of the European market, because we furnish a cheaper and better article for the same price. And this excellence is due to our soil and climate, and to the cheapness of the labor by which cotton is cultivated. the proceeds in England will be consumed in the transportation. Probably, however, the greatest advantage we have over the Indian producers is in the cheapness of our labor. It is true that wages are very low in India, but the labor is also inefficient. We have the cheapest and most efficient labor in the world. The soil is everywhere favorable for cotton in our southern states. Where it is rich enough to produce any thing it will produce cotton. The climate is our main peculiarity. The African slave in the southern states Although we are so near the equator that we is well fed with good and substantial food, have six months of the summer, and some- that gives him strength, endurance, and times more, without a frost that will kill so health. He is well clad in winter, and well tender a plant as cotton, we have in all that lodged, to protect him from the inclemencies time a succession of rain, and sunshine, and of the season. He is cheerful, able to work, dews, and clouds, such as belong to temperate and he works faithfully. As the whole cost latitudes. The weather is hot enough for of this labor to the state is made up of the cotton, and yet rainy and showery, so as to simplest necessaries of life, the support of keep the growth of the plant vigorous, and the young, and the old, and the feeble, it is bring to perfection a succession of fruit on evident that the south has the cheapest lathe stalks from July to November. The bor that is possible. It was the doctrine of first pickings begin as early as July at some Malthus, that in every country there is a places, everywhere in August, and during constant tendency to reduce the wages of the whole of September and October new labor down to the mere support of the lablossoms are appearing, new bolls forming, borer. That limit, however approximated to and new pods opening their silky product elsewhere, has never been reached but in the for the hands of the cultivator. Even after south. the frost has stopped the growth of the plant and stripped it of its leaves, the bolls still open, and the fields are whitened with a succession of fruit, until January arrives and warns the planter to prepare for another The slave is supplied with all he wants of meal, and with as much meat as is needed for his health and strength. This meal is prepared in many ways, and makes a most palatable bread. His master generally feeds on it in preference to flour. He has a garden, where he can raise potatoes, cabbages, collards, greens, turnips, beans, and such other vegetables as the taste and industry of the family may desire. He has clothing— cheap, it is true, but warm and substantial. There is a separate dwelling for each family, and an unlimited supply of fuel for the winter. The old, who are unable to labor in the field, find some slight work about the house-the men in the garden, the women in the care of young children whose mothers are out on the usual plantation work. The sick are carefully attended to by regular physicians and good nursing. Another advantage we have over India is the length and cost of the voyage. It is worth two and a half or three cents a pound to transport cotton from our sea-ports to Liverpool. The distance from India to England being twice as great, and the voyage more than twice as long, freights and other ex- All this is essential to the health and penses must increase in a like ratio; and as strength of the laborer, and to his efficiency the best qualities of Bombay and Surat are on the plantation. The humanity and symworth, even now, when prices are high in pathy of the master, who has often been England, only eight or nine cents, it is evi- reared by some of his slaves, are sufficient dent that almost nothing is left for the interior to secure their comfort; but if these should producer, especially for the inferior qualities. be wanting, there is an inexorable law seWe can produce cotton with profit at much curing the necessary wants of the servant. lower rates than we now name. A decline With less meat, or with insufficient food, to the Indian planter is ruinous, because the slave is unfitted for regular work. With freights are stationary, and all, or nearly all less clothing, he is liable to sickness and disease. Without attention and nursing in his family times of want and suffering, with sickness, his life is endangered, and his ser-nothing laid up for sickness and old age. vices lost to his master. These demands, united with the influences of humanity and sympathy, secure him the necessaries and some of the comforts of life. Another element of the cheapness of this labor is that nothing is wasted in vicious indulgences. In other countries, a large part of the wages of labor is expended in strong drink; but the most stringent laws are everywhere passed against selling spirits to slaves; the Maine liquor law is enforced with the most severe penalties, and with the utmost 'certainty of conviction for the guilty. Much time is lost in free countries in holidays and shows; in idleness and neglect of work; in seeking employment; in change from one place to another; but all this is saved in the south, for there are no idle hands about the plantation, and, excepting the week between Christmas and New Year's day, when there is a general holiday, there is no lost time, except from sickness, in any part of the year. Now he is industrious and temperate, and receives the necessaries of life in return; then he would be lazy, and wasteful, and destitute. As industry and temperance are great virtues, and the necessaries of life at all seasons and times, in sickness and health, in youth and old age are a great boon to the laboring poor; and as want, and suffering, and neglect when