season, he had a number of labourers at work without leaving the field or taking any repose for sixty hours—he himself working with them, and eating and drinking only with them during all the time. Such services men may give voluntarily, from their own regard to the value of property to be saved by it, or for the purpose of establishing their credit as worth good wages; but to require it of slaves would be intensely cruel, if not actually impossible. A man can work excessively on his own impulse as much easier than he can be driven to by another, as a horse travels easier in going towards his accustomed stable than in going from it. I mean—and every man who has ever served as a sailor or a soldier will know that it is no imaginary effect—that the actual fatigue, the waste of bodily energy, the expenditure of the physical capacity, is greater in one case than the other.Sailors and soldiers both, are led by certain inducements to place themselves within certain limits, and for a certain time, both defined by contract, in a condition resembling, in many particulars, that of slaves; and, although they are bound by their voluntary contract and by legal and moral considerations to obey orders, the fact that force is also used to secure their obedience to their officers, scarcely ever fails toproduce in them the identical vices which are complained of in slaves. They obey the letter, but defeat the intention of orders that do not please them; they are improvident, wasteful, reckless: they sham illness, and as Dr. Cartwright gives specific medical appellations to discontent, laziness, and rascality, so among sailors and soldiers, when men suddenly find themselves ill and unable to do their duty in times of peculiar danger, or when unusual labour is required, they are humorously said to be suffering under an attack of the powder-fever, the cape-fever, the ice-fever, the coast-fever, or the reefing-fever. The counteracting influences to these vices, which it is the first effort of every good officer to foster, are, first, regard to duty; second, patriotism; third,esprit du corps, or professional pride; fourth, self-respect, or personal pride; fifth, self-interest, hope of promotion, or of bounty, or of privileges in mitigation of their hard service, as reward for excellence. Things are never quickly done at sea, unless they are done with a will, or “cheerly,” as the sailor’s word is—that is, cheerfully. An army is never effective in the field when depressed in itsmorale.None of these promptings to excellence can be operative, except in a very low degree, to counteract the indolent and vicious tendencies of the Slavery, much more pure than the slavery of the army or the ship, by which the exertions of the Virginia labourer are obtained for his employer.Incidents, trifling in themselves, constantly betray to a stranger what must be the necessary consequences. The catastrophe of one such occurred since I began to write this letter. I requested a fire to be made in my room, as I was going out this morning. On my return, I found a grand fire—the room door having been closed upon it, and, by the way, I had to obtain assistance to open it, the lock being “out of order.” Just now, while I was writing, down tumbled upon the floor,and rolled away close to the valance of the bed, half a hodfull of ignited coal, which had been so piled up on the grate, and left without a fender or any guard, that this result was almost inevitable. And such carelessness of servants you have momentarily to notice.But the constantly-occurring delays, and the waste of time and labour that you encounter everywhere, are most annoying and provoking to a stranger. At an hotel, for instance, you go to your room and find no conveniences for washing; ring and ring again, and hear the office-keeper ring again and again. At length two servants appear together at your door, get orders, and go away. A quarter of an hour afterwards, perhaps, one returns with a pitcher of water, but no towels; and so on. Yet as the servants seem anxious to please, it can only result from want of system and order.Until the negro is big enough for his labour to be plainly profitable to his master, he has no training to application or method, but only to idleness and carelessness. Before the children arrive at a working age, they hardly come under the notice of their owner. An inventory of them is taken on the plantation at Christmas; and a planter told me that sometimes they escaped the attention of the overseer and were not returned at all, till twelve or thirteen years old. The only whipping of slaves I have seen in Virginia, has been of these wild, lazy children, as they are being broke in to work. They cannot be depended upon a minute, out of sight.You will see how difficult it would be, if it were attempted, to eradicate the indolent, careless, incogitant habits so formed in youth. But it is not systematically attempted, and the influences that continue to act upon a slave in the same direction, cultivating every quality at variance with industry, precision, forethought, and providence, are innumerable.It is not wonderful that the habits of the whole communityshould be influenced by, and be made to accommodate to these habits of its labourers. It irresistibly affects the whole industrial character of the people. You may see it in the habits and manners of the free white mechanics and trades-people. All of these must have dealings or be in competition with slaves, and so have their standard of excellence made low, and become accustomed to, until they are content with slight, false, unsound workmanship. You notice in all classes, vagueness in ideas of cost and value, and injudicious and unnecessary expenditure of labour by a thoughtless manner of setting about work.[22]For instance, I noticed a rivet loose in my umbrella, as I was going out from my hotel during a shower, and stepped into an adjoining shop to have it repaired.“I can’t do it in less than half an hour, sir, and it will be worth a quarter,” said the locksmith, replying to inquiries.“I shouldn’t think it need take you so long—it is merely a rivet to be tightened.”“I shall have to take it all to pieces, and it will take me all of half an hour.”“I don’t think you need take it to pieces.”“Yes, I shall—there’s no other way to do it.”“Then, as I can’t well wait so long, I will not trouble you with it;” and I went back to the hotel, and with the fire-poker did the work myself, in less than a minute, as well as he could have done it in a week, and went on my way, saving half an hour and quarter of a dollar, like a “Yankee.”Virginians laugh at us for such things: but it is because they are indifferent to these fractions, or, as they say, above regarding them, that they cannot do their own business with the rest of the world; and all their commerce, as they areabsurdly complaining, only goes to enrich Northern men. A man forced to labour under their system is morally driven to indolence, carelessness, indifference to the results of skill, heedlessness, inconstancy of purpose, improvidence, and extravagance. Precisely the opposite qualities are those which are encouraged, and inevitably developed in a man who has to make his living, and earn all his comfort by his voluntarily-directed labour.“It is with dogs,” says an authority on the subject, “as it is with horses; no work is so well done as that which is done cheerfully.” And it is with men, both black and white, as it is with horses and with clogs; it is even more so, because the strength and cunning of a man is less adapted to being “broken” to the will of another than that of either dogs or horses.Work accomplished in a given time.—Mr. T. R. Griscom, of Petersburg, Virginia, stated to me, that he once took accurate account of the labour expended in harvesting a large field of wheat; and the result was that one quarter of an acre a day was secured for each able hand engaged in cradling, raking, and binding. The crop was light, yielding not over six bushels to the acre. In New York a gang of fair cradlers and binders would be expected, under ordinary circumstances, to secure a crop of wheat, yielding from twenty to thirty bushels to the acre, at the rate of about two acres a day for each man.Mr. Griscom formerly resided in New Jersey; and since living in Virginia has had the superintendence of very large agricultural operations, conducted with slave-labour. After I had, in a letter, intended for publication, made use of this testimony, I called upon him to ask if he would object to my giving his name with it. He was so good as to permit me todo so, and said that I might add that the ordinary waste in harvesting wheat in Virginia, through the carelessness of the negroes, beyond that which occurs in the hands of ordinary Northern labourers, is equal in value to what a Northern farmer would often consider a satisfactory profit on his crop. He also wished me to say that it was his deliberate opinion, formed not without much and accurate observation, that four Virginia slaves do not, when engaged in ordinary agricultural operations, accomplish as much, on an average, as one ordinary free farm labourer in New Jersey.Mr. Griscom is well known at Petersburg as a man remarkable for accuracy and preciseness; and no man’s judgment on this subject could be entitled to more respect.Another man, who had superintended labour of the same character at the North and in Virginia, whom I questioned closely, agreed entirely with Mr. Griscom, believing that four negroes had to be supported on every farm in the State to accomplish the same work which was ordinarily done by one free labourer in New York.A clergyman from Connecticut, who had resided for many years in Virginia, told me that what a slave expected to spend a day upon, a Northern labourer would, he was confident, usually accomplish by eleven o’clock in the morning.In a letter on this subject, most of the facts given in which have been already narrated in this volume, written from Virginia to theNew York Times, I expressed the conviction that, at the most, not more than one-half as much labour was ordinarily accomplished in Virginia by a certain number of slaves, in a given time, as by an equal number of free labourers in New York. The publication of this letter induced a number of persons to make public the conclusions of their own experience or observations on this subject. So far as I know, these, in every case, sustained my conclusions, or, if any doubtwas expressed, it was that I had under-estimated the superior economy of free-labour. As affording evidence more valuable than my own on this important point, from the better opportunities of forming sound judgment, which a residence at different times, in both Virginia and a Free State had given the writers, I have reprinted, in anAppendix, two of these letters, together with a quantity of other testimony from Southern witnesses on this subject, which I beg the reader, who has any doubt of the correctness of my information, not to neglect.“Driving.”