Subsistence, therefore, is independent of capital and easy to procure. Every one is able to clear a piece of ground and provide for himself; nobody offers his services to another, and so, if a man wants a labourer, he must compel his fellow-man to work for him. “All freemen in new countries” says Bagehot “must be pretty equal; every one has labour, and every one has land; capital, at least in agricultural countries (for pastoral countries are very different), is of little use; it cannot hire labour; the labourers go and work for themselves. There is a story often told of a great English capitalist who went out to Australia with a shipload of labourers and a carriage; his plan was that the labourers should build a house for him, and that he would keep his carriage, just as in England. But (so the story goes) he had to try to live in his carriage, for [[299]]his labourers left him, and went away to work for themselves”[9]. Similarly, Sombart observes: “Colonies, in which there are no labourers to exploit, are like knives without blades”[10]. In such countries, if a man wants others to work in his service and according to his instructions, he must compel them to do so, i.e. he must enslave them. And agriculture, requiring little skill and application, is very fit to be imposed upon slaves: compulsory agricultural labour, though not so productive as voluntary labour, can yet yield some profit. Moreover, the agricultural slave is rather easy to control; his work does not require independent action. It is also easy to prevent him from running away. In all this he differs from a hunting slave. And agriculture is also more favourable to the existence of slavery than cattle-breeding; for among pastoral tribes there is but a fixed and rather small amount of work to be done; but where men subsist by agriculture, any increase in the number of slaves brings about an increase of food.
We cannot, therefore, agree with Adam Smith, who asserts that in those countries where slaves are employed, it would be more profitable to employ free labourers, and that it was, in general, pride and love of power in the master that led to the employment of slaves[11]. A free labourer, it is true, is more interested in the work he has to do, and therefore likely to do it better, than a slave; but in those countries where there is an abundance of fertile soil, and capital is of little use, free labourers cannot be had; every freeman prefers working for himself, or perhaps not working at all.
Cairnes, speaking of Negro slavery as it was carried on in the United States, admits that slave labour has sometimes an advantage over free labour, but only where tobacco, cotton and similar crops are raised for industrial purposes, not where cereals are grown. “The economic advantages of slavery” he remarks “are easily stated: they are all comprised in the fact that the employer of slaves has absolute power over his workmen, [[300]]and enjoys the disposal of the whole fruit of their labours. Slave labour, therefore, admits of the most complete organization; that is to say, it may be combined on an extensive scale, and directed by a controlling mind to a single end, and its cost can never rise above that which is necessary to maintain the slave in health and strength. On the other hand, the economical defects of slave labour are very serious. They may be summed up under the three following heads:—it is given reluctantly; it is unskilful; it is wanting in versatility.… The line dividing the Slave from the Free States marks also an important division in the agricultural capabilities of North America. North of this line, the products for which the soil and climate are best adapted are cereal crops, while south of it the prevailing crops are tobacco, rice, cotton, and sugar; and these two classes of crops are broadly distinguished in the methods of culture suitable to each. The cultivation of the one class, of which cotton may be taken as the type, requires for its efficient conduct that labour should be combined and organized on an extensive scale. On the other hand, for the raising of cereal crops this condition is not so essential. Even where labour is abundant and that labour free, the large capitalist does not in this mode of farming appear on the whole to have any preponderating advantage over the small proprietor, who, with his family, cultivates his own farm, as the example of the best cultivated states in Europe proves. Whatever superiority he may have in the power of combining and directing labour seems to be compensated by the greater energy and spirit which the sense of property gives to the exertions of the small proprietor. But there is another essential circumstance in which these two classes of crops differ. A single labourer, Mr. Russell tells us, can cultivate twenty acres of wheat or Indian corn, while he cannot manage more than two of tobacco, or three of cotton. It appears from this that tobacco and cotton fulfil that condition which we saw was essential to the economical employment of slaves—the possibility of working large numbers within a limited space; while wheat and Indian corn, in the cultivation of which the labourers are dispersed over a wide surface, fail in this respect. We thus find that cotton, and the class of crops of which [[301]]cotton may be taken as the type, favour the employment of slaves in competition with peasant proprietors in two leading ways: first, they need extensive combination and organization of labour—requirements which slavery is eminently calculated to supply, but in respect to which the labour of peasant proprietors is defective; and secondly, they allow of labour being concentrated, and thus minimize the cardinal evil of slave labour—the reluctance with which it is yielded. On the other hand, the cultivation of cereal crops, in which extensive combination of labour is not important, and in which the operations of industry are widely diffused, offers none of these advantages for the employment of slaves, while it is remarkably fitted to bring out in the highest degree the especial excellencies of the industry of free proprietors. Owing to these causes it has happened that slavery has been maintained in the Southern States[12], which favour the growth of tobacco, cotton, and analogous products, while, in the Northern States, of which cereal crops are the great staple, it from an early period declined and has ultimately died out. And, in confirmation of this view, it may be added that wherever in the Southern States the external conditions are especially favourable to cereal crops, as in parts of Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri, and along the slopes of the Alleghanies, there slavery has always failed to maintain itself. It is owing to this cause that there now exists in some parts of the South a considerable element of free labouring population”[13].
This reasoning is quite correct so far as Negro slavery in the United States is concerned; but it does not hold with regard to primitive slavery or “retail slavery” as Bagehot calls it. The few slaves kept in primitive agricultural societies work together with their masters, who can therefore continually supervise their work and do not want overseers. Moreover, the slave in primitive and simple societies is not looked upon as a piece of machinery; he is, so to speak, an inferior member of the family, sharing in its pleasures, sorrows, and occupations; therefore it is not only the fear of punishment that induces him to work; he is interested in the welfare of the family, and knows [[302]]that the better he works, the more he will be valued, and the more food there will be of which he will get his due share[14]. This retail slavery, as Bagehot remarks, “the slavery in which a master owns a few slaves, whom he well knows and daily sees—is not at all an intolerable state; the slaves of Abraham had no doubt a fair life, as things went in that day. But wholesale slavery, where men are but one of the investments of large capital, and where a great owner, so far from knowing each slave, can hardly tell how many gangs of them he works, is an abominable state”[15]. Retail slavery, therefore, can very well exist where cereal crops are raised; it is even the most convenient system of labour in primitive agricultural societies.
We see that the general economic state of truly agricultural tribes may account for the existence of slavery among so many of these tribes. We shall now inquire what secondary causes there are at work among agricultural tribes, and what effect they have. But we shall have to speak first of a great factor in economic life, which we have not met with before.
§ 4. Land and population.
The general principle laid down in the last paragraph is that in primitive agricultural societies capital is of little use and subsistence easy to acquire; therefore every able-bodied man can, by taking a piece of land into cultivation, provide for himself. Hence it follows that nobody voluntarily serves another; he who wants a labourer must subject him, and this subjection will often assume the character of slavery.
But this general rule requires an important qualification. Hitherto we have supposed, that there is much more fertile land than is required to be cultivated for the support of the [[303]]actual population. Such, indeed, is the case among most savages; but it is not always so. And where it is not so, our general rule does not obtain. When all land fit for cultivation has been appropriated, a man, though able-bodied and willing to work, if he owns no land, cannot earn his subsistence independently of a landlord; he has to apply to the owners of the land for employment as a tenant or servant. In such case free labourers are available; therefore slaves are not wanted.
In this and the ensuing paragraphs we shall endeavour to prove by facts the hypothesis arrived at here by a deductive reasoning, which we may express thus: where all land fit for cultivation has been appropriated, slavery is not likely to exist.