sick or aged are great and real evils, philanthropy surely wastes its sympathy on the slave when it complains that he is denied his wages. The culture of cotton is specially suited for slave labor, because of its giving full employment for the whole year. January is devoted to fitting up the fences, clearing off the decayed trees that have fallen in the fields, and putting in order the cultivators and all the implements of the farm. The ploughs are also started, and some of the ground broken up for spring planting. February is the main time for ploughing, and in the more southern part of the cotton country, corn is planted in this month. In Jatitude 31° the time for corn is the 20th of February; above this line it gradually becomes later. About a month after the corn, cotton is planted. In every locality it is desired to have the cotton The children are all put at work at eleven or twelve years of age, as soon as they are able to guide a plough or pick cotton in the fields. The women and men are both efficient workers, and the division of labor is so complete that the children of many moth-up as soon as the fear of frost is gone. The ers are watched over and cared for by one, and the cooking for many families attended to by a single cook. season for planting begins as early as the 15th of March in the most southern latitudes, is delayed to the 1st of April at the parallel of 32, to the 15th in latitude 34°, and later still above this line. As the seed are planted close together in drills, the hands pass along the rows and chop down the weakest and smallest plants, leaving them in bunches, fifteen to twenty inches apart. The ploughs follow or precede the hoes, both be This system of labor is thus the cheapest possible. The corn and the meat being, in most cases, raised on the plantation, and not burdened with the cost of transportation, are supplied at the cheapest prices; the work is all light and easy, so that women and boys, as well as men, can engage in it efficiently. Every thing is arranged so that labor is se-ing necessary to kill the grass and soften the cured at the lowest possible rate. Some philanthropists, indeed, object to the system on this account: that the slave obtains no wages. But he has food and clothing, a house and fire, proper attention when sick, and support in old age. His children are taken care of, and every necessary want supplied. For an idle and improvident race like the negro, these are more than wages. They are more than his industry would secure. He would not earn as much for himself were he free, as he now receives from his master; and these earnings would be wasted in drink, or in excessive indulgences, or in dress, or in luxuries, leaving for himself and ground about the plants. The hoes follow again, and thin out the bunches to one or two stalks, and finally they are reduced to one, the rest having perished from the cutworm or insects, or the blows of the plough and the hoe. For two or three months this hoeing and ploughing, to soften the ground and destroy the grass, gives full employment to the hands. The corn has also to be treated in the same way, and the work is continued on both until the summer has come and the fruit begins to appear on the cotton. There is a little leisure now to the hands before the picking is begun, and this gives time to harvest the wheat that has been sown; to cut the oats, and gather the fodder from the corn. This work fills up the time until the picking begins. At first, but few of the pods are open. The hands pass between the rows -which are from three to four feet wide on the poor lands, and from six to seven on the richest and as the branches stretch out so as to reach each other, they each gather from two rows as they pass through the field. By September the fields are white with the opening cotton, and every hand, young and old, male and female, that can be of any service, is busied in gathering the cotton, lest the rain should come and beat it out, and scatter it on the ground. In October this picking continues undiminished. At the close of this month, frost usually appears, and stops the growth of the plant and kills the leaves, but the pods keep opening, and new cotton offering itself to the hands until December. The fields are picked over twice or three times if the season is favorable and the crop large, and five or six times if the opening cotton does not hurry the planter. The gathered cotton has now to be sunned, and dried, and ginned, and packed, and delivered at the nearest railway station or river landing, or sold in the neighboring town. Thus is the year completed with unremitting toil, from Christmas to Christmas. The distribution of labor between the white and black races, so that the former shall have the selection of the products and of the place of labor, of the seeds and the mode of cultivation, and of all the plans and management of the plantation, is another great aid to the cheapness and the efficiency of the labor. Some political economists have supposed that free is cheaper than slave labor; but though there are pursuits where the watch fulness, foresight, intelligence, and energy of a free man will make his labor so much more productive than that of a slave as to pay the superior cost of his support, it is certain that the want of these qualities in the slave is but a slight drawback to the value of his labor in the production of cotton. The work is so regular, and simple, and easy, that the free man performs it no better than the slave, and as the direction, and management, and skill are in the master, the work is well directed, and wisely managed. The slave works enough, though he does not work as hard as some free men. In fact, it is very doubtful if a free white man, impelled by necessity or the desire of accumulation, would be more efficient in the cotton field than the slave. Certain it is that in the south, where the hot sun