—On mentioning to a gentleman in Virginia (who believed that slave-labour was better and cheaper than free-labour), Mr. Griscom’s observation, he replied: that without doubting the correctness of the statement of that particular instance, he was sure that if four men did not harvest more than an acre of wheat a day, they could not have been well “driven.” He knew that, if properly driven, threatened with punishment, and punished if necessary, negroes would do as much work as it was possible for any white man to do. The same gentleman, however, at another time, told me that negroes were seldom punished; not oftener, he presumed, than apprentices were, at the North; that the driving of them was generally left to overseers, who were the laziest and most worthless dogs in the world, frequently not demanding higher wages for their services than one of the negroes whom they were given to manage might be hired for. Another gentleman told me that he would rather, if the law would permit it, have some of his negroes for overseers, than any white man he had ever been able to obtain in that capacity.Another planter, whom I requested to examine a letter on the subject, that I had prepared for theTimes, that he might, if he could, refute my calculations, or give me any facts of an opposite character, after reading it said: “The truth is, that,in general, a slave does not do half the work he easily might; and which, by being harsh enough with him, he can be made to do. When I came into possession of my plantation, I soon found the overseer then upon it was good for nothing, and told him I had no further occasion for his services: I then went to driving the negroes myself. In the morning, when I went out, one of them came up to me and asked what work he should go about. I told him to go into the swamp and cut some wood. ‘Well, massa,’ said he, ‘s’pose you wants me to do kordins we’s been use to doin’; ebery nigger cut a cord a day.’ ‘A cord! that’s what you have been used to doing, is it?’ said I. ‘Yes, massa, dat’s wot dey always makes a nigger do roun’ heah—a cord a day, dat’s allers de task.’ ‘Well, now, old man,’[23]said I, ‘you go and cut me two cords to-day.’ ‘Oh, massa! two cords! Nobody couldn’ do dat. Oh! massa, dat’s too hard! Nebber heard o’ nobody’s cuttin’ more’n a cord o’ wood in a day, roun’ heah. No nigger couldn’ do it.’ ‘Well, old man, you have two cords of wood cut to-night, or to-morrow morning you will have two hundred lashes—that’s all there is about it. So, look sharp!’ Of course, he did it, and no negro has ever cut less than two cords a day for me since, though my neighbours still get but one cord. It was just so with a great many other things—mauling rails: I always have two hundred rails mauled in a day; just twice what it is the custom, in our country, to expect of a negro, and just twice as many as my negroes had been made to do before I managed them myself.”This only makes it more probable that the amount of labour ordinarily and generally performed by slaves in Virginia isvery small, compared with that done by the labourers of the Free States.Of course, it does not follow that all articles produced by such labour cost four times as much as in New York. There are other elements of cost besides labour, as land and fuel. I could not have a bushel of lime or salt or coal dug for me on my farm at Staten Island at any price. There are farms in Virginia where either could be obtained by an hour’s labour.Yet now, as I think of all the homes of which I have had a glimpse, it does not seem to me that men who are reputed to be worth $400,000 have equal advantages of wealth here with those whose property is valued at a quarter that, in the Eastern Free States; men with $40,000 live not as well here, all things considered, as men worth $10,000 at the North; and the farmer who owns half a dozen negroes, and who I suppose must be called worth $4000, does not approach in his possession of civilized comfort, the well-to-do working man with us, who rents a small house, and whose property consists in its furniture, his tools, skill, and strength, and who has a few hundred dollars laid up in the Savings-Bank, against a rainy day. I do not need to ask a farmer, then, any longer why he lifts his stable door into its place, and fastens it by leaning a log against it, as he evidently has been doing for years. He cannot afford to buy or hire a blacksmith for his little farm, and what with going and coming, and paying in corn which must be carried a number of miles over scarcely passable roads, our thriftiest farmers would wait for better times, perhaps, before they would take half the trouble or give a third as much corn as the blacksmith will want for the job, to save a minute’s time whenever they needed to enter and leave their stable. And so with everything. Any substantial work costs so much, not alone in money or corndirectly, but in the time and trouble in effecting the exchange, that the people make shift and do without it. And this is evidently the case not only with the people as individuals and families, but in their community. It is more obvious, if possible, in the condition of the houses of worship, the schools, the roads, the public conveyances; finally, it accounts for what at first sight appears the marvellous neglect or waste of the natural resources of the country, and it no longer surprises me that a farmer points out a coal bed, which has never been worked, in the bank of a stream which has never been dammed, in the midst of a forest of fine timber trees, with clay and lime and sand convenient, and who yet lives in a miserable smoky cabin of logs on a diet almost exclusively formed of pounded maize and bacon. Nor, when I ask, if a little painstaking here and there would not save much waste of fertility, that he should reply, that inasmuch as land enough, equally good, can be bought for six dollars an acre, the whole fertile matter can be better lost than a week’s labour be spent to save all that will not go into this year’s crop.To this general rule of make shift, there is but rare exception to the general rule of the difficulty or expense of accomplishing any ordinary aim of civilized, in distinction from savage society. I am inclined to think that there is none in Virginia. There are, however, individuals and localities and communities and enterprises, upon which the forces of wealth—including both capital and talent, or energy—seem to have concentrated, just as we sometimes observe to be the case at the North. It is true also, as Virginians are fond of asserting, that absolute destitution of the means of preserving life is more rare than at the North, but then life is barely preserved with little labour by a naked savage in the wilderness; and it must be said that a great number, I almost think a majority, of theEastern Virginians live but one step removed from what we should deem great destitution at the North. I am sure, upon consideration, that this phrase would convey no unjust idea of the life of the majority of the Virginians, whom I have seen, to the people of a New England manufacturing town.I have said that there are points where the forces of wealth seem to have concentrated. As a rule the farm-labour of a slave accomplishes not half as much in a day, as at the North; that of a white man, probably, not a third; that of most mechanics, because of their carelessness and unfaithfulness, much less than of most at the North, although they are paid more than there. But it is true, there are apparent exceptions, and I have been at times a good deal puzzled by them. Generally a patient study discovers a concealed force. Most commonly, I think, the explanation is given in the converse of the maxim that “high wages are the cheapest.” The workman who commands much more than the ruling rate of wages is hard to be got, and proverbially accomplishes much more for his employer than the excess of his wages indicates. The man who cannot command the current rates is the first to be dropped off on a reduction, the last to be taken on at an increase of force. As prime field-hand slaves furnish the standard of labour in Virginia, and the vast majority of labourers are far below that standard in quality, their labour is paid much less, and it is of less value relative to its cost. Most of the labouring class of Virginia are of a quality which our farmers would call “dear at any price.” If, then, by unusually skilful and energetic management, under favourable circumstances, the labour of slaves, in certain instances, seems to accomplish as much for its course as that of free labourers at the North, it does not follow that results of labour of all kinds in Virginia do not cost ordinarily, and on average, twice or thrice as much as in the adjoining Free States.Whenever I have found unusual efficiency apparent in any enterprise in Virginia—as sometimes in railroadconstruction, milling, and mining—I have thus far invariably found the negroes employed to be picked men, and, when my inquiries have been frankly answered, that they were working under some unusual stimulus. For instance, a tobacco manufacturer pays the owner of a valuable negro $140 a year for his services, undertaking also to feed and clothe him and otherwise care for his permanent value. He then offers to pay the negro a certain rate per pound for all the tobacco he works up beyond a certain quantity. One of the largest manufacturers informed me that he paid seldom less than $60 a year, and sometimes over $300, to each slave he used, in addition to the rent paid their masters, which was from $100 to $150 a year. I did not learn the averages, but suppose that, while the nominal wages for the labour of these slaves was but little more than the ruling market-rate of $120 a year, their labour really cost the manufacturer at least double that. Hardly any of the white labour employed in enterprises which are pursued with energy and efficiency is native, nor does it ever, so far as I have seen, seem to be established and at home.
An Englishman will cross three thousand miles of sea, and, landing in our Free States, find, under a different sky and climate, a people speaking the same language, influenced by the same literature, giving allegiance to the same common law, and with not very dissimilar tastes, manners, or opinions, on the whole, to those of his own people. What most strikes him is an apparent indifference to conditions of living which he would at home call shabby. He will find men, however, at whose homes he will hardly see anything, either of substance, custom, or manner, by which he would know that he was out of England, and if he asks how these manage to get waiters who do not smell of the stable; and grooms who keep stirrups bright; roofs which do not leak; lawns which are better than stubble fields; walks which are not grassy; fences which do not need shoreing up; staunch dogs; clean guns; strong boots and clothes that will go whole through a thicket; the true answer will be, by taking double the pains and paying double as much as would be necessary to secure the same results in England, and that few men are willing or able to do this.
