“The rich slave-owners look with fear and dislike on my experiment.”
“What else could you expect, Mr. Onslow? Take a case, publicly vouched for as true. Not long since a New York capitalist purchased mineral lands in Virginia, with a view to working them. He went on the ground and hired some of the white inhabitants of the neighborhood as laborers. All promised well, when lo! a committee of slaveholders, headed by one Jenkins,[[15]] waited on him, and told him he must discharge his hands and hire slaves. The white laborers offered to work at reduced wages rather than give up their employment, but they were overawed, and their employer was compelled by the slave despots to abandon his undertaking and return to a State where white laborers have rights.”
“And yet,” said Onslow, “there are politicians who try to persuade the people that the enslaving of a black man removes him from competition with white labor; whereas the direct effect of slavery is to give to slaveholders the monopoly and control of the most desirable kinds of labor, and to enable them to degrade and impoverish the white laboring man!”
Here the furious ringing of a bell called the gentlemen to dinner.
CHAPTER XI.
MR. ONSLOW SPEAKS HIS MIND.
“How faint through din of merchandise
And count of gain
Has seemed to us the captive’s cries!
How far away the tears and sighs
Of souls in pain!”