Slavery as an industrial system

by H. J. Nieboer

Much more fully has the true reason, why in densely peopled countries there is little use for slaves, been recognized by Wakefield in his book on the art of colonization. With him, the theory is not based upon a general conception of society, but upon the facts of the colonial history of his own time.

Wakefield, then, complains that in Australia and other colonies manufactures cannot thrive; the reason for this is, according to him, that there are no labourers to be had; for there is so much free land that every newly-arrived labourer becomes a landowner rather than work for wages. Therefore there are many colonies which would keep slaves if the home government let them. This leads the writer to an investigation of the circumstances which induce men to keep slaves.

“They are not moral, but economical circumstances; they relate not to vice and virtue, but to production. They are the circumstances, in which one man finds it difficult or impossible [[307]]to get other men to work under his direction for wages. They are the circumstances … which stand in the way of combination and constancy of labour, and which all civilized nations, in a certain stage of their advance from barbarism, have endeavoured to counteract, and have in some measure counteracted, by means of some kind of slavery. Hitherto in this world, labour has never been employed on any considerable scale, with constancy and in combination, except by one or other of two means; either by hiring, or by slavery of some kind. What the principle of association may do in the production of wealth, and for the labouring classes, without either slavery or hiring, remains to be seen; but at present we cannot rely upon it.…

“Slavery is evidently a make-shift for hiring; a proceeding to which recourse is had, only when hiring is impossible or difficult … it is adopted because at the time and under the circumstances there is no other way of getting labourers to work with constancy and in combination. What, then, are the circumstances under which this happens?

“It happens whenever population is scanty in proportion to land. Slavery … has been confined to countries of a scanty population, has never existed in very populous countries, and has gradually ceased in the countries whose population gradually increased to the point of density. And the reason is plain enough.… In populous countries, the desire to own land is not easily gratified, because the land is scarce and dear: the plentifulness and cheapness of land in thinly-peopled countries enables almost everybody who wishes it to become a landowner. In thinly-peopled countries, accordingly, the great majority of free people are landowners who cultivate their own land; and labour for hire is necessarily scarce: in densely-peopled countries, on the contrary, the great majority of the people cannot obtain land, and there is plenty of labour for hire. Of plentifulness of labour for hire, the cause is dearness of land: cheapness of land is the cause of scarcity of labour for hire”[21]. [[308]]

Wakefield proposed that the government should sell the new land in the colonies at a sufficient price, i.e. at a price which would oblige the newly arrived labourers to serve a few years for wages before being able to become landowners[22].

Another writer on colonial matters of the same period, Merivale, follows quite the same line of argument as Wakefield. The great demand for slaves and the great profitableness of slavery, he says, arise altogether from the scarcity of labour. “When the pressure of population induces the freeman to offer his services, as he does in all old countries, for little more than the natural minimum of wages, those services are very certain to be more productive and less expensive than those of the bondsman, whose support is a charge to the master, and who has nothing to gain by his industry.… This being the case, it is obvious that the limit of the profitable duration of slavery is attained whenever the population has become so dense that it is cheaper to employ the free labourer for hire. Towards this limit every community is approximating, however slowly.” That the relation between land and population is indeed the determining factor as regards the system of labour most suitable to a country, is clearly shown by the effect which the emancipation of the slaves had upon the economic development of the different colonies. Merivale then proceeds to divide the British slave colonies, at the time of emancipation, into three classes, as respects their economical situation. First, the oldest settlements, established in the smaller Antilles (Barbadoes, Antigua, etc.). They were those in which the land was nearly all occupied. “They were less injured than any others by the immediate effect of emancipation; for the negroes had no resource except in continuing to work; there was no unoccupied land for them to possess, no independent mode of obtaining a subsistence to which they could resort, still less of obtaining those luxuries which habit had rendered desirable to them.” “The next class is that of colonies in which the fertile or advantageously situated soil was all cultivated, and becoming [[309]]exhausted; but there remained much unoccupied soil, of a less valuable description, and the population was not dense in proportion to the whole surface.” This applies especially to Jamaica. Here the colonists “were injured, perhaps, by the abolition of the slave trade; and they suffer now, since emancipation, by the difficulty of compelling the negroes to perform hired labour while they have their own provision grounds, and other resources, at their disposal.” “Finally, there is a third class of colonies, in some of which the fertility of the cultivated soil is as yet unexhausted, in others there is abundance of fertile and unoccupied land. Such are the Mauritius and Trinidad, and, in a far higher degree, Guiana”. In these colonies, after emancipation, “the negroes have found it easy to obtain a subsistence in a country overflowing with natural wealth: they have been rescued from a servitude involving, perhaps, a greater amount of labour than in any other settlements: they have abundance of land to resort to for their maintenance. The accounts, both from Guiana and Trinidad, seem to report the negroes as generally peaceful and well-inclined, but indisposed to labour, to which they can only be tempted by the most exorbitant offers of wages”[23].

There is one more reason why slaves are of little use in those countries where all land has been appropriated. When there is free land, a man can, by increasing the number of his slaves, to any extent augment his revenue: every slave will take a new patch of land into cultivation; the more slaves a man owns, the more land he will have in tillage. But when the supply of land is limited, each landowner can employ only a definite number of labourers. As soon as there are hands enough to cultivate his grounds, an increase in the number of labourers soon becomes unprofitable. What we have said of pastoral tribes obtains here too: it may be that slaves are wanted, but when they are procured the point will soon be reached at which a further increase in their number yields no longer any profit. Therefore, when all land has been appropriated, even though it be equally divided between the members of the [[310]]community and so a labouring class be wanting, there is little use for slaves.

It must be understood that we speak here of self-dependent agricultural countries. Where manufactures and the trade with foreign parts are highly developed, economic life becomes much more complicated and presents quite another character.

What we want to prove is that in such self-dependent agricultural countries, when all arable land has been appropriated, slavery is not likely to exist.