I make half a day’s journey southward here, and I find, with an equal resemblance between the people and those I left, an indifference to conditions of living, which Mrs. Stowe’s Ophelia describes as “shiftless,” and which makes the samesort of impression on my mind, as the state of things at the North does upon an Englishman’s. But, in this case, there has been no change in the skies; I wear the same clothing, or if I come from the low sea-board and, going in-land, gain elevation, I need some better protection against cold. I also find exceptions; how are they to be accounted for? The first step does not seem difficult. In this well-provided, hospitable, and most agreeable household, for instance, there are four times as many servants as in one which would otherwise be as similar as possible to it at the North; to say nothing of the governess, or of the New York plumber, who has been at work here for a month; or of the doctor, who, having come fifteen miles to lance the baby’s gums, stays of course to dine with us; or of the German, who I am told—such is the value of railroads even at a distance—left Richmond only at nine o’clock last night, and having tuned the piano, will return in time for his classes there to-morrow; or of the patent chain-pump pedlar, whose horses have been knocked up in crossing the swamp; or of the weekly mail-carrier, who cannot go on till the logs which have floated off the bridge are restored. Mr. T. means soon, he tells me, to build a substantial bridge there, because his nearest respectable neighbors are in that direction. His nearest neighbours on this side of the creek, by the way, he seems to regard with suspicion. They live in solitary cabins, and he don’t think they do a day’s work in a year; but they somehow manage to always have corn enough to keep themselves from starving, and as they certainly don’t raise half enough for this, the supposition is that his negroes steal it and supply it in exchange for whisky. Clearly the negroes do get whisky, somewhere; for even their preacher, who has been a capital blacksmith, and but for this vice would be worth $2500, was taken with delirium tremens last Sunday night, and set one of the outhouses on fire, sothat the energetic Mr. T., who will have things right about his “place,” has determined to get rid of him, and will have him sold for what he will fetch at the sheriff’s sale at the County House to-morrow; and Prior, the overseer, must go to Richmond immediately, to see about a new blacksmith, for the plumber says that until one is got he must stand idle, and the ploughs are all needing repair. A less energetic man would keep old Joe, in spite of his vice, on account of his old wife and many children, and out of regard to the spiritual interests of his flock, for when not very drunk, old Joe is reckoned the best preacher in five counties. But Mr. T. is determined to live like a gentleman; he is not going to have the hoofs of his thorough-breds spoiled; and he will have hot and cold water laid on; and he tells Prior that if he can find a first-rate shoer, young, healthy, active, and strong, and handy at anything in the way of his trade, not to lose him, if he has to go as high as $250, for the year; or, if necessary, he will buy such an one outright, at any fair price, if he can have him on trial for a month. If there is none in market, he must try to induce that Scotchman who hung the bells to come up again for a few days. “Treat him like a gentleman,” he says, “and tell him he will be paid whatever he asks, and make as if it were a frolic.”
$250 a year, and a man’s board and clothing, with iron, coal, and, possibly, doctor’s bills to be added, is certainly a high price to pay for the blacksmith’s work of a single farm. This exceptional condition, then, it is obvious on the face of things, is maintained at an enormous expense, not only of money, but of nerve, time, temper, if not of humanity, or the world’s judgment of humanity. There is much inherited wealth, a cotton plantation or two in Mississippi and a few slips of paper in a broker’s office in Wall Street, that account for the comfort of this Virginia farmer, as, with something ofthe pride which apes humility, he likes to style himself. And after all he has no road on which he can drive his fine horses; his physician supposes the use of chloric ether, as an anasthetic agent, to be a novel and interesting subject of after-dinner eloquence; he has no church within twenty miles, but one of logs, attendance on which is sure to bring on an attack of neuralgia with his wife, and where only an ignorant ranter of a different faith from his own preaches at irregular intervals; there is no school which he is willing that his children should attend; his daily papers come weekly, and he sees no books except such as he has especially ordered from Norton or Stevens.
This being the exception, how is it with the community as a whole?
As a whole, the community makes shift to live, some part tolerably, the most part wretchedly enough, with arrangements such as one might expect to find in a country in stress of war. Nothing which can be postponed or overlooked, without immediate serious inconvenience, gets attended to. One soon neglects to inquire why this is not done or that; the answer is so certain to be that there is no proper person to be got to do it without more trouble (or expense) than it is thought to be worth. Evidently habit reconciles the people to do without much, the permanent want of which would seem likely to be intolerable to those who had it in possession. Nevertheless, they complain a good deal, showing that the evil is an increasing one. Verbal statements to the same effect as the following, written by a Virginian to the ‘Journal of Commerce,’ are often heard.
“Hundreds of farmers and planters, mill owners, tobacconists, cotton factories, iron works, steam-boat owners, master builders, contractors, carpenters, stage proprietors, canal boat owners, railroad companies, and others, are, and have been short of hands these five years past, in Maryland,Virginia, and the Carolinas. They pay $150 or $200 a year each hand, and his board, and stealing, and if that hand be present or absent, sick or well, it is all the same. His clothes cost say $30 more, and in many cases the hirer has to pay his policy of life insurance.”
“Hundreds of farmers and planters, mill owners, tobacconists, cotton factories, iron works, steam-boat owners, master builders, contractors, carpenters, stage proprietors, canal boat owners, railroad companies, and others, are, and have been short of hands these five years past, in Maryland,Virginia, and the Carolinas. They pay $150 or $200 a year each hand, and his board, and stealing, and if that hand be present or absent, sick or well, it is all the same. His clothes cost say $30 more, and in many cases the hirer has to pay his policy of life insurance.”
For all that, labourers are being constantly sent away. I have not been on or seen a railroad train, departing southward, that it did not convey a considerable number of the best class of negro labourers, in charge of a trader who was intending to sell them to cotton-planters. Thus it is evident that, great as is the need for more labourers here, there is a still greater demand for them to raise cotton; and in order to supply this demand, the Virginians suffer the most extreme inconvenience. The wonder is, that their own demand for labour is not supplied by free labourers. But it appears that where negro slavery has long existed, certain occupations are, by custom, assigned to the slaves, and a white man is not only reluctant to engage himself in those occupations, but is greatly disinclined to employ other whites in them. I have often asked: “Why do you not employ white men?” (for this or that purpose for which slaves could not be procured;) and, almost always, the reply has been given in a tone which indicated a little feeling, which, if I do not misapprehend it, means that the employment of whites in duties upon which slaves are ordinarily employed is felt to be not only humiliating to the whites employed, but also to the employer.
Nor is this difficulty merely a matter of sentiment. I have been answered: “Our poor white men will not do such work if they can very well help it, and they will do no more of it than they are obliged to. They will do a few days’ work when it is necessary to provide themselves with the necessaries of life, but they are not used to steady labour; they work reluctantly, and will not bear driving; they cannot beworked to advantage with slaves, and it is inconvenient to look after them, if you work them separately.” And then, when I push the inquiries by asking, why not send North and get some of our labourers? “Well—the truth is, I have been used to driving niggers, and I don’t think I could drive white men. I should not know how to manage them.” So far as I understand the matter, then, Virginia is in this position: there are slaves enough in most of the country to mainly exclude white labourers from labouring men’s occupations and to make the white people dependent on slave-labour for certain things; but the slaves being drawn off almost as fast as they grow up to grow cotton in the more Southern States, and those which remain being managed with almost as much regard for this demand as for the local demand for labour, this local demand is not systematically provided for; and even if there were the intention to provide for it, there are no sufficient means to do so, as the white population increases in number much more rapidly than the slave.[17]I do not mean that no whites are employed in the ordinary occupations of slaves in Virginia. In some parts there are few or no slaves, and the white people who live in these parts, of course do not live without having work done; but even in these districts it is hardly possible to find men or women, who are willing and able to serve others well and faithfully, on wages. In some parts white working men also drift in slowly from the Free States, but they are too few and scattered to perceptibly affect the habits of the people and customs of the country,while they rapidly adapt themselves to these habits and customs. Thus it is questionable if as yet they do not add more to the general demand for labour than they supply to reduce it.
Still, it is where slaves remain in the greatest numbers, proportionately to the whites, that the scarcity of labourers, or what is practically the same thing, the cost of getting desirable work done, is most obvious. Schools, churches, roads, bridges, fences, houses, stables, are all more frequent, and in better repair, where the proportion of whites to slaves is large, than in the “negro counties,” as some are popularly designated, from the preponderance of the slave population in them. I find this observation confirmed by an examination of the Census returns and other documents.
In the North-western counties, Cabell, Mason, Brooke, and Tyler, in or adjoining which there are no large towns, but a free labouring population, with slaves in ratio to the freemen as one to fifteen only, the value of land is over seven dollars and three quarters an acre.
In Southampton, Surrey, James Town and New Kent, in which the slave population is as 1 to 2·2, the value of land is but little more than half as much—$4.50 an acre.
The value of land of course rises with its availability to contribute to the wants of men, and it can only be made available as labour can be applied to it.
In Surrey, Prince George, Charles City, and James, adjoining counties on James River, and originally having some of the most productive soil in the State, and now supplied with the public conveniences which have accrued in two hundred years of occupation by a civilized and Christian community, the number of slaves being at present, to that of whites as 1 to 1·9, the value of land is but $6 an acre.
