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

by Henry Charles Carey

This is all most true, but what does it prove in regard to British policy? Has not its object been that of preventing the people of the world from availing themselves of the vast deposites, of iron ore and of fuel throughout the earth, and thus to deprive them of the power to call to their aid the pressure of the atmosphere and the elasticity of steam? Has it not looked to depriving them of all power to avail themselves of the natural agents required in the processes of bleaching and fermentation, in softening woods, and melting metals, and was not that the object had in view by a distinguished statesman, since Chancellor of England, when he said, that "the country could well afford the losses then resulting from the exportation of manufactured goods, as its effect would be to smother in the cradle the manufactures of other nations?" Has not this been the object of every movement of Great Britain since the days of Adam Smith, and does not the following diagram represent exactly what would be the state of affairs if she could carry into full effect her desire to become "the workshop of the world?"

\British ships/
Producers of raw materials\ / Consumers of cloth and iron
Europe, Asia, Africa > < in Europe, Asia, Africa
America / \ North and South America
/ And rails \

Mr. McCulloch insists that agriculture is less profitable than manufactures and trade, and his countrymen insist that all the world outside of England shall be one great farm, leaving to England herself the use of all the various natural agents required in manufactures and commerce, that they may remain poor while she becomes rich. There is in all this a degree of selfishness not to be paralleled, and particularly when we reflect that it involves a necessity on the part of all other nations for abstaining from those scientific pursuits required for the development of the intellect, and which so naturally accompany the habit of association in towns, for the purpose of converting the food, the wool, the hides, and the timber of the farmer into clothing and furniture for his use. It is the policy of barbarism, and directly opposed to any advance in civilization, as will be fully seen when we examine into its working in reference to any particular trade or country.

The annual average production of cotton is probably seventeen hundred millions of pounds, or less than two pounds per head for the population of the world; and certainly not one-tenth of what would be consumed could they find means to pay for it; and not one-tenth of what would be good for them; and yet it is a drug, selling in India at two and three cents per pound, and commanding here at this moment, notwithstanding the abundance of gold, but eight or nine cents, with a certainty that, should we again be favoured, as we were a few years since, with a succession of large crops, it will fall to a lower point than it ever yet has seen: a state of things that could not exist were the people of the world to consume even one-third as much as would be good for them. Why do they not? Why is it that India, with her hundred millions of population, and with her domestic manufacture in a state of ruin, consumes of British cottons to the extent of only sixteen cents per head—or little more, probably, than a couple of yards of cloth? To these questions an answer may perhaps be found upon an examination of the circumstances which govern the consumption of other commodities; for we may be quite certain that cotton obeys precisely the same laws as sugar and coffee, wine and wheat. Such an examination would result in showing that when a commodity is at once produced at or near the place of growth in the form fitting it for use, the consumption is invariably large; and that when it has to go through many and distant hands before being consumed, it is as invariably small. The consumption of sugar on a plantation is large; but if it were needed that before being consumed it should be sent to Holland to be refined, and then brought back again, we may feel well assured that there would not be one pound consumed on any given plantation where now there are twenty, or possibly fifty. The consumption of cotton on the plantation is very small indeed, because, before being consumed, 'it has to be dragged through long and muddy roads to the landing, thence carried to New Orleans, thence to Liverpool, and thence to Manchester, after which the cloth has to be returned, the planter receiving one bale for every five he sent away, and giving the labour of cultivating an acre in exchange for fifty, sixty, or eighty pounds of its product. If, now, the people who raised the cotton were free to call to their aid the various natural agents of whose service it is the object of the British system to deprive them, and if, therefore, the work of converting it into cloth were performed on the ground where it was raised, or in its neighbourhood, is it not clear that the consumption would be largely increased? The people who made the cloth would be the consumers of numerous things raised on the plantation that are now wasted, while the facility of converting such things into cloth would be a bounty on raising them; and thus, while five times the quantity of cotton would be consumed, the real cost—that is, the labour cost—would be less than it is for the smaller quantity now used. So, too, in India. It may be regarded as doubtful if the quantity of cotton to day consumed in that country is one-half what it was half a century since—and for the reason that the number of people now interposed between the consumer and the producer is so great. The consumption of wine in France is enormous, whereas here there is scarcely any consumed; and yet the apparent excess of price is not so great as would warrant us in expecting to find so great a difference. The real cause is not so much to be found in the excess of price, though that is considerable, as in the mode of payment. A peasant in France obtains wine in exchange for much that would be wasted but for the proximity of the wine-vat, and the demand it makes for the labour of himself and others. He raises milk, eggs, and chickens, and he has fruit, cabbages, potatoes, or turnips, commodities that from their bulky or perishable nature cannot be sent to a distance, but can be exchanged at home. The farmer of Ohio cannot exchange his spare labour, or that of his horses, for wine, nor can he pay for it in peaches or strawberries, of which the yield of an acre might produce him hundreds of dollars—nor in potatoes or turnips, of which he can obtain hundreds of bushels; but he must pay in wheat, of which an acre yields him a dozen bushels, one-half of which are eaten up in the process of exchange between him and the wine-grower. Whenever the culture of the grape shall come to be established in that State, and wine shall be made at home, it will be found that the gallons consumed will be almost as numerous as are now the drops. Look where we may, we shall find the same result. Wherever the consumer and the producer are brought into close connection with each other, the increase of consumption is wonderful, even where there is no reduction in the nominal price; and wherever they are separated, the diminution of consumption is equally wonderful, even where there is a reduction of the nominal price—and it is so because the facility of exchange diminishes as the distance increases. A man who has even a single hour's labour to spare may exchange it with his neighbour for as much cotton cloth as would make a shirt; but if the labour market is distant, he may, and will, waste daily as much time as would buy him a whole piece of cotton cloth, and may have to go shirtless while cotton is a drug. When the labour market is near, land acquires value and men become rich and free. When it is distant, land is of little value and men continue poor and enslaved.

