The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign / Why It Exists, and How It May Be Extinguished

by Henry Charles Carey

The essential error of this passage is found in the supposition that any set of people or any species of industry, is to profit by the cheapening of labour and the enslavement of man. Nothing of this kind can take place. The true interests of all men are promoted by the elevation, and they all suffer by whatever tends to the depression, of their fellow-men. The master of slaves, whether wearing a crown or carrying a whip, is himself a slave; and that such is the case with nations as well as individuals, the reader may perhaps be satisfied if he will follow out the working of the British system as here described by the reviewer. For half a century Irish labour has been, as we are here told, poured into England, producing a glut in the market, and lowering not only the wages, but also the standard of comfort among English labourers. This is quite true; but why did these men come? Because labour was cheaper in Ireland than in England. Why was it so? Because, just half a century since, it was provided by the Act of Union that the women and children of Ireland should either remain idle or work in the field. Prior to the centralization by that act of all power in the British Parliament, the people of that country had been vigorously engaged in the effort to produce competition for the purchase of labour at home; and had they been permitted to continue on in that direction, it would have risen to a level with English labour, and then it could not have been profitably exported. This, however, they were not permitted to do. Their furnaces and factories were closed, and the people who worked in them were driven to England to seek their bread, and wages fell, because the price of all commodities, labour included, tends to a level, and whatever reduces them anywhere tends to reduce them everywhere. The price of English labour fell because the Act of Union had diminished the value of that of Ireland.

If we desire to know to what extent it had this effect, we must look to the consequences of an over-supply of perishable articles. Of all commodities, labour is the most perishable, because it must be sold on the instant or it is wasted, and if wasted, the man who has it to sell may perish himself. Now we know that an over-supply of even iron, equal to ten per cent., will reduce prices thirty, forty, or fifty per cent., and that an excess of a single hundred thousand bales in the crop of cotton makes a difference of ten per cent. upon three millions of bales, whereas a diminution to the same extent will make a difference of ten per cent. in the opposite direction. Still more is this the case with oranges and peaches, which must be sold at once or wasted. With an excess in the supply of either, they are often abandoned as not worth the cost of gathering and carrying to market. A small excess in the supply of men, women, and children so far reduces their value in the eyes of the purchaser of labour, that he finds himself, as now in England, induced to regard it as a mercy of Heaven when famine, pestilence, and emigration clear them out of his way; and he is then disposed to think that the process "cannot be carried too far nor continued too long."

Irish labour, having been cheapened by the provisions of the Act of Union, was carried to the market of England for sale, and thus was produced a glut of the most perishable of all commodities; and the effect of that glut must have been a diminution in the general price of labour in England that far more than compensated for the increased number of labourers. Admitting, however, that the diminution was no more than would be so compensated, it would follow, of course, that the quantity of wages paid after a year's immigration was the same that it had previously been. That it was not, and could not have been so great, is quite certain; but it is not needed to claim more than that there was no increase. It follows, necessarily, that while the quantity of wages to be expended in England against food and clothing remained the same, the number of persons among whom it was to be divided had increased, and each had less to expend. This of course diminished the power to purchase food, and to a much greater degree diminished the demand for clothing, for the claims of the stomach are, of all others, the most imperious. The reader will now see that the chief effect thus produced by cheap labour is a reduction in the domestic demand for manufactured goods. As yet, however, we are only at the commencement of the operation. The men who had been driven from Ireland by the closing of Irish factories, had been consumers of food,[211] but as they could no longer consume at home, it became now necessary that that food should follow them to England, and the necessity for this transportation tended largely to diminish the prices of all food in Ireland, and of course the value of labour and land. Each new depression in the price of labour tended to swell the export of men, and the larger that export the greater became, of course, the necessity for seeking abroad a market for food. Irish food came to swell the supply, but the English market for it did not grow, because the greater the glut of men, the smaller became the sum of wages to be laid out against food; and thus Irish and English food were now contending against each other, to the injury, of English and Irish labour and land. The lower the price of food in England, the less was the inducement to improve the land, and the less the demand for labour the less the power to buy even food, while the power to pay for clothing diminished with tenfold rapidity. With each step in this direction the labourer lost more and more the control over his own actions, and became more and more enslaved. The decline in the home demand for manufactures then produced a necessity for seeking new markets, for underworking the Hindoo, and for further cheapening labour; and the more labour was cheapened the less became the demand for, and the return to capital. Land, labour, and capital thus suffered alike from the adoption of a policy having for its object to prevent the people of Ireland from mining coal, making iron, or availing themselves of the gratuitous services of those powerful agents so abundantly provided by nature for their use.