In Fairfax, another of the first settled counties, and inwhich, twenty-years ago, land was even less in value than in the James River counties, it is now become worth twice as much.
The slave population, once greater than that of whites, has been reduced by emigration and sale, till there are now less than half as many slaves as whites. In the place of slaves has come another sort of people. The change which has taken place, and the cause of it, is thus simply described in the Agricultural Report of the County to the Commissioner of Patents.[18]
“In appearance, the county is so changed in many parts, that a traveller who passed over it ten years ago would not now recognize it. Thousands and thousands of acres had been cultivated in tobacco by the former proprietors, would not pay the cost, and were abandoned as worthless, and became covered with a wilderness of pines. These lands have been purchased by Northern emigrants; the large tracts divided and subdivided and cleared of pines; and neat farm-houses and barns, with smiling fields of grain and grass in the season, salute the delighted gaze of the beholder. Ten years ago it was a mooted question whether Fairfax lands could be made productive; and if so, would they pay the cost? This problem has been satisfactorily solved by many, and in consequence of the above altered state of things school-houses and churches have doubled in number.”
“In appearance, the county is so changed in many parts, that a traveller who passed over it ten years ago would not now recognize it. Thousands and thousands of acres had been cultivated in tobacco by the former proprietors, would not pay the cost, and were abandoned as worthless, and became covered with a wilderness of pines. These lands have been purchased by Northern emigrants; the large tracts divided and subdivided and cleared of pines; and neat farm-houses and barns, with smiling fields of grain and grass in the season, salute the delighted gaze of the beholder. Ten years ago it was a mooted question whether Fairfax lands could be made productive; and if so, would they pay the cost? This problem has been satisfactorily solved by many, and in consequence of the above altered state of things school-houses and churches have doubled in number.”
The following substantiates what I have said of the inavailability of the native whites for supplying the place of the negroes exported to the cotton plantations.
From the Patent Office Report for 1847.“As to the price of labour, our mechanics charge from one to two dollars a day. As to agricultural labour, we have none. Our poor are poor becausethey will not work, therefore are seldom employed.“Chas. Yancey,“Buckingham Co., Virginia.”
From the Patent Office Report for 1847.
“As to the price of labour, our mechanics charge from one to two dollars a day. As to agricultural labour, we have none. Our poor are poor becausethey will not work, therefore are seldom employed.
“Chas. Yancey,“Buckingham Co., Virginia.”
The sentence, “As to agricultural labour, we have none,” must mean no free labour, the number of slaves in this county being according to the Census 8,161, or nearly 3,000 morethan the whole white population. There are also 250 free negroes in the county.
From a Correspondent of the ‘American Agriculturist,’ Feb. 14, 1855.“As to labourers, we work chiefly slaves, not because they are cheaper, but rather because they are the onlyreliablelabour we can get. The whites here engage to work forless price than the blackscan be got for; yet they will not work well, andrarely work out the time specified. If any of your friends come here and wish to work whites, I would advise them by all means to bring them with them; for our white labourers are far inferior to our blacks, and our black labour is far inferior to what we read and hear of your labourers.“C. G. G.“Albemarle Co., Virginia.”
From a Correspondent of the ‘American Agriculturist,’ Feb. 14, 1855.
“As to labourers, we work chiefly slaves, not because they are cheaper, but rather because they are the onlyreliablelabour we can get. The whites here engage to work forless price than the blackscan be got for; yet they will not work well, andrarely work out the time specified. If any of your friends come here and wish to work whites, I would advise them by all means to bring them with them; for our white labourers are far inferior to our blacks, and our black labour is far inferior to what we read and hear of your labourers.
“C. G. G.“Albemarle Co., Virginia.”
In Albemarle there are over thirteen thousand slaves to less than twelve thousand whites.
Among the native Virginians I find most intelligent men, very ready to assert that slavery is no disadvantage to Virginia, and, as necessary to the maintenance of this assertion, that slave-labour is no clearer than free-labour, that is, than free-labour would be, if slavery did not exist. It is even said—and, as I have shown, it is practically true, at least wherever slavery has not in a great measure withdrawn from the field—that white labour cannot live in competition with slave-labour. In other words, the holder of slave-labour controls the local market for labour, and the cost of slave-labour fixes the cost of everything which is produced by slave-labour. But it is a mistake which the Virginians generally make, when they jump from this to the conclusion that slave-labour is therefore cheaper under all circumstances than free-labour. It is evident that slaves are valuable for another purpose than to supply the local demand for their labour, namely, to supply the demand of the cotton planter; consequently those slaves which are employed to supply the local demand, must be employed either at a loss, or at what they are worth to the cotton planter. Whether this is more or less than free-labourwould cost if the field were open, can only be ascertained by comparing the cost of slave-labour in Virginia with the cost of free-labour in the Free States.
An exact comparison on a large scale I cannot find the means of making, but I have taken a great many notes which lead me with confidence to a few important general conclusions.
Wages.—Many thousand slaves have been hired in Eastern Virginia during the time of my visit. The wages paid for able working men—sound, healthy, in good condition, and with no especial vices, from twenty to thirty years old—are from $110 to $140; the average, as nearly as I can ascertain, from very extended inquiry, being $120 per year, with board and lodging, and certain other expenses. These wages must represent exactly the cost of slave-labour, because any considerations which would prevent the owner of a slave disposing of his labour for those wages, when the labour for his own purposes would not be worth as much, are so many hindrances upon the free disposal of his property, and thereby deduct from its actual value, as measured with money.
As the large majority of slaves are employed in agricultural labour, and many of those, hired at the prices I have mentioned, are taken directly from the labour of the farm, and are skilled in no other, these wages represent the cost of agricultural labour in Eastern Virginia.
In New York, the usual wages for similar men, if Americans, white or black, are exactly the same in the money part; for Irish or German labourers the most common wages are $10 per month, for summer, and $8 per month, for winter, or from $96 to $120 a year, the average being about $108.
The hirer has, in addition to paying wages for the slave, to feed and to clothe him; the free labourer requires also to beboarded, but not to be clothed by his employer. The opinion is universal in Virginia, that the slaves are better fed than the Northern labourers. This is, however, a mistake, and we must consider that the board of the Northern labourer would cost at least as much more as the additional cost of clothing to the slave. Comparing man with man, with reference simply to equality of muscular power and endurance, my final judgment is, that the wages for common labourers are twenty-five per cent. higher in Virginia than in New York.
Loss from disability of the labourer.—This to the employer of free labourers need be nothing. To the slave-master it is of varying consequence: sometimes small, often excessively embarrassing, and always a subject of anxiety and suspicion. I have not yet made the inquiry on any plantation where as many as twenty negroes are employed together, that I have not found one or more of the field-hands not at work, on account of some illness, strain, bruise, or wound, of which he or she was complaining; and in such cases the proprietor or overseer has, I think, never failed to express his suspicion that the invalid was really as well able to work as anyone else on the plantation. It is said to be nearly as difficult to form a satisfactory diagnosis of negroes’ disorders as it is of infants’, because their imagination of symptoms is so vivid, and because not the smallest reliance is to be placed on their accounts of what they have felt or done. If a man is really ill, he fears lest he should be thought to be simulating, and therefore exaggerates all his pains, and locates them in whatever he supposes to be the most vital parts of his system.
Frequently the invalid slaves neglect or refuse to use the remedies prescribed for their recovery. They conceal pills, for instance, under their tongue, and declare that they have swallowed them, when, from their producing no effect, it willbe afterwards evident that they have not. This general custom I heard ascribed to habit, acquired when they were not very ill, and were loth to be made quite well enough to have to go to work again.
Amusing incidents, illustrating this difficulty, I have heard narrated, showing that the slave rather enjoys getting a severe wound that lays him up:—he has his hand crushed by the fall of a piece of timber, and after the pain is alleviated, is heard to exclaim, “Bress der Lord—der haan b’long to masser—don’t reckon dis chile got no more corn to hoe dis yaar, no how.”
Mr. H., of North Carolina, observed to me, in relation to this difficulty, that a man who had had much experience with negroes could generally tell, with a good deal of certainty, by their tongue, and their pulse, and their general aspect, whether they were really ill or not.
“Last year,” said he, “I hired out one of my negroes to a railroad contractor. I suppose that he found he had to work harder than he would on the plantation, and became discontented, and one night he left the camp without asking leave. The next day he stopped at a public-house, and told the people he had fallen sick working on the railroad, and was going home to his master. They suspected he had run away, and, as he had no pass, they arrested him and sent him to the jail. In the night the sheriff sent me word that there was a boy, who said he belonged to me, in the jail, and he was very sick indeed, and I had better come and take care of him. I suspected how it was, and, as I was particularly engaged, I did not go near him till towards night, the next day. When I came to look at him, and heard his story, I felt quite sure that he was not sick; but, as he pretended to be suffering very much, I told the sheriff to give him plenty of salts and senna, and to be careful that he did not get muchof anything to eat. The next day I got a letter from the contractor, telling me that my nigger had run away, without any cause. So I rode over to the jail again, and told them to continue the same treatment until the boy got a good deal worse or a good deal better. Well, the rascal kept it up for a week, all the time groaning so, you’d think he couldn’t live many hours longer; but, after he had been in seven days, he all of a sudden said he’d got well, and wanted something to eat. As soon as I heard of it, I sent them word to give him a good paddling,[19]and handcuff him, and send him back to the railroad. I had to pay them for taking up a runaway, besides the sheriff’s fees, and a week’s board of the boy to the county.”