Before proceeding further, it would be well for the reader to look around his own neighbourhood, and see how many exchanges are even now made that could not be made by people that were separated even ten or twenty miles from each other, and how many conveniences and comforts are enjoyed in exchange for both labour and commodities that would be wasted but for the existence of direct intercourse between the parties—and, then to satisfy himself if the same law which may be deduced from the small facts of a village neighbourhood, will not be found equally applicable to the great ones of larger communities.

Having reflected upon these things, let him next look at the present condition of the cotton trade, and remark the fact that scarcely any of the wool produced is consumed without first travelling thousands of miles, and passing through almost hundreds of hands. The places of production are India, Egypt, Brazil, the West Indies, and our Southern States. In the first, the manufacture is in a state of ruin. In the second, third, and fourth, it has never been permitted to have an existence; and in the last it has but recently made an effort to struggle into life, but from month to month we hear of the stoppage or destruction of Southern mills, and the day is apparently now not far distant when we shall have again to say that no portion of the cotton crop can be consumed in the cotton-growing region until after it shall have travelled thousands of miles in quest of hands to convert it into cloth.

Why is this? Why is it that the light and easily transported spindle and loom are not placed in and about the cotton fields? The planters have labour, that is now wasted, that would be abundant for the conversion of half their crops, if they could but bring the machinery to the land, instead of taking the produce of the land to the machinery. Once brought there, it would be there for ever; whereas, let them carry the cotton to the spindle as long as they may, the work must still be repeated. Again, why is it that the people of India, to whom the world was so long indebted for all its cotton goods, have not only ceased to supply distant countries, but have actually ceased to spin yarn or make cloth for themselves? Why should they carry raw cotton on the backs of bullocks for hundreds of miles, and then send it by sea for thousands of miles, paying freights, commissions, and charges of all kinds to an amount so greatly exceeding the original price, to part with sixty millions of pounds of raw material, to receive in exchange eight or ten millions of pounds of cloth and yarn? Is it not clear that the labour of converting the cotton into yarn is not one-quarter as great as was the labour of raising, the cotton itself? Nevertheless, we here see them giving six or eight pounds of cotton for probably a single one of yarn, while labour unemployed abounds throughout India. Further, Brazil raises cotton, and she has spare labour, and yet she sends her cotton to look for the spindle, instead of bringing the spindle to look for the cotton, as she might so readily do. Why does she so? The answer to these questions is to be found in British legislation, founded on the idea that the mode of securing to the people of England the highest prosperity is to deprive all mankind, outside of her own limits, of the power to mine coal, make iron, construct machinery, or use steam, in aid of their efforts to obtain food, clothing, or any other of the necessaries of life. This system is directly opposed to that advocated by Adam Smith. Not only, said he, is it injurious to other nations, but it must be injurious to yourselves, for it will diminish the productiveness of both labour and capital, and will, at the same time, render you daily more and more dependent upon the operations of other countries, when you should be becoming more independent of them. His warnings were then, as they are now, unheeded; and from his day to the present, England has