Mr. Russell,[40] although he clearly sees the calamity of the South, fully accepts the cotton planter’s opinion, that, after all, the system of slavery is a necessary evil attending upon the great good of cheap cotton. He says: “If the climate had admitted of the growing of cotton on the banks of the Ohio, we should have seen that slavery possessed as great advantages over free labour in the raising of this crop as it does in that of tobacco.” If this is so, it is important that it should be well understood why it is so as precisely as possible.
In his Notes on Maryland, Mr. Russell (p. 141) says: “Though a slave may, under very favourable circumstances, cultivate twenty acres of wheat and twenty acres of Indian corn, he cannot manage more than two acres of tobacco. The cultivation of tobacco, therefore, admits of the concentration of labour, and thus the superintendence and management of a tobacco plantation will be more perfect and less expensive than a corn one.” And this is the only explanation he offers of the supposed advantage of slave labour in the cultivation of tobacco (and of consequence in the cultivation of cotton). The chief expense of raising Indian corn is chargeable to planting and tillage, that of tobacco to the seedbed, the transplanting and nursing of the young plants (which is precisely similar to the same operation with cabbages), the hand-weeding, the hoeing after the plant has “become too large to work without injuring the leaves by the swingle-trees of a horse plough;”[41] “the topping,” “the suckering,” the selection and removal of valueless leaves, and “the worming,” all of them, except hoeing, being operations which can be performed by children and child-bearing women, as they usually are in Virginia.[42]
The chief expense of raising cotton, as of Indian corn, is that of planting and tillage. The principal difference between the method of tillage of cotton and that of Indian corn is occasioned by the greater luxuriance of weeds in the Southern climate and the slow growth of the cotton plant in its early stages, which obliges the tillage process to be more carefully and more frequently performed. For this reason, the area of cotton cultivated by each labourer is less than of corn. The area of corn land to a hand is much over-estimated by Mr. Russell. On the other hand, the only mention he makes of the area of cotton land to a hand (being the statement of a negro) would lead to the conclusion that it is often not over three acres, and that five acres is extraordinary. Mr. De Bow says,[43] in an argument to prove that the average production per acre is over-estimated, “In the real cotton region, perhaps the average number of acres per hand is ten.”
Mr. Russell observes of worming and leafing tobacco: “These operations can be done as well, and consequently as cheaply, by women and children as by full-grown men.” (Page 142.) After reading Mr. Russell’s views, I placed myself, through the kindness of Governor Chase, in communication with the Ohio Board of Agriculture, from which I have obtained elaborate statistics, together with reports on the subject from twelve Presidents or Secretaries of County Agricultural Societies, as well as from others. These gentlemen generally testify that a certain amount of labour given to corn will be much better repaid than if given to tobacco. “Men are worth too much for growing corn to be employed in strolling through tobacco fields, looking for worms, and even women can, as our farmers think, find something better to do about the house.” Children, too, are thought to be, and doubtless are, better employed at school in preparing themselves for more profitable duties, and this is probably the chief reason why coarse tobacco[44] cannot be cultivated with as much profit as corn in Ohio, while the want of intelligent, self-interested labour, is the reason why the corn-field, among the tall broad blades of which a man will work during much of its growth in comparative obscurity, cannot be cultivated with as much profit on soils of the same quality in Virginia as in Ohio. In short, a class of labourers, who are good for nothing else, and who, but for this, would be an intolerable burden upon those who are obliged to support them, can be put to some use in raising tobacco, and, therefore, coarse tobacco continues to be cultivated in some of the principal slaveholding counties of Virginia. But this class of labourers is of no more value in cotton culture than in corn culture. Mr. De Bow says: “The South-west, the great cotton region, is newly settled, and the number of children, out of all proportion, less than in negroes [regions?] peopled, by a natural growth of population.[45] Weak women and children are, in fact, not at all wanted for cotton culture, the cotton planter’s inquiry being exclusively for ‘prime boys,’ or ‘A 1 field-hands.’”
Thus in every way cotton culture more resembles corn culture than it does tobacco culture. The production of corn is larger in the aggregate, is considerably larger per man engaged in its cultivation, and is far larger per acre in Ohio than in Virginia.[46] I should, therefore, be inclined to reverse Mr. Russell’s statement, and to say that if the climate had admitted of the growing of cotton on both banks of the Ohio, we should have seen that free-labour possessed as great advantages over slavery in the cultivation of cotton as of corn.
Mr. Russell echoes also the opinion, which every cotton planter is in the habit of urging, that the production of cotton would have been comparatively insignificant in the United States if it had not been for slave labour. He likewise restricts the available cotton region within much narrower limits than are usually given to it, and holds that the slave population must soon in a great measure be concentrated within it. As these conclusions of a scientific traveller unintentionally support a view which has been lately systematically pressed upon manufacturers and merchants both in Great Britain and the Free States, namely, that the perpetuation of slavery in its present form is necessary to the perpetuation of a liberal cotton supply, and also that the limit of production in the United States must be rapidly approaching, and consequently that the tendency of prices must be rapidly upward, the grounds on which they rest should be carefully scrutinized.
Mr. Russell says, in a paragraph succeeding the words just now quoted with regard to the supposed advantages of slave labour in raising tobacco:
“The rich upland soils of the cotton region afford a profitable investment for capital, even when cultivated by slaves left to the care of overseers. The natural increase of the slaves, from two to six per cent., goes far to pay the interest of the money invested in them. The richest soils of the uplands are invariably occupied by the largest plantations, and the alluvial lands on the banks of the western rivers are so unhealthy for white labourers that the slaveowners occupy them without competition. Thus the banks of the western rivers are now becoming the great cotton-producing districts. Taking these facts into consideration, it appears that the quantity of cotton which would have been raised without slave labour in the United States would have been comparatively insignificant to the present supply.”[47]
The advantages of slave-labour for cotton culture seem from this to have been predicated mainly upon the unwholesomeness to free or white labourers of the best cotton lands, especially of the alluvial lands on the banks of rivers. Reference is made particularly to “the county of Washington, Mississippi State [which] lies between the Yazoo and Mississippi rivers. * * * The soil is chiefly alluvial, though a considerable portion is swampy and liable to be flooded.”[48]
Mr. Russell evidently considers that it is to this swampy condition, and to stagnant water left by floods, that the supposed insalubrity of this region is to be chiefly attributed. How would he explain, then, the undoubted salubrity of the bottom lands in Louisiana, which are lower than those of the Mississippi, exposed to a more southern sun, more swampy, and which were originally much more frequently flooded, but having been dyked and “leveed,” are now inhabited by a white population of several hundred thousand. I will refer to the evidence of an expert:—