But the same gentleman admitted that he had sometimes been mistaken, and had made men go to work when they afterwards proved to be really ill; therefore, when one of his people told him he was not able to work, he usually thought, “Very likely he’ll be all the better for a day’s rest, whether he’s really ill or not,” and would let him off without being particular in his examination. Lately he had been getting a new overseer, and when he was engaging him, he told him that this was his way. The overseer replied, “It’s my way, too, now; it didn’t use to be, but I had a lesson. There was a nigger one day at Mr. ——’s who was sulky and complaining; he said he couldn’t work. I looked at his tongue, and it was right clean, and I thought it was nothing but damned sulkiness, so I paddled him, and made him go to work; but, two days after, he was under ground. He was a good eight hundred dollar nigger, and it was a lesson to me about taming possums, that I ain’t agoing to forget in a hurry.”
The liability of women, especially, to disorders and irregularities which cannot be detected by exterior symptoms, butwhich may be easily aggravated into serious complaints, renders many of them nearly valueless for work, because of the ease with which they can impose upon their owners. “The women on a plantation,” said one extensive Virginian slaveowner to me, “will hardly earn their salt, after they come to the breeding age: they don’t come to the field, and you go to the quarters, and ask the old nurse what’s the matter, and she says, ‘Oh, she’s not well, master; she not fit to work, sir;’ and what can you do? You have to take her word for it that something or other is the matter with her, and you dare not set her to work; and so she lay up till she feels like taking the air again, and plays the lady at your expense.”
I was on a plantation where a woman had been excused from any sort of labour for more than two years, on the supposition that she was dying of phthisis. At last the overseer discovered that she was employed as a milliner and dressmaker by all the other coloured ladies of the vicinity; and upon taking her to the house, it was found that she had acquired a remarkable skill in these vocations. She was hired out the next year to a fashionable dress-maker in town, at handsome wages; and as, after that, she did not again “raise blood,” it was supposed that when she had done so before, it had been by artificial means. Such tricks every army and navy surgeon is familiar with.
The interruption and disarrangement of operations of labour, occasioned by slaves “running away,” frequently causes great inconvenience and loss to those who employ them. It is said to often occur when no immediate motive can be guessed at for it—when the slave has been well treated, well fed, and not over-worked; and when he will be sure to suffer hardship from it, and be subject to severe punishment on his return, or if he is caught.
This is often mentioned to illustrate the ingratitude andespecial depravity of the African race. I should suspect it to be, if it cannot be otherwise accounted for, the natural instinct of freedom in a man, working out capriciously, as the wild instincts of domesticated beasts and birds sometimes do.
But the learned Dr. Cartwright, of the University of Louisiana, believes that slaves are subject to a peculiar form of mental disease, termed by himDrapetomania, which, like a malady that cats are liable to, manifests itself by an irrestrainable propensity torun away; and in a work on the diseases of negroes, highly esteemed at the South for its patriotism and erudition, he advises planters of the proper preventive and curative measures to be taken for it.
He asserts that, “with the advantage of proper medical advice, strictly followed, this troublesome practice of running away, that many negroes have, can be almost entirely prevented.” Its symptoms and the usual empirical practice on the plantations are described: “Before negroes run away, unless they are frightened or panic-struck, they become sulky and dissatisfied. The cause of this sulkiness and dissatisfaction should be inquired into and removed, or they are apt to run away or fall into the negro consumption.” When sulky or dissatisfied without cause, the experience of those having most practice withdrapetomania, the Doctor thinks, has been in favour of “whipping themout of it.” It is vulgarly called, “whipping the devilout of them,” he afterwards informs us.
Another droll sort of “indisposition,” thought to be peculiar to the slaves, and which must greatly affect their value, as compared with free labourers, is described by Dr. Cartwright, as follows:—
“Dysæsthesia Æthiopica, or Hebetude of Mind and Obtuse Sensibility of Body. * * * From the careless movements of the individuals affected with this complaint, they are apt to do much mischief, which appears as if intentional, but is mostly owing to the stupidness of mind and insensibilityof the nerves induced by the disease. Thus they break, waste, and destroy everything they handle—abuse horses and cattle—tear, burn, or rend their own clothing, and, paying no attention to the rights of property, steal others to replace what they have destroyed. They wander about at night, and keep in a half-nodding state by day. They slight their work—cut up corn, cane, cotton, and tobacco, when hoeing it, as if for pure mischief. They raise disturbances with their overseers, and among their fellow-servants, without cause or motive, and seem to be insensible to pain when subjected to punishment. * * *“When left to himself, the negro indulges in his natural disposition to idleness and sloth, and does not take exercise enough to expand his lungs and vitalize his blood, but dozes out a miserable existence in the midst of filth and uncleanliness, being too indolent, and having too little energy of mind, to provide for himself proper food and comfortable clothing and lodging. The consequence is, that the blood becomes so highly carbonized and deprived of oxygen that it not only becomes unfit to stimulate the brain to energy, but unfit to stimulate the nerves of sensation distributed to the body. * * *“This is the disease calledDysæsthesia(a Greek term expressing the dull or obtuse sensation that always attends the complaint). When roused from sloth by the stimulus of hunger, he takes anything he can lay his hands on, and tramples on the rights as well as on the property of others, with perfect indifference. When driven to labour by the compulsive power of the white man, he performs the task assigned to him in a headlong, careless manner, treading down with his feet or cutting with his hoe the plants he is put to cultivate—breaking the tools he works with, and spoiling everything he touches that can be injured by careless handling. Hence the overseers call it ‘rascality,’ supposing that the mischief is intentionally done. * * *“The term, ‘rascality,’ given to this disease by overseers, is founded on an erroneous hypothesis, and leads to an incorrect empirical treatment, which seldom or never cures it.”
“Dysæsthesia Æthiopica, or Hebetude of Mind and Obtuse Sensibility of Body. * * * From the careless movements of the individuals affected with this complaint, they are apt to do much mischief, which appears as if intentional, but is mostly owing to the stupidness of mind and insensibilityof the nerves induced by the disease. Thus they break, waste, and destroy everything they handle—abuse horses and cattle—tear, burn, or rend their own clothing, and, paying no attention to the rights of property, steal others to replace what they have destroyed. They wander about at night, and keep in a half-nodding state by day. They slight their work—cut up corn, cane, cotton, and tobacco, when hoeing it, as if for pure mischief. They raise disturbances with their overseers, and among their fellow-servants, without cause or motive, and seem to be insensible to pain when subjected to punishment. * * *
“When left to himself, the negro indulges in his natural disposition to idleness and sloth, and does not take exercise enough to expand his lungs and vitalize his blood, but dozes out a miserable existence in the midst of filth and uncleanliness, being too indolent, and having too little energy of mind, to provide for himself proper food and comfortable clothing and lodging. The consequence is, that the blood becomes so highly carbonized and deprived of oxygen that it not only becomes unfit to stimulate the brain to energy, but unfit to stimulate the nerves of sensation distributed to the body. * * *
“This is the disease calledDysæsthesia(a Greek term expressing the dull or obtuse sensation that always attends the complaint). When roused from sloth by the stimulus of hunger, he takes anything he can lay his hands on, and tramples on the rights as well as on the property of others, with perfect indifference. When driven to labour by the compulsive power of the white man, he performs the task assigned to him in a headlong, careless manner, treading down with his feet or cutting with his hoe the plants he is put to cultivate—breaking the tools he works with, and spoiling everything he touches that can be injured by careless handling. Hence the overseers call it ‘rascality,’ supposing that the mischief is intentionally done. * * *
“The term, ‘rascality,’ given to this disease by overseers, is founded on an erroneous hypothesis, and leads to an incorrect empirical treatment, which seldom or never cures it.”
There are many complaints described in Dr. Cartwright’s treatise, to which the negroes, in slavery, seem to be peculiarly subject.
