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

by Henry Charles Carey

The change thus effected has been stated in a recent official report to have been attended with ruin and distress, to which "no parallel can be found in the annals of commerce." What were the means by which it was effected is shown in the fact that at this period Sir Robert Peel stated that in Lancashire, children were employed fifteen and seventeen hours per day during the week, and on Sunday morning, from six until twelve, cleaning the machinery. In Coventry, ninety-six hours in the week was the time usually required; and of those employed, many obtained but 2s. 9d.—66 cents—for a week's wages. The object to be accomplished was that of underworking the poor Hindoo, and driving him from the market of the world, after which he was to be driven from his own. The mode of accomplishment was that of cheapening labour and enslaving the labourer at home and abroad.

With the decline of manufactures there has ceased to be a demand for the services of women or children in the work of conversion, and they are forced either to remain idle, or to seek employment in the field; and here we have one of the distinguishing marks of a state of slavery. The men, too, who were accustomed to fill up the intervals of other employments in pursuits connected with the cotton manufacture, were also driven to the field—and all demand for labour, physical or intellectual, was at an end, except so far as was needed for raising rice, indigo, sugar, or cotton. The rice itself they were not permitted to clean, being debarred therefrom by a duty double that which was paid on paddy, or rough rice, on its import into England. The poor grower of cotton, after paying to the government seventy-eight per cent.[84] of the product of his labour, found himself deprived of the power to trade directly with the man of the loom, and forced into "unlimited competition" with the better machinery and almost untaxed labour of our Southern States; and thereby subjected to "the mysterious variations of foreign markets" in which the fever of speculation was followed by the chill of revulsion with a rapidity and frequency that set at naught all calculation. If our crops were small, his English customers would take his cotton; but when he sent over more next year, there had, perhaps, been a good season here, and the Indian article became an absolute drug in the market. It was stated some time since, in the House of Commons, that one gentleman, Mr. Turner, had thrown £7000 worth of Indian cotton upon a dunghill, because he could find no market for it.

It will now readily be seen that the direct effect of thus compelling the export of cotton from India was to increase the quantity pressing on the market of England, and thus to lower the price of all the cotton of the world, including that required for domestic consumption. The price of the whole Indian crop being thus rendered dependent on that which could be realized for a small surplus that would have no existence but for the fact that the domestic manufacture had been destroyed, it will readily be seen how enormous has been the extent of injury inflicted upon the poor cultivator by the forcible separation of the plough and the loom, and the destruction of the power of association. Again, while the price of cotton is fixed in England, there, too, is fixed the price of cloth, and such is the case with the sugar and the indigo to the production of which these poor people are forced to devote themselves; and thus are they rendered the mere slaves of distant men, who determine what they shall receive for all they have to sell, and what they shall pay for all they require to purchase. Centralization and slavery go thus always hand in hand with each other.

The ryots are, as we see, obliged to pay sixteen or eighteen pence for the pound of cotton that has yielded them but one penny; and all this difference is paid for the labour of other people while idle themselves.

"A great part of the time of the labouring population in India is," says Mr. Chapman,[85] "spent in idleness. I don't say this to blame them in the smallest degree. Without the means of exporting heavy and crude surplus agricultural produce, and with scanty means, whether of capital, science, or manual skill, for elaborating on the spot articles fitted to induce a higher state of enjoyment and of industry in the mass of the people, they have really no inducement to exertion beyond that which is necessary to gratify their present and very limited wishes; those wishes are unnaturally low, inasmuch as they do not afford the needful stimulus to the exercise requisite to intellectual and moral improvement; and it is obvious that there is no remedy for this but extended intercourse. Meanwhile, probably the half of the human time and energy of India runs to mere waste. Surely we need not wonder at the poverty of the country."

Assuredly we need not. They are idle perforce. With indifferent means of communication, their cotton and their food could readily travel in the form of cloth, and they could consume liberally of food and clothing; but they find themselves now forced to export every thing in its rudest form, and this they are to do in a country that is almost without roads. The manner in which these raw products now travel may be seen on a perusal of the following passage from the London Economist:—

"The cotton is brought on oxen, carrying 160 pounds each, at the extreme rate, in fair weather, of seven miles a day for a continuance, and at a price of about 5s. for each hundred miles. If we take the average distance to Mirzapore at 500 miles, each pound of cotton costs in transit alone above 2-1/2 d. It has thence to be borne by water-carriage nearly 800 miles farther on to Calcutta. * * * The great cotton-growing districts are in the northern portion of the Peninsula, embracing Guzerat, and a vast tract called the Deccan, lying between the Satpoora range of hills and the course of the Kishna River. General Briggs says—'The cotton from the interior of the country to the coast at Bombay occupies a continuous journey of from one to two months, according to the season of the year; while in the rains the route is wholly impassable, and the traffic of the country is at a stand.'

"In the absence of a defined road, even the carriers, with their pack-cattle, are compelled to travel by daylight, to prevent the loss of their bullocks in the jungles they have to pass through, and this under a burning sun of from 100 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit. The droves of oxen are never so few as one hundred, and sometimes exceed a thousand. Every morning after daylight each animal has to be saddled, and the load lifted on him by two men, one on each side; and before they are all ready to move the sun has attained a height which renders the heat to an European oppressive. The whole now proceeds at the rate of about two miles an hour, and seldom performs a journey of more than eight miles; but, as the horde rests every fourth day, the average distance is but six miles a day. If the horde is overtaken by rain, the cotton, saturated by moisture, becomes heavy, and the black clayey soil, through which the whole line of road lies, sinks under the feet of a man above the ankle, and under that of a laden ox to the knees.

"In this predicament the cargo of cotton lies sometimes for weeks on the ground, and the merchant is ruined."

"So miserably bad," says another writer, "are the existing means of communication with the interior, that many of the most valuable articles of produce are, for want of carriage and a market, often allowed to perish on the farm, while the cost of that which found its way to the port was enormously enhanced; but the quantity did not amount to above 20 per cent. of the whole of the produce, the remainder of the articles always being greatly deteriorated."