The reader may, perhaps, appreciate more fully the evil effects of this course upon an examination of the reverse side of the picture. Let us suppose that the Irishman could at once be raised from being the slave of the landholder to becoming a freeman, exercising control over the application of his labour, and freely discussing with his employer what should be his reward,—and see what would be the effect. It would at once establish counter-attraction, and instead of a constant influx of people from Ireland into England, there would be a constant afflux to that country, and in a little time the whole mass of Irish labour that now weighs on the English market would be withdrawn, and wages would rise rapidly. At the cost of the landholder, it will be said. On the contrary, to his profit. The Irishman at home, fully employed, would consume thrice the food he can now obtain, and Irish food would at once cease to press on the English market, and the price of English food would rise. This, of course, would offer new inducements to improve the land, and, this would make a demand for labour and capital, the price of both of which would rise. These things, however, it will be said, would be done at the cost of the manufacturer. On the contrary, to his advantage Ireland now consumes but little of English manufactures. "No one," says the Quarterly Review, "ever saw an English scarecrow with such rags" as are worn by hundreds of thousands of the people of Ireland. Raise the value of Irishmen at home, make them free, and the Irish market will soon require more manufactured goods than now go to all India. Raise the value of man in Great Britain, and the domestic market will absorb an amount of commodities that would now be deemed perfectly incredible.

How can this be done for Ireland? By the same process under which the man of Germany, Russia, Denmark, and Spain is now passing gradually toward freedom. By providing that she shall be protected in her efforts to bring the consumer to the side of the producer, and thus be enabled to provide at home demand for all her labour and all her food, and for all the capital now deemed surplus that weighs on the market of England. It will, however, be said that this would deprive the English manufacturer of the market he now has in that country. It would not. He would sell more in value, although it would certainly be less in bulk. If Ireland spun her own yarn and made her own coarse cloths, she would need to buy fine ones. If she made her woollen cloth she could afford to buy silks. If she made her own pig-iron she would have occasion to purchase steam-engines. If she mined her own coal she would require books; and the more her own labourer was elevated in the scale of material comfort, and moral and intellectual improvement, the larger would be her demands on her neighbours for those commodities requiring for their production the exercise of mind, to their advantage as well as her own.

The error in the whole British system is, that it looks to preventing everywhere local association and local commerce; and this it does because it seeks to locate in England the workshop of the world. The natural effect of this is a desire to compel all nations to transport their products to market in their rudest form, at greatest cost to themselves, and greatest exhaustion of their land; and the poorer they become, the greater are her efforts at competing with them in the rudest manufactures, to the great injury of her own people. The man who is constantly competing with men below himself, will be sure eventually to fall to their level; whereas, he who looks upward and determines upon competition with those who are above him, will be very likely to rise to their level. If all the world were engaged in perfecting their products, the standard of man would be everywhere rising, and the power to purchase would grow everywhere, with rapid increase in the amount of both internal and external commerce, but the commodities, exchanged would be of a higher character—such as would require for their preparation a higher degree of intellect. At present, all the nations outside of England are to be stimulated to the adoption of a system that affords to their men, women, and children no employment but that of the rude operations of the field, while those in England are to be kept at work mining coal, making pig metal; and converting cotton into yarn; and thus the tendency of the system is toward driving the whole people of the world into pursuits requiring little more than mere brute labour, and the lowest grade of intellect, to the destruction of commerce, both internal and external. The more this is carried into effect the more must the people of England and the world become brutalized and enslaved, and the greater must be the spread of intemperance and immorality. To this, Ireland, India, and all other countries that find themselves forced to press their products on the English market, are largely contributing, and the only people that are doing any thing for its correction are those who are labouring to make a market at home for their products, and thus diminish the competition for their sale in the English market. Were Germany and Russia now to abolish protection, the direct effect would be to throw upon England an immense amount of food they now consume at home, and thus diminish the price to such an extent as to render it impracticable to apply labour to the improvement of English land. This would of course diminish the wages of English labour, and diminish the power of the labourers to purchase manufactured goods, and the diminution thus produced in the domestic demand would be twice as great as the increase obtained abroad. It is time that the people of England should learn that the laws which govern the community of nations are precisely the same as those which govern communities of individuals, and that neither nations nor individuals can benefit permanently by any measures tending to the injury of their neighbours. The case of Ireland is one of oppression more grievous than is to be found elsewhere in the records of history; and oppression has brought its punishment in the enslavement of the English labourer, land-owner, and capitalist. The first has small wages, the second small rents, and the third small profits, while the intermediate people, bankers, lawyers, and agents, grow rich. The remedy for much of this would be found in the adoption of measures that would raise the value of labour, capital, and land, in Ireland, and thus permit the two former to remain at home, to give value to the last.