“More fatal than any other is congestion of the lungs,peripneumonia notha, often called cold plague, etc. * * *“TheFrambæsia, Piam, or Yaws, is acontagiousdisease, communicable by contact among those who greatly neglect cleanliness. It is supposed to be communicable, in a modified form, to the white race, among whom it resembles pseudo syphilis, or some disease of the nose, throat, or larynx. * * *“Negro-consumption, a disease almost unknown to medical men of theNorthern States and of Europe, is also sometimes fearfully prevalent among the slaves. ‘It is of importance,’ says the Doctor, ‘to know the pathognomic signs in its early stages, not only in regard to its treatment, but to detect impositions, as negroes afflicted with this complaint are often for sale; the acceleration of the pulse, on exercise, incapacitates them for labour, as they quickly give out, and have to leave their work. This induces their owners to sell them, although they may not know the cause of their inability to labour. Many of the negroes brought South, for sale, are in the incipient stages of this disease; they are found to be inefficient labourers, and are sold in consequence thereof. The effect of superstition—a firm belief that he is poisoned or conjured—upon the patient’s mind, already in a morbid state (dysæsthesia), and his health affected from hard usage, over-tasking or exposure, want of wholesome food, good clothing, warm, comfortable lodging, with the distressing idea (sometimes) that he is an object of hatred or dislike, both to his master or fellow-servants, and has no one to befriend him, tends directly to generate that erythism of mind which is the essential cause of negro-consumption.’ * * * ‘Remedies should be assisted by removing theoriginal causeof the dissatisfaction or trouble of mind, and by using every means to make the patient comfortable, satisfied, and happy.’”
“More fatal than any other is congestion of the lungs,peripneumonia notha, often called cold plague, etc. * * *
“TheFrambæsia, Piam, or Yaws, is acontagiousdisease, communicable by contact among those who greatly neglect cleanliness. It is supposed to be communicable, in a modified form, to the white race, among whom it resembles pseudo syphilis, or some disease of the nose, throat, or larynx. * * *
“Negro-consumption, a disease almost unknown to medical men of theNorthern States and of Europe, is also sometimes fearfully prevalent among the slaves. ‘It is of importance,’ says the Doctor, ‘to know the pathognomic signs in its early stages, not only in regard to its treatment, but to detect impositions, as negroes afflicted with this complaint are often for sale; the acceleration of the pulse, on exercise, incapacitates them for labour, as they quickly give out, and have to leave their work. This induces their owners to sell them, although they may not know the cause of their inability to labour. Many of the negroes brought South, for sale, are in the incipient stages of this disease; they are found to be inefficient labourers, and are sold in consequence thereof. The effect of superstition—a firm belief that he is poisoned or conjured—upon the patient’s mind, already in a morbid state (dysæsthesia), and his health affected from hard usage, over-tasking or exposure, want of wholesome food, good clothing, warm, comfortable lodging, with the distressing idea (sometimes) that he is an object of hatred or dislike, both to his master or fellow-servants, and has no one to befriend him, tends directly to generate that erythism of mind which is the essential cause of negro-consumption.’ * * * ‘Remedies should be assisted by removing theoriginal causeof the dissatisfaction or trouble of mind, and by using every means to make the patient comfortable, satisfied, and happy.’”
Longing for home generates a distinct malady, known to physicians asNostalgia, and there is a suggestive analogy between the treatment commonly employed to cure it and that recommended in this last advice of Dr. Cartwright.
Discipline.—Under the slave system of labour, discipline must always be maintained by physical power. A lady of New York, spending a winter in a Southern city, had a hired slave-servant, who, one day, refused outright to perform some ordinary light domestic duty required of her. On the lady’s gently remonstrating with her, she immediately replied: “You can’t make me do it, and I won’t do it: I aint afeard of you whippin’ me.” The servant was right; the lady could not whip her, and was too tender-hearted to call in a man, or to send her to the guard-house to be whipped, as is the custom with Southern ladies, when their patience is exhausted, under such circumstances. She endeavoured, by kindness and by appeals to the girl’s good sense, to obtain a moralcontrol over her; but, after suffering continual annoyance and inconvenience, and after an intense trial of her feelings, for some time, she was at length obliged to go to her owner, and beg him to come and take her away from the house, on any terms. It was no better than having a lunatic or a mischievous and pilfering monomaniac quartered on her.[20]
But often when courage and physical power, with the strength of the militia force and the army of the United States, if required, at the back of the master, are not wanting, there are a great variety of circumstances that make a resort to punishment inconvenient, if not impossible.
Really well-trained, accomplished, and docile house-servants are seldom to be purchased or hired at the South, though they are found in old wealthy families rather oftener than first-rate English or French servants are at the North. It is, doubtless, a convenience to have even moderately good servants who cannot, at any time of their improved value or your necessity, demand to have their pay increased, or who cannot be drawn away from you by prospect of smaller demands and kinder treatment at your neighbour’s; but I believe few of those who are incessantly murmuring against this healthy operation of God’s good law of supply and demand would be willing to purchase exemption from it, at the price with which the masters and mistresses of the South do. They would pay, to get a certain amount of work done, three or four times as much, to the owner of the best sort of hired slaves, as they do to the commonest, stupidest Irish domestic drudges at the North, though the nominal wages by the week or year, in Virginia, are but little more than in New York.
The number of servants usually found in a Southern family, of any pretension, always amazes a Northern lady. In one that I have visited, there are exactly three negroes to each white, the negroes being employed solely in the house.
(A Southern lady, of an old and wealthy family, who had been for some time visiting a friend of mine in New York, said to her, as she was preparing to return home: “I cannot tell you how much, after being in your house so long, I dread to go home, and to have to take care of our servants again. We have a much smaller family of whites than you, but we have twelve servants, and your two accomplish a great deal more, and do their work a great deal better than our twelve. You think your girls are very stupid, and that they give you much trouble: but it is as nothing. There is hardly one of our servants that can be trusted to do the simplest work without being stood over. If I order a room to be cleaned, or a fire to be made in a distant chamber, I never can be sure I am obeyed unless I go there and see for myself. If I send a girl out to get anything I want for preparing the dinner, she is as likely as not to forget what is wanted, and not to come back till after the time at which dinner should be ready. A hand-organ in the street will draw all my girls out of the house; and while it remains near us I have no more command over them than over so many monkeys. The parade of a military company has sometimes entirely prevented me from having any dinner cooked; and when the servants, standing in the square looking at the soldiers, see my husband coming after them, they only laugh, and run away to the other side, like playful children.[21]And, when I reprimand them, they only say they don’t mean to do anything wrong,or they won’t do it again, all the time laughing as though it was all a joke. They don’t mind it at all. They are just as playful and careless as any wilful child; and they never will do any work if you don’t compel them.”)
The slave employer, if he finds he has been so unfortunate as to hire a sulky servant, who cannot be made to work to his advantage, has no remedy but to solicit from his owner a deduction from the price he has agreed to pay for his labour, on the same ground that one would from a livery-stable keeper, if he had engaged a horse to go a journey, but found that he was not strong or skilful enough to keep him upon the road. But, if the slave is the property of his employer, and becomes “rascally,” the usual remedy is that which the veterinary surgeon recommended when he was called upon for advice how to cure a jibing horse: “Sellhim, my lord.” “Rascals” are “sent South” from Virginia, for the cure or alleviation of their complaint, in much greater numbers than consumptives are from the more Northern States.
“How do you manage, then, when a man misbehaves, or is sick?” I have been often asked by Southerners, in discussing this question.
If he is sick, I simply charge against him every half day of the time he is off work, and deduct it from his wages. If he is careless, or refuses to do what in reason I demand of him, I discharge him, paying him wages to the time he leaves. With new men in whom I have not confidence, I make a written agreement, before witnesses, on engaging them, that will permit me to do this. As for “rascality,” I never had but one case of anything approaching to what you call so. A man insolently contradicted me in the field: I told him to leave his job and go to the house, took hold and finished it myself, then went to the house, made out a written statement of account, counted out the balance in money due tohim, gave him the statement and the money, and told him he must go. He knew that he had failed of his duty, and that the law would sustain me, and we parted in a friendly manner, he expressing regret that his temper had driven him from a situation which had been agreeable and satisfactory to him. The probability is, that this single experience educated him so far that his next employer would have no occasion to complain of his “rascality;” and I very much doubt if any amount of corporeal punishment would have improved his temper in the least.
“Sogering.”—That slaves have to be “humoured” a great deal, and that they very frequently cannot be made to do their master’s will, I have seen much evidence. Not that they often directly refuse to obey an order, but when they are directed to do anything for which they have a disinclination, they undertake it in such a way that the desired result is sure not to be accomplished. They cannot be driven by fear of punishment to do that which the labourers in free communities do cheerfully from their sense of duty, self-respect, or regard for their reputation and standing with their employer. A gentleman who had some free men in his employment in Virginia, that he had procured in New York, told me that he had been astonished, when a dam that he had been building began to give way in a freshet, to see how much more readily than negroes they would obey his orders, and do their best without orders, running into the water waist-deep, in mid-winter, without any hesitation or grumbling.
