[1] Not only does Moses evince his knowledge of the despotism of capital, in forbidding its profits, but also in his injunction, not to let emancipated slaves "go away empty." Deuteronomy xv. 13, 14.
"And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty. Thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy floor, and out of thy wine-press: of that wherewith the Lord thy God hath blessed thee thou shalt give unto him."
People without property exposed to the unrestricted exactions of capital are infinitely worse off after emancipation than before. Moses prevented the exactions of capital by providing property for the new free man.
CHAPTER III.
SUBJECT CONTINUED—EXPLOITATION OF SKILL.
"The worth of a thing, is just what it bring." The professional man who charges the highest fees is most respected, and he who undercharges stands disgraced. We have a friend who has been, and we believe will continue to be, one of the most useful men in Virginia. He inherited an independent patrimony. He acquired a fine education, and betook himself laboriously to an honorable profession. His success was great, and his charges very high. In a few years he amassed a fortune, and ceased work. We expounded our theory to him. Told him we used to consider him a good man, and quite an example for the rising generation; but that now he stood condemned under our theory. Whilst making his fortune, he daily exchanged about one day of his light labor for thirty days of the farmer, the gardener, the miner, the ditcher, the sewing woman, and other common working people's labor. His capital was but the accumulation of the results of their labor; for common labor creates all capital. Their labor was more necessary and useful than his, and also more honorable and respectable. The more honorable, because they were contented with their situation and their profits, and not seeking to exploitate, by exchanging one day of their labor for many of other people's. To be exploitated, ought to be more creditable than to exploitate. They were "slaves without masters;" the little fish, who were food for all the larger. They stood disgraced, because they would not practice cannibalism; rise in the world by more lucrative, less useful and less laborious pursuits, and live by exploitation rather than labor. He, by practising cannibalism more successfully than others, had acquired fame and fortune. 'Twas the old tune—"Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands." The more scalps we can shew, the more honored we are.
We told him he had made his fortune by the exploitation of skill, and was now living by the still worse exploitation of capital. Whilst working, he made thirty dollars a day—that is, exploitated or appropriated the labor of thirty common working men, and gave in exchange his own labor, intrinsically less worthy, than any one of theirs. But now he was doing worse. He was using his capital as a power to compel others to work for him—for whom he did not work at all. The white laborers who made his income, or interests and dividends, were wholly neglected by him, because he did not know even who they were. He treated his negro slaves much better. It was true, he appropriated or exploitated much of the results of their labor, but he governed them and provided for them, with almost parental affection. Some of them we knew, who feigned to be unfit for labor, he was boarding expensively. Our friend at first ridiculed our theory. But by degrees began to see its truth, and being sensitively conscientious, was disposed to fret whenever the subject was introduced.
One day he met us, with a face beaming with smiles, and said, "I can explain and justify that new theory of yours. This oppression and exaction of skill and capital which we see continually practiced, and which is too natural to man ever to cease, is necessary in order to disperse and diffuse population over the globe. Half the good lands of the world are unappropriated and invite settlement and cultivation. Most men who choose can become proprietors by change of residence. They are too much crowded in many countries, and exploitation that disperses them is a blessing. It will be time enough to discuss your theory of the despotism of skill and capital, when all the world is densely settled, and the men without property can no longer escape from the exactions of those who hold property."