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

by Henry Charles Carey

IV. That this in turn implies the exhaustion of the land and the impoverishment of its owner.

V. That the impoverishment of the land renders necessary a removal to new and more distant lands.

VI. That this renders necessary a larger amount of transportation, while the impoverishment of the farmer increases the difficulty of making roads.

VII. That the increased distance of the market produces a steadily increased necessity for limiting the work of cultivation to the production of those commodities which can be obtained from high and dry lands, and that the quantity of products tends therefore to diminish with the increased distance from market.

VIII. That with each step in the progress of exhausting the land, men are compelled to separate more widely from each other, and that there is therefore a steady diminution in the power of association for the making of roads, or the establishment of schools, and that the small towns, or near places of exchange, tend gradually toward depopulation and ruin.

IX. That the more men separate from each other the less is the power to procure machinery, and the greater the necessity for cultivating the poorest soils, even though surrounded by lead, iron, and copper ore, coal, lime, and all other of the elements of which machinery is composed.

X. That with the diminished power of association, children grow up uneducated, and men and women become rude and barbarous.

XI. That the power to apply labour productively tends steadily to diminish, and that women, in default of other employment, are forced to resort to the field, and to become slaves to their fathers, husbands, and brothers.

XII. That the power to accumulate capital tends likewise to diminish—that land becomes from day to day more consolidated—and that man sinks gradually into the condition of a slave to the landed or other capitalist.

XIII. That with this steady passage of man from the state of a freeman to that of a slave, he has steadily less to sell, and can therefore purchase less; and that thus the only effect of a policy which compels the impoverishment of the land and its owner is to destroy the customer, who, under a different system of policy, might have become a larger purchaser from year to year.