While the discussion of this subject was confined to ourselves; while they who denounced the practice of domestic slavery were such as could not condemn others, without standing self-condemned, we heard them patiently, as we hear from the pulpit the meek expostulations of the humble and contrite. Their interest afforded a pledge that they would not rashly carry their doctrines into practice: their self-rebukes excused them from the charge of arrogance; and the sincerity of their enthusiasm commanded our respect and sympathy. But since we have seen one community rashly overturning the domestic institutions of another; and hear from our northern neighbors an avowal of the like benevolent design toward us, it is time to look into the subject more narrowly. Let us understand it well. If we are wrong, the discovery of our fault may prepare us to bear, with becoming meekness, the impending judgment. If we are right, an understanding conviction that we are so, may be necessary to man our hearts and brace our nerves for the impending struggle.
I have said that slavery exists every where—originating in the decree which makes labor the price of subsistence. The correlative of this proposition is that subsistence is the wages of labor. I shall pass by the hackneyed topic of the process by which it inevitably happens, in all societies, that some men rise to affluence, while others remain as they began. So it ever has been, is, and will be, whether we find out how it comes to pass or no. There will be rich and poor. The rich man will not dig the earth: the poor man must. He becomes the rich man's servant, and the wages of his abject toil are food and raiment. This, his condition, is compulsory and inevitable; and compulsory toil for food and raiment,—what is it but slavery? True, the compulsion is not that of his fellow-worm. But is it the less crushing, because it is enforced by one from whose power there is no escape?
But are food and raiment the wages to which labor is every where stinted? Yes. Circumstances may make occasional differences in the price of labor, as in the settlement of a new country; but the same law which governs the price of every thing else, governs also the price of labor. This is, in every case, the cost of production; and food and raiment are the cost of the production of labor.
A few remarks will show the modifications to which this rule is subject, and will prove, that strictly speaking, it admits of no exception, though its modifications may occasionally afford, to individuals, an escape from the class of laborers into that of employers.
In a society perfectly stationary, (if there be such a thing,) where the wants of the whole community, and the nature and amount of labor necessary to supply those wants, and the subjects of labor are the same from generation to generation, there will be a steady demand for a new laborer, to supply the place of each one that dies off. Hence the average wages will be such as to enable each pair to produce and bring forward another pair; or, in other words, they will enable a man and his wife to rear two children. If, on an average, they are more than this, then on an average, more than two children will be reared; the number of laborers will be increased; the supply will exceed the demand; the competition will reduce wages below the standard of the cost of production, until the surplus laborers are starved off; and they will then return to that standard, and settle there.
In a society retrograde in its condition, the average of wages will be less than enough to support a laboring pair and two children. There will always be a stock of surplus labor to be starved off, and a ragged lazaroni will mark this condition of society.
In a society advancing in all things, there must be an increasing supply to keep up with the increasing demand. Competition among employers will enhance the price of labor, and this will enable the laboring class to reproduce itself in an increasing ratio. And this it will do, for he who said "increase and multiply, and replenish the earth," has commanded it.
It is thus perfectly true of labor, and the laboring class collectively, that the cost of production is the measure of price; and that food and raiment for the laborer of today, and for those future laborers who are rising up to supply the future demand, are all that enter into the cost of production. The seeming exceptions to the rule do but confirm it, and show how its author has rivetted it on the necks of men, that they shall not escape from it. It is the brazen collar which marks the laborer "THE BORN THRALL OF NECESSITY." His wages are never increased beyond the wants of his own individual nature, but for a purpose, to which the law of that nature makes it sure that he will apply them; the reproduction of just so many others (neither more nor less) as the exigencies of society may require, to follow in the same dull round of labor in which his life has been spent.
There will indeed be individuals who may seem to form exceptions to this rule, in every state of society. The laborer, whose superior strength or skill commands more than the average of wages, will have something to spare. So too, he who, from prudence or coldness, remains unmarried; because his wages are established according to an average of the necessities of the laboring class, from a part of which he keeps himself exempt. Such a man, if industrious, frugal, provident and thrifty, will improve in condition, and eventually emerge from the class of laborers into that of employers. But the condition of the class remains unchanged. As he rose from it, some one, unperceived, came into it, to supply his place; and others to meet the new demand occasioned by the addition of one more to the number of employers. Thus it is, and so it must be, that the proportional number of the laboring class never diminishes, while society advances; and, the more rapid the advancement of the whole, the greater the proportion of laborers to employers, and the greater the competition for employment. There is, of course, a progressive reduction in the price of labor, accompanying this progressive increase of the number condemned, by impealable laws, to this low and hard condition.—There they are, forever toiling and sweating in the dark and cheerless abodes of poverty, aliens to the society in which they breathe, whose comforts are ever in an inverse ratio to the sum of general prosperity.
But "in this lowest depth there is yet a lower deep." While superior strength and skill, and exemption from family burdens, enable some to escape to the upper air, others, under the pressure of disease, infirmity and numerous children, sink into that gulph from which there is no return. Of these we take no note. The few whom fortune favors, come with eclat upon the stage of higher life, and are pointed out as brilliant examples of the blessings of a system of free labor. The countless victims of her malice