When once negro slavery was firmly established, any rival form of industry was doomed. For it is an economical law of slavery, that where it exists it must exist without a rival. It can only succeed where it is a predominant form of labor. The utility of the slave is that of a machine. When once he has been trained to any special kind of industry, no attempts to enlarge his sphere of activity can be attended with profit. The time given to the new acquisition is so much waste, and his mental incapacity and absence of any moral interest in his work almost necessarily limits him to a single task. Thus, as we have seen, the many attempts to develop varied forms of production in the Southern colonies all failed. Maryland and Virginia grew only tobacco. South Carolina grew mainly rice. Moreover, the spectacle of the free laborer working on the same soil and at the same task, would be fatal to that resignation, and that complete moral and intellectual subjection, which alone can make slave labor possible. Thus the cheaper and more efficient system obtained the mastery so completely that by the beginning of the eighