These estimates are all made by persons anxious to maintain the necessity of protection to the continued production of sugar in the United States, and who are, therefore, under strong temptation to over-estimate expenditures.
In the first statement, the cost of clothing and boarding a first-rate, hard-working man is stated to be $30 a year. A suit of winter clothing and a pair of trousers for summer, a blanket for bedding, a pair of shoes and a hat, must all at least be included under the head of clothing; and these, however poor, could not certainly cost, altogether, less than $10. For food, then, $20 a year is a large estimate, which is 5½ cents. a day. This is for the best hands; light hands are estimated at half this cost. Does the food of a first-rate labourer, anywhere in the free world, cost less? The lowest price paid by agricultural labourers in the Free States of America for board is 21 cents a day, that is, $1.50 a week; the larger part probably pay at least twice as much as this.
On most plantations, I suppose, but by no means on all, the slaves cultivate “patches,” and raise poultry for themselves. The produce is nearly always sold to get money to buy tobacco and Sunday finery. But these additions to the usual allowance cannot be said to be provided for them by their masters. The labour expended in this way for themselves does not average half a day a week per slave; and many planters will not allow their slaves to cultivate patches, because it tempts them to reserve for and to expend in the night-work the strength they want employed in their service during the day, and also because the produce thus obtained is made to cover much plundering of their master’s crops, and of his live stock.[36] The free labourer also, in addition to his board, nearly always spends something for luxuries—tobacco, fruit, and confections, to say nothing of dress and luxuries and recreations.
The fact is, that ninety-nine in a hundred of our free labourers, from choice and not from necessity—for the same provisions cost more in Louisiana than they do anywhere in the Northern States—live, in respect to food, at least four times as well as the average of the hardest-worked slaves on the Louisiana sugar-plantations. And for two or three months in the year I have elsewhere shown that these are worked with much greater severity than free labourers at the North ever are. For on no farm, and in no factory, or mine, even when double wages are paid for night-work, did I ever hear of men or women working regularly eighteen hours a day. If ever done, it is only when some accident makes it especially desirable for a few days.
I have not compared the comfort of the light hands, in which, besides the aged and children, are evidently included most of the females of the plantation, with that of factory girls and apprentices; but who of those at the North was ever expected to find board at four cents a day, and obliged to save money enough out of such an allowance to provide him or herself with clothing? But that, manifestly and beyond the smallest doubt of error (except in favour of free labour), expresses the condition of the Louisiana slave. Forty-eight of the most worthy planters of the State attest it in an official document, published by order of Congress.
There is no reason for supposing that the slaves are much, if any, better fed elsewhere than in Louisiana. I was expressly told in Virginia that I should find them better fed in Louisiana than anywhere else. In the same Report of Mr. Secretary Walker, a gentleman in South Carolina testifies that he considers that the “furnishing” (food and clothing) of “full-tasked hands” costs $15 a year.[37]
The United States army is generally recruited from our labouring class, and a well-conditioned and respectable labourer is not very often induced to join it. The following, taken from an advertisement, for recruits, in the Richmond Enquirer, shows the food provided:
“Daily Rations.—One and a quarter pounds of beef, one and three-sixteenths pounds of bread; and at the rate of eight quarts of beans, eight pounds of sugar, four pounds of coffee, two quarts of salt, four pounds of candles, and four pounds of soap, to every hundred rations.”
From an advertisement for slaves to be hired by the year, to work on a canal, in the Daily Georgian:
“Weekly Allowance.—They will be provided with three and a half pounds of pork or bacon, and ten quarts of gourd seed corn per week, lodged in comfortable shanties, and attended by a skilful physician.”