The manager of a large candle-factory in London, in which the labourers are treated with an unusual degree of confidence and generosity, writes thus in a report to his directors:—
“The present year promises to be a very good one as regards profit, in consequence of the enormous increase in the demand for candles. Nomere driving of the men and boys, by ourselves and those in authority under us, would have produced the sudden and very great increase of manufacture, necessary for keeping pace with this demand. It has been effected only by the hearty good-will with which the factory has worked, the men and boys making the great extra exertion, which they saw to be necessary to prevent our getting hopelessly in arrears with the orders, as heartily as if the question had been, how to avert some difficulty threatening themselves personally. One of the foremen remarked with truth, a few days back: ‘To look on them, one would think each was engaged in a little business of his own, so as to have only himself affected by the results of his work.’”
“The present year promises to be a very good one as regards profit, in consequence of the enormous increase in the demand for candles. Nomere driving of the men and boys, by ourselves and those in authority under us, would have produced the sudden and very great increase of manufacture, necessary for keeping pace with this demand. It has been effected only by the hearty good-will with which the factory has worked, the men and boys making the great extra exertion, which they saw to be necessary to prevent our getting hopelessly in arrears with the orders, as heartily as if the question had been, how to avert some difficulty threatening themselves personally. One of the foremen remarked with truth, a few days back: ‘To look on them, one would think each was engaged in a little business of his own, so as to have only himself affected by the results of his work.’”
A farmer in Lincolnshire, England, told me that once, during an extraordinary harvest season, he had a number of labourers at work without leaving the field or taking any repose for sixty hours—he himself working with them, and eating and drinking only with them during all the time. Such services men may give voluntarily, from their own regard to the value of property to be saved by it, or for the purpose of establishing their credit as worth good wages; but to require it of slaves would be intensely cruel, if not actually impossible. A man can work excessively on his own impulse as much easier than he can be driven to by another, as a horse travels easier in going towards his accustomed stable than in going from it. I mean—and every man who has ever served as a sailor or a soldier will know that it is no imaginary effect—that the actual fatigue, the waste of bodily energy, the expenditure of the physical capacity, is greater in one case than the other.
Sailors and soldiers both, are led by certain inducements to place themselves within certain limits, and for a certain time, both defined by contract, in a condition resembling, in many particulars, that of slaves; and, although they are bound by their voluntary contract and by legal and moral considerations to obey orders, the fact that force is also used to secure their obedience to their officers, scarcely ever fails toproduce in them the identical vices which are complained of in slaves. They obey the letter, but defeat the intention of orders that do not please them; they are improvident, wasteful, reckless: they sham illness, and as Dr. Cartwright gives specific medical appellations to discontent, laziness, and rascality, so among sailors and soldiers, when men suddenly find themselves ill and unable to do their duty in times of peculiar danger, or when unusual labour is required, they are humorously said to be suffering under an attack of the powder-fever, the cape-fever, the ice-fever, the coast-fever, or the reefing-fever. The counteracting influences to these vices, which it is the first effort of every good officer to foster, are, first, regard to duty; second, patriotism; third,esprit du corps, or professional pride; fourth, self-respect, or personal pride; fifth, self-interest, hope of promotion, or of bounty, or of privileges in mitigation of their hard service, as reward for excellence. Things are never quickly done at sea, unless they are done with a will, or “cheerly,” as the sailor’s word is—that is, cheerfully. An army is never effective in the field when depressed in itsmorale.
None of these promptings to excellence can be operative, except in a very low degree, to counteract the indolent and vicious tendencies of the Slavery, much more pure than the slavery of the army or the ship, by which the exertions of the Virginia labourer are obtained for his employer.
Incidents, trifling in themselves, constantly betray to a stranger what must be the necessary consequences. The catastrophe of one such occurred since I began to write this letter. I requested a fire to be made in my room, as I was going out this morning. On my return, I found a grand fire—the room door having been closed upon it, and, by the way, I had to obtain assistance to open it, the lock being “out of order.” Just now, while I was writing, down tumbled upon the floor,and rolled away close to the valance of the bed, half a hodfull of ignited coal, which had been so piled up on the grate, and left without a fender or any guard, that this result was almost inevitable. And such carelessness of servants you have momentarily to notice.
But the constantly-occurring delays, and the waste of time and labour that you encounter everywhere, are most annoying and provoking to a stranger. At an hotel, for instance, you go to your room and find no conveniences for washing; ring and ring again, and hear the office-keeper ring again and again. At length two servants appear together at your door, get orders, and go away. A quarter of an hour afterwards, perhaps, one returns with a pitcher of water, but no towels; and so on. Yet as the servants seem anxious to please, it can only result from want of system and order.
Until the negro is big enough for his labour to be plainly profitable to his master, he has no training to application or method, but only to idleness and carelessness. Before the children arrive at a working age, they hardly come under the notice of their owner. An inventory of them is taken on the plantation at Christmas; and a planter told me that sometimes they escaped the attention of the overseer and were not returned at all, till twelve or thirteen years old. The only whipping of slaves I have seen in Virginia, has been of these wild, lazy children, as they are being broke in to work. They cannot be depended upon a minute, out of sight.
You will see how difficult it would be, if it were attempted, to eradicate the indolent, careless, incogitant habits so formed in youth. But it is not systematically attempted, and the influences that continue to act upon a slave in the same direction, cultivating every quality at variance with industry, precision, forethought, and providence, are innumerable.
It is not wonderful that the habits of the whole communityshould be influenced by, and be made to accommodate to these habits of its labourers. It irresistibly affects the whole industrial character of the people. You may see it in the habits and manners of the free white mechanics and trades-people. All of these must have dealings or be in competition with slaves, and so have their standard of excellence made low, and become accustomed to, until they are content with slight, false, unsound workmanship. You notice in all classes, vagueness in ideas of cost and value, and injudicious and unnecessary expenditure of labour by a thoughtless manner of setting about work.[22]For instance, I noticed a rivet loose in my umbrella, as I was going out from my hotel during a shower, and stepped into an adjoining shop to have it repaired.
“I can’t do it in less than half an hour, sir, and it will be worth a quarter,” said the locksmith, replying to inquiries.
“I shouldn’t think it need take you so long—it is merely a rivet to be tightened.”
“I shall have to take it all to pieces, and it will take me all of half an hour.”
“I don’t think you need take it to pieces.”
“Yes, I shall—there’s no other way to do it.”
“Then, as I can’t well wait so long, I will not trouble you with it;” and I went back to the hotel, and with the fire-poker did the work myself, in less than a minute, as well as he could have done it in a week, and went on my way, saving half an hour and quarter of a dollar, like a “Yankee.”
Virginians laugh at us for such things: but it is because they are indifferent to these fractions, or, as they say, above regarding them, that they cannot do their own business with the rest of the world; and all their commerce, as they areabsurdly complaining, only goes to enrich Northern men. A man forced to labour under their system is morally driven to indolence, carelessness, indifference to the results of skill, heedlessness, inconstancy of purpose, improvidence, and extravagance. Precisely the opposite qualities are those which are encouraged, and inevitably developed in a man who has to make his living, and earn all his comfort by his voluntarily-directed labour.
“It is with dogs,” says an authority on the subject, “as it is with horses; no work is so well done as that which is done cheerfully.” And it is with men, both black and white, as it is with horses and with clogs; it is even more so, because the strength and cunning of a man is less adapted to being “broken” to the will of another than that of either dogs or horses.
Work accomplished in a given time.—Mr. T. R. Griscom, of Petersburg, Virginia, stated to me, that he once took accurate account of the labour expended in harvesting a large field of wheat; and the result was that one quarter of an acre a day was secured for each able hand engaged in cradling, raking, and binding. The crop was light, yielding not over six bushels to the acre. In New York a gang of fair cradlers and binders would be expected, under ordinary circumstances, to secure a crop of wheat, yielding from twenty to thirty bushels to the acre, at the rate of about two acres a day for each man.
Mr. Griscom formerly resided in New Jersey; and since living in Virginia has had the superintendence of very large agricultural operations, conducted with slave-labour. After I had, in a letter, intended for publication, made use of this testimony, I called upon him to ask if he would object to my giving his name with it. He was so good as to permit me todo so, and said that I might add that the ordinary waste in harvesting wheat in Virginia, through the carelessness of the negroes, beyond that which occurs in the hands of ordinary Northern labourers, is equal in value to what a Northern farmer would often consider a satisfactory profit on his crop. He also wished me to say that it was his deliberate opinion, formed not without much and accurate observation, that four Virginia slaves do not, when engaged in ordinary agricultural operations, accomplish as much, on an average, as one ordinary free farm labourer in New Jersey.
Mr. Griscom is well known at Petersburg as a man remarkable for accuracy and preciseness; and no man’s judgment on this subject could be entitled to more respect.
Another man, who had superintended labour of the same character at the North and in Virginia, whom I questioned closely, agreed entirely with Mr. Griscom, believing that four negroes had to be supported on every farm in the State to accomplish the same work which was ordinarily done by one free labourer in New York.
