Cotton is king, and pro-slavery arguments : $b comprising the writings of Hammond, Harper, Christy, Stringfellow, Hodge, Bledsoe, and Cartwright, on this important subject
History
Cotton is king, and pro-slavery arguments : $b comprising the writings of Hammond, Harper, Christy, Stringfellow, Hodge, Bledsoe, and Cartwright, on this important subject
Scott, Dred, 1809-1858; Slavery -- Justification; Slavery -- United States; United States -- Fugitive slave law (1850)
"These results, do not of course, necessarily represent in any degree
the fresh spur to diligence on the part of the old population, caused by
the new labor. In islands like Trinidad, where the amount of unredeemed
land suited for such production is almost unlimited, the new labor
introduced cannot for a long time press on the old labor at all. But
wherever the amount of land fitted for this kind of culture is nearly
exhausted, the presence of the new competition will soon be felt. And,
in any case, it is only through this gradual supply of the labor market
that we can hope to bring the wholesome spur of necessity to act
eventually on the laboring classes. Englishmen, indeed, may well think
that at times the good influences of this competitive jostling for
employment are overrated and its evil underrated. But this is far from
true of the negro race. To their slow and unambitious temperament,
influences of this kind are almost unalloyed good, as the great
superiority in the population of Barbadoes to that of the other islands
sufficiently shows."
The _Economist_, in further discussing this question, favors the
introduction of a permanent class of laborers, not only that the
cultivation may be increased, but because there is "no doubt at all that
if a larger supply of labor could be attained in the West Indies,
without any very great incidental evils, the benefit experienced even by
the planters would be by no means so great as that of the negro
population themselves;" and thinks that "the philanthropic party, in
their tenderness for the emancipated Africans, are sometimes not a
little blind to the advantages of stern industrial necessities;" and
that, "what the accident of population and soil has done for Barbadoes,
it cannot be doubted that a stream of immigration, if properly
conducted, might do in some degree for the other islands."
Lest it should be thought that the _Economist_ stands alone in its
representations in relation to the failure of negro free labor in
Jamaica, we quote a statement of the Colonial Minister, which recently
appeared in the _New York Tribune_, and was thence transferred to the
_American Missionary_, February, 1859:
"The Colonial Minister says: 'Jamaica is now the only important sugar
producing colony which exports a considerable smaller quantity of sugar
than was exported in the time of slavery, while some such colonies since
the passage of the Emancipation Act have largely increased their
product.'"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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