been engaged in an incessant effort utterly to destroy the manufactures of India, and to crush every attempt elsewhere to establish any competition with her for the purchase of cotton. The reader will determine for himself if this is not a true picture of the operations of the last seventy years. If it is, let him next determine if the tendency of the system is not that of enslaving the producers of cotton, white, brown, and black, and compelling them to carry all their wool to a single market, in which one set of masters dictates the price at which they must sell the raw material and must buy the manufactured one. Could there be a greater tyranny than this?

To fully understand the working of the system in diminishing the power to consume, let us apply elsewhere the same principle, placing in Rochester, on the Falls of the Genesee, a set of corn-millers who had contrived so effectually to crush all attempts to establish mills in other parts of the Middle States, that no man could eat bread that had not travelled up to that place in its most bulky form, coming back in its most compact one, leaving at the mill all the refuse that might have been applied to the fattening of hogs and cattle—and let us suppose that the diagram on the following page represented the corn trade of that portion of the Union.

\ Wagons and /
Producers of food \ / Consumers of food
in those states > < in those states
/ \
/Rochester mills\

Now, suppose all the grain of half a dozen States had to make its way through such a narrow passage as is above indicated, is it not clear that the owners of roads, wagons, and mills would be masters of the owners of land? Is it not clear that the larger the crops the higher would be freights, and the larger the charge for the use of mills, the smaller would be the price of a bushel of wheat as compared with that of a bag of meal? Would not the farmers find themselves to be mere slaves to the owners of a small quantity of mill machinery? That such would be the case, no one can even for a moment doubt—nor is it at all susceptible of doubt that the establishment of such a system would diminish by one-half the consumption of food, throughout those States, and also the power to produce it, for all the refuse would be fed at and near Rochester, and the manure yielded by it would be totally lost to the farmer who raised the food. The value of both labour and land would thus be greatly diminished. Admitting, for a moment, that such a system existed, what would be the remedy? Would it not be found in an effort to break down the monopoly, and thus to establish among the people the power to trade among themselves without paying, toll to the millers of Rochester? Assuredly it would; and to that end they would be seen uniting among themselves to induce millers to come and settle among them, precisely as we see men every where uniting to bring schools and colleges to their neighbourhood, well assured that a small present outlay is soon made up, even in a pecuniary point of view, in being enabled to keep their children at home while being educated, instead of sending them abroad, there to be boarded and lodged, while food is wasted at home that they might eat, and chambers are empty that they might occupy. Education thus obtained costs a parent almost literally nothing, while that for which a child must go to a distance is so costly that few can obtain it. Precisely so is it with food and with cloth. The mere labour of converting grain into flour is as nothing when compared with that required for its transportation hundreds of miles; and the mere labour required for the conversion of cotton into cloth is as nothing compared with the charges attendant upon its transportation from the plantation to Manchester and back again. Commercial centralization looks, however, to compelling the planter to pay treble the cost of conversion, in the wages and profits of the people employed in transporting and exchanging the cotton.