The author then proceeds to show from the report of Professor George Tucker, of the University of Virginia, that in New England agriculture yields an annual value averaging one hundred and eighty dollars per hand; and the Southern States a hundred and thirty dollars per hand; and proceeds: "Now it is admitted on all hands that slave labor is better adapted to agriculture than to any other branch of industry; and that, if not good for agriculture, it is really good for nothing."
Referring to the subject of manufactures, and the blighting influence of slavery thereon, the author says: "Of all the states in this Union, not one has on the whole such various and abundant resources for manufacturing as our own Virginia both East and West."
Notwithstanding these advantages, the author demonstrates from the census that the state has scarcely entered upon the work of manufacturing her raw material. Thus in four leading manufactures, the output in New York was twenty-one millions, New Jersey, six millions, and Pennsylvania, sixteen millions in value; while that of Virginia was two and three-fourths millions. With respect to the commerce of the state, the author, after pointing out her exceptional advantages growing out of her fine harbors and numerous rivers, declares:
"That the commerce of our old slave-eaten commonwealth has decayed and dwindled away to a mere pittance in the general mass of American trade.
"The value of her exports, which, twenty-five or thirty years ago, averaged four or five millions a year shrunk by 1842 to two millions eight hundred and twenty thousand dollars, and by 1845 to two million one hundred thousand dollars."
"Her imports from foreign countries were, in the year 1765, valued at upwards of four millions of dollars; in 1791 they had sunk to two and one-half millions; in 1821 they had fallen to a little over one million; in 1827 they had come down to about half this sum; and in 1843 to the half of this again, or about one-quarter of a million; and here they have stood ever since—at next to nothing."...
"Why should every commercial improvement, every wheel that speeds the movement of trade, serve but to carry away from the slave states more and more of their wealth for the benefit of the great Northern cities? The only cause that can be assigned is that where slavery prevails, commerce and navigation cannot flourish, and commercial towns cannot compete with those in the free states."[[191]]
VIEWS OF R. R. HOWISON
R. R. Howison, in his History of Virginia, published in 1848, replying to the question whether the state has prospered: "As her physical resources would warrant us in expecting: has she held her place in the great march of American States during the present century?" answers:
"It has long been the sad conviction of her most enlightened children that these questions must be answered in the negative.... It must, therefore, be regarded as a truth, but too fully established, that Virginia has fallen below her duty; that she has been indolent while others have been laborious; that she has been content to avoid a movement positively retrograde while others have gone rapidly forward. Her motion compared with that of Massachusetts and Ohio might, in familiar terms, be likened to the heavy stage coach of the past century, competing with the fine steam car of the present.