“As to the relative cost of slave and free labor in this colony, I can supply facts upon which the most implicit reliance can be placed. They have been furnished to me by the proprietor of an estate containing three hundred acres of land, and situated at a distance of about twelve miles from the shipping port. The estate referred to produced during slavery an annual average of 140 hogsheads of sugar of the present weight, and required 230 slaves. It is now worked by 90 free laborers: 60 adults, and 30 under 16 years of age. Its average product during the last seven years has been 194 hogsheads. The total cost of labor has been £770 16s., or £3 19s. 2d. per hogshead of 1,700 pounds. The average of pounds of sugar to each laborer during slavery was 1,043 pounds, and during freedom 3,660 pounds. To estimate the cost of slave-labor, the value of 230 slaves must be ascertained; and I place them at what would have been a low average,—£50 sterling each,—which would make the entire stock amount to £11,500. This, at six per cent. interest, which on such property is much too low an estimate, would give £690; cost of clothing, food, and medical attendance I estimate at £3 10s., making £805. Total cost, £1,495, or £10 12s. per hogshead, while the cost of free labor on the same estate is under £4.”
In 1853, the French committee charged by the Governor of Martinique to visit the island reported, that “in an agricultural and manufacturing point of view the aspect of Barbadoes is dazzling.”
Sugar is the most important export. The following were the amounts exported before emancipation, according to Schomburg and Sewell:—
| Average export, | 1720-1800, | 23,000 | hhds. |
| " " | 1800-1830, | 20,000 | " |
| Particular export, | 1830, | 22,769 | " |
| Particular export in year of emancipation, | 1834, | 27,318 | " |
(The weight of a hogshead of sugar, it should be noted, was only 12 cwt. between 1826 and 1830; from 1830 to 1850, 14 cwt.; and now it is from 15 to 17 cwt.)
| Yield in | 1852, | 48,610 | hhds. |
| " | 1853, | 38,316 | " |
| " | 1854, | 44,492 | " |
| " | 1855, | 39,692 | " |
| " | 1856, | 43,552 | " |
| " | 1857, | 38,858 | " |
| " | 1858, | 50,778 | " |
| Average export, | 1835-50, | 26,000 | " |
| " " | 1851-58, | 43,000 | " |
That is, an average more than double the export for ten years preceding emancipation.
Besides sugar, other articles are exported now to the value of $100,000. In addition, there is a large production for home-consumption, of such articles as sweet potatoes, eddoes, yams, cassava-root, etc.
If imports are the true expression of a nation’s economic well-being,—as all sound political economists affirm,—then can Barbadoes show most conclusively how much more profitable to a people is freedom than chatteldom.
| Average imports, | 1822-32, | £600,000 |
| Imports, | 1845, | 682,358 |
| " | 1856, | 840,000 |