breeds discase, and the malarious air brings fevers, the white freeman could not produce as much as the slave, much less could he labor as cheaply. His expenditures being more, his wife and children not working at all, or but little, his waste of time and money in vicious practices and holidays, would require larger wages, and for these he has nothing more to give than the slave. The slaves marry and are given in marriage as regularly and religiously as the white peasants of any country; and though the marriage has not a legal sanction, it has the religious and moral. They are kept together with their families far more than the white people. On many plantations there are one or two hundred negroes, all descended from three or four families; while the children of the first master have been scattered from Maine to Texas. They have regularly improved since first introduced from Africa, and are now improving, from year to year, in intelligence, in moral culture, in intellectual development, in appearance, in habits, in comfort; and they are as cheerful and faithful, as devoted to the interests of their master, as attached to him and his family, as if they were free hired servants, receiving regular wages. There is no mendicity, no need for poor-houses, asylums, hospitals; for the master's house is the asylum of the slaves; his wife and his daughters their nurses, and his own doctor their physician. Such a set of laborers, able and willing to work, contented and happy, with every want supplied, and yet costing the master the least possible sum needed for their health and their strength, furnish the cheapest and most efficient labor possible. As the south sends nothing to the north that can be produced there, there is no conflict between the labor of the north and the south. There is no competition, no tendency to equalization in wages, no interference the one with the other. They are, in fact, mutual helps to each other, as town and country, as man and wife, as the limbs, and the head, and the heart of the human body. The high wages at the north cannot be reduced by the labor of the slave. Instead of reduction, it causes an increase. His cheap toil is for their advantage. His labors, under the hot tropical sun, are for the benefit of every mechanic, and artisan, and workman, that now fears the competition of the northern free black. As a slave he benefits them, as a free man he would be in their way. We have one more point to mention to complete the explanation we suggest of our high prices, and this is the operation of the tariff. By a tax at the sea-ports on any article imported, its price is so raised that the American producer of the same kind of goods is enabled to raise his price. This advance enables him to pay higher rates to his workmen, and to the capitalist, and to all concerned in the manufacture. But it prevents, also, the exportation of his goods, because they are too high for the foreign market. Being thus unable to pay for the supplies he must have from abroad, the cotton planter comes to his aid with a product much wanted abroad, and raised here under favorable circumstances of soil and climate, and with a cheap kind of labor that does not compete with the labor of the manufacturer. This will pay for the foreign supplies of both, and the planter buys them, and takes in return the high-priced manufactures. Thus high prices are sustained, at the expense, indeed, of the planter, but to the great advantage and prosperity of the north and the west. We have now considered the several points of the explanation we proposed for our high prices, that in cotton we have an article of great profit to the planters, produced by cheap labor, although the other labor of the country is dear; in large and intense demand in Europe and all parts of the world, because it furnishes the cheapest material for clothing, for the production of which there is no competitor with us, as we have almost a monopoly of the market; and that by means of this export we pay for our foreign supplies, and by our tariff raise the price of the imports to our own high limit, and thus sustain the rates of labor and capital, and secure the prosperity of our country. High prices for labor on iron, on cotton and woollen manufactures, and on all the articles we import from abroad, we could not have without a tariff; this tariff could not be maintained without an export of some product, furnished by nature or made with cheap labor, in intense demand abroad; for otherwise it would be impossible to pay for our imports. Cotton furnishes the desired article, and thus makes prices high both for labor and money, since the rates for the one and the other closely correspond at all times and in all countries. Precisely the same set of operations has been going on in California for the past ten years. Nature there, as here, furnishes a product which pays well to those who obtain it; the gift of nature there being in the mines, and here in the soil and climate. The miner there and the cultivator here are well paid for their labor. Both productions are in intense demand abroad; and both unite in enabling us to pay for our foreign importations, without reducing to the foreign limit the wages of labor and the interest of capital that supply these products. It may, perhaps, be proper to confirm the propositions we have been considering by inquiring into the course of our domestic trade. If the true explanation has been given of the anomaly of high prices prevailing in a country engaged in a large commerce with the rest of the world, we will find large transfers to the south of manufactures from the north, and of agricultural products from the west; because cotton being very profitable to the planter, and nearly all the labor of the south being appropriated to this culture, the northern manufacturer will supply all his wants of every kind in which labor is the chief element, and the western farmer will supply him with all those articles of food that are of easy transportation. In fact, we find in the south that any article of necessity, comfort, or luxury comes from the north. If we enter the dwellings, or the shops, or the stores of the cotton states, they tell all the same story— every thing comes from the north. As I rose from my bed this morning and surveyed the furniture of my chamber, I found nothing made at home. The bedstead, netting, and canopy; the coverlet, sheets, and ticking; the bureau, wardrobe, washstand, and crib; the tables, chairs, mirrors, curtains, carpet, bell-wire, and tassel; the medicine chest, and all its bottles, and mixtures, and quack preparations; all the perfumery, and cosmetics, and jewelry, and brushes, and powders; every article of dress, or clothing, or ornament; even the whitewash on the walls, and the paint on the wood-work, and the glass in the windows were from the north. As I came from the chamber to the library, I found no change. The book-case, curtains, carpet, pictures, tables, sofas, paper, ink-stand, pen, and ink were from the north. (There was a northern grate for northern coal; a marble mantel and caster, and vinegar, and oil, and mustard from the north, with vases and photographs; were from the north, but the catsup was globe and statuary from the same source. made here; the fish were from Savannah, I opened the book-cases, and run my eye but they had been brought up by a northover the shelves, to see if any could be found ern locomotive, running on English rails; with a southern imprimatur; but though the walls and doors were covered with paint some had on them the names of southern manufactured at the north, but the floor was authors, it was a long while before I found of Georgia pine; the locks, and keys, and a southern publishing house. There was andirons, and shovel, and tongs, and hearth“Beulah,” but it had not Mobile on its title- broom, and rug, and oil-cloth, and tablepage; Dr. Thornwell's "Truth," but it was linen, and napkins were not made here, but not published in Columbia; the "Laws of the morning newspaper was printed on paper Georgia," but they were printed in New made at home, out of southern rags, and by York; "Cobb on Slavery," but it claimed southern labor. to be from Philadelphia; Stevens' "History After breakfast Albert drove me down of Georgia," but it came from Appleton's, on town in a northern buggy, behind a northern Broadway; "White's Statistics" had Savan-horse, with northern harness, and reins, and nah on its title-page, but I suspected this was a counterfeit stamp, and that it had not been printed in the south; Judge O'Neall's "Historical Sketches of Carolina" claimed to be from Charleston, and this was the first genuine southern print I found in my library. A more diligent search discovered others, but they were few and far between. As I went to the breakfast-room, the exclusion of the south was not so complete. The sideboard, and its glass and silver were from the north, but it had on it a handsome pitcher from our own kaolin; the window-shades, clock, tables, chairs, and crumb-cloth were from the same source; but there was a lounge manufactured here. Albert gave me my coffee in a northern cup, on a northern waiter, sweetened with Stuart's sugar, but the cream was from home; Ziney brought in hot waffles on a northern plate, but the corn, and flour, and eggs of which they were made were produced here; the water was handed in a northern tumbler, and cooled with Boston ice, but the water-cooler had on it a domestic stamp; the butter was southern, though hardened in a New England refrigerator; the cantelopes were raised here, though the salt and pepper which seasoned them were not; the hot biscuits were from southern flour, but the yeast-powders with which they were raised were from New York; the beef-steak was from our own market, but the tongue had been brought a thousand miles from home; the clabber was fresh from our own dairy, but the cheese was from New Jersey; the white, hot, smoking hominy was a domestic product, but the dish in which it was served was not; the bread was from our town bakery, but the ham was from Cincinnati; the knives, and forks, and spoons, whip. I stopped at a furniture shop, and asked how much of their stock was made here; and they said about fifty dollars in a thousand, the southern work being principally of pine; I asked at a book store the same question, and they told me, including law books and the reports of our supreme court, perhaps one dollar in a hundred; I asked at a tin shop, and they said their stoves, and gas fixtures, and lamps, and japanned work, and block tin were from the north, but that their tin ware was made in their own shop, though out of English plate and with northern solder; I enquired at a shoe shop, and they told me they had several hands employed on customers' work, but the great proportion of their sales were from Boston; I stopped at the paper warehouse, and was sure now that I had found a shop with home-made products, but they told me they only manufactured wrapping paper, and supplied the newspaper offices, but their card, and post, and letter paper was from the north; I drove to the cotton mills, and here found a genuine home manufacture, but their machinery, and looms, and spools, and oil were from the same northern hive, whose products swarm over every part of our country. The south are an agricultural people, devoted to the production of cotton, because it is more profitable than any other employment, and they are able and willing to buy their supplies from the north, because it is their interest to do so. Their labor is employed according to the irresistible laws of trade in the most remunerating pursuit, and they can afford to buy the manufactures they want, because they can be furnished cheaper than they can make them. They might tan their own leather, make their |