A clergyman from Connecticut, who had resided for many years in Virginia, told me that what a slave expected to spend a day upon, a Northern labourer would, he was confident, usually accomplish by eleven o’clock in the morning.
In a letter on this subject, most of the facts given in which have been already narrated in this volume, written from Virginia to theNew York Times, I expressed the conviction that, at the most, not more than one-half as much labour was ordinarily accomplished in Virginia by a certain number of slaves, in a given time, as by an equal number of free labourers in New York. The publication of this letter induced a number of persons to make public the conclusions of their own experience or observations on this subject. So far as I know, these, in every case, sustained my conclusions, or, if any doubtwas expressed, it was that I had under-estimated the superior economy of free-labour. As affording evidence more valuable than my own on this important point, from the better opportunities of forming sound judgment, which a residence at different times, in both Virginia and a Free State had given the writers, I have reprinted, in anAppendix, two of these letters, together with a quantity of other testimony from Southern witnesses on this subject, which I beg the reader, who has any doubt of the correctness of my information, not to neglect.
“Driving.”—On mentioning to a gentleman in Virginia (who believed that slave-labour was better and cheaper than free-labour), Mr. Griscom’s observation, he replied: that without doubting the correctness of the statement of that particular instance, he was sure that if four men did not harvest more than an acre of wheat a day, they could not have been well “driven.” He knew that, if properly driven, threatened with punishment, and punished if necessary, negroes would do as much work as it was possible for any white man to do. The same gentleman, however, at another time, told me that negroes were seldom punished; not oftener, he presumed, than apprentices were, at the North; that the driving of them was generally left to overseers, who were the laziest and most worthless dogs in the world, frequently not demanding higher wages for their services than one of the negroes whom they were given to manage might be hired for. Another gentleman told me that he would rather, if the law would permit it, have some of his negroes for overseers, than any white man he had ever been able to obtain in that capacity.
Another planter, whom I requested to examine a letter on the subject, that I had prepared for theTimes, that he might, if he could, refute my calculations, or give me any facts of an opposite character, after reading it said: “The truth is, that,in general, a slave does not do half the work he easily might; and which, by being harsh enough with him, he can be made to do. When I came into possession of my plantation, I soon found the overseer then upon it was good for nothing, and told him I had no further occasion for his services: I then went to driving the negroes myself. In the morning, when I went out, one of them came up to me and asked what work he should go about. I told him to go into the swamp and cut some wood. ‘Well, massa,’ said he, ‘s’pose you wants me to do kordins we’s been use to doin’; ebery nigger cut a cord a day.’ ‘A cord! that’s what you have been used to doing, is it?’ said I. ‘Yes, massa, dat’s wot dey always makes a nigger do roun’ heah—a cord a day, dat’s allers de task.’ ‘Well, now, old man,’[23]said I, ‘you go and cut me two cords to-day.’ ‘Oh, massa! two cords! Nobody couldn’ do dat. Oh! massa, dat’s too hard! Nebber heard o’ nobody’s cuttin’ more’n a cord o’ wood in a day, roun’ heah. No nigger couldn’ do it.’ ‘Well, old man, you have two cords of wood cut to-night, or to-morrow morning you will have two hundred lashes—that’s all there is about it. So, look sharp!’ Of course, he did it, and no negro has ever cut less than two cords a day for me since, though my neighbours still get but one cord. It was just so with a great many other things—mauling rails: I always have two hundred rails mauled in a day; just twice what it is the custom, in our country, to expect of a negro, and just twice as many as my negroes had been made to do before I managed them myself.”
This only makes it more probable that the amount of labour ordinarily and generally performed by slaves in Virginia isvery small, compared with that done by the labourers of the Free States.
Of course, it does not follow that all articles produced by such labour cost four times as much as in New York. There are other elements of cost besides labour, as land and fuel. I could not have a bushel of lime or salt or coal dug for me on my farm at Staten Island at any price. There are farms in Virginia where either could be obtained by an hour’s labour.
Yet now, as I think of all the homes of which I have had a glimpse, it does not seem to me that men who are reputed to be worth $400,000 have equal advantages of wealth here with those whose property is valued at a quarter that, in the Eastern Free States; men with $40,000 live not as well here, all things considered, as men worth $10,000 at the North; and the farmer who owns half a dozen negroes, and who I suppose must be called worth $4000, does not approach in his possession of civilized comfort, the well-to-do working man with us, who rents a small house, and whose property consists in its furniture, his tools, skill, and strength, and who has a few hundred dollars laid up in the Savings-Bank, against a rainy day. I do not need to ask a farmer, then, any longer why he lifts his stable door into its place, and fastens it by leaning a log against it, as he evidently has been doing for years. He cannot afford to buy or hire a blacksmith for his little farm, and what with going and coming, and paying in corn which must be carried a number of miles over scarcely passable roads, our thriftiest farmers would wait for better times, perhaps, before they would take half the trouble or give a third as much corn as the blacksmith will want for the job, to save a minute’s time whenever they needed to enter and leave their stable. And so with everything. Any substantial work costs so much, not alone in money or corndirectly, but in the time and trouble in effecting the exchange, that the people make shift and do without it. And this is evidently the case not only with the people as individuals and families, but in their community. It is more obvious, if possible, in the condition of the houses of worship, the schools, the roads, the public conveyances; finally, it accounts for what at first sight appears the marvellous neglect or waste of the natural resources of the country, and it no longer surprises me that a farmer points out a coal bed, which has never been worked, in the bank of a stream which has never been dammed, in the midst of a forest of fine timber trees, with clay and lime and sand convenient, and who yet lives in a miserable smoky cabin of logs on a diet almost exclusively formed of pounded maize and bacon. Nor, when I ask, if a little painstaking here and there would not save much waste of fertility, that he should reply, that inasmuch as land enough, equally good, can be bought for six dollars an acre, the whole fertile matter can be better lost than a week’s labour be spent to save all that will not go into this year’s crop.
To this general rule of make shift, there is but rare exception to the general rule of the difficulty or expense of accomplishing any ordinary aim of civilized, in distinction from savage society. I am inclined to think that there is none in Virginia. There are, however, individuals and localities and communities and enterprises, upon which the forces of wealth—including both capital and talent, or energy—seem to have concentrated, just as we sometimes observe to be the case at the North. It is true also, as Virginians are fond of asserting, that absolute destitution of the means of preserving life is more rare than at the North, but then life is barely preserved with little labour by a naked savage in the wilderness; and it must be said that a great number, I almost think a majority, of theEastern Virginians live but one step removed from what we should deem great destitution at the North. I am sure, upon consideration, that this phrase would convey no unjust idea of the life of the majority of the Virginians, whom I have seen, to the people of a New England manufacturing town.
I have said that there are points where the forces of wealth seem to have concentrated. As a rule the farm-labour of a slave accomplishes not half as much in a day, as at the North; that of a white man, probably, not a third; that of most mechanics, because of their carelessness and unfaithfulness, much less than of most at the North, although they are paid more than there. But it is true, there are apparent exceptions, and I have been at times a good deal puzzled by them. Generally a patient study discovers a concealed force. Most commonly, I think, the explanation is given in the converse of the maxim that “high wages are the cheapest.” The workman who commands much more than the ruling rate of wages is hard to be got, and proverbially accomplishes much more for his employer than the excess of his wages indicates. The man who cannot command the current rates is the first to be dropped off on a reduction, the last to be taken on at an increase of force. As prime field-hand slaves furnish the standard of labour in Virginia, and the vast majority of labourers are far below that standard in quality, their labour is paid much less, and it is of less value relative to its cost. Most of the labouring class of Virginia are of a quality which our farmers would call “dear at any price.” If, then, by unusually skilful and energetic management, under favourable circumstances, the labour of slaves, in certain instances, seems to accomplish as much for its course as that of free labourers at the North, it does not follow that results of labour of all kinds in Virginia do not cost ordinarily, and on average, twice or thrice as much as in the adjoining Free States.
Whenever I have found unusual efficiency apparent in any enterprise in Virginia—as sometimes in railroadconstruction, milling, and mining—I have thus far invariably found the negroes employed to be picked men, and, when my inquiries have been frankly answered, that they were working under some unusual stimulus. For instance, a tobacco manufacturer pays the owner of a valuable negro $140 a year for his services, undertaking also to feed and clothe him and otherwise care for his permanent value. He then offers to pay the negro a certain rate per pound for all the tobacco he works up beyond a certain quantity. One of the largest manufacturers informed me that he paid seldom less than $60 a year, and sometimes over $300, to each slave he used, in addition to the rent paid their masters, which was from $100 to $150 a year. I did not learn the averages, but suppose that, while the nominal wages for the labour of these slaves was but little more than the ruling market-rate of $120 a year, their labour really cost the manufacturer at least double that. Hardly any of the white labour employed in enterprises which are pursued with energy and efficiency is native, nor does it ever, so far as I have seen, seem to be established and at home.