The evil under which the people of England labour is that they are borne down under the weight of raw produce forced into their market, and the competition for its sale. This, in turn, reacts upon the world—as prices in that market fix the prices of all other markets. What is now needed is to raise there the price of labour and its products, as would at once be done were it possible for all the agricultural nations to become so much masters of their own actions as to be able to say that from this time forward they would have such a demand at home as would free them from the slavery incident to a necessity for going to that market. Could that now be said, the instant effect would be so to raise the price of food as to make a demand for labour and capital in England that would double the price of both, as will be seen on an examination of the following facts. The United Kingdom contains seventy millions of acres, and an average expenditure of only three days labour per acre, at 12s. per week, would amount to twenty-one millions of pounds, or half as much as the whole capital engaged in the cotton trade. No one who studies the reports on the agriculture of the British islands can doubt that even a larger quantity might annually, and most profitably, be employed on the land; and when we reflect that this would be repeated year after year, it will be seen how large a market would thus be made for both labour and capital. The rise of wages would put an end to the export of men from either England or Ireland, and the increase in the home demand for manufactures would be great.

It may be said that the rise in the price of food would give large rents, without improvement in the land, and that the profit of this change would go to the land-owner. In all other trades, however, high wages compel improvements of machinery, and it is only when they are low that men can profitably work old machines. Were the wages of England this day doubled, it would be found that they would eat up the whole proceeds of all badly farmed land, leaving no rent, and then the owners of such land would find themselves as much obliged to improve their machinery of production as are the mill-owners of Manchester. If they could not improve the whole, they would find themselves compelled to sell a part; and thus dear labour would produce division of the land and emancipation of the labourer, as cheap labour has produced the consolidation of the one and the slavery of the other.

To enable Russia and Germany to refrain from pressing their products on the market that now regulates and depresses prices, it would be required that they should have great numbers of mills and furnaces, at which their now surplus food could be consumed, and their effect would be to create among them a new demand for labour with rise of wages, a better market for food to the benefit of the farmer, a better market for capital, and a greatly increased power to improve the land and to make roads and build schools. This would, of course, make demand for cotton, to the benefit of the cotton-grower, while improved prices for food would benefit the farmer everywhere. Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas, too, would then have their factories, at which food and cotton would be converted into cloth, and the value of man in those States would rise to a level with that of Mississippi and Alabama—and our domestic slave trade would be brought to an end by precisely the same measures that would relieve England, Ireland, and Scotland from any necessity for exporting men to distant regions of the earth.

Nothing of this kind could at once be done; but Russia, Germany, and other countries of Europe are now, under protection, doing much toward it; and it is in the power of the people of this country to contribute largely toward bringing about such a state of things. Much was being done under the tariff of 1842, but it is being undone under the act of 1846. The former tended to raise the value of man at home, and hence it was that under it the domestic slave trade so much diminished. The latter tends to diminish the value of man at home, and hence it is that under it that trade so rapidly increases. The former tended to diminish the quantity of food to be forced on the market of England, to the deterioration of the value of English labour and land. The latter tends to increase the quantity for which a market must be sought abroad; and whatever tends to force food into that country tends to lessen the value of its people, and to produce their forced export to other countries. As yet, however, we have arrived only at the commencement of the working of the "free trade" system. We are now where we were in 1836, when the making of railroads by aid of large purchases, on credit, of cloth and iron, stimulated the consumption of food and diminished the labour applied to its production. After the next revulsion, now perhaps not far distant, the supply of food will be large, and then it will be that the low prices of 1841-2, for both food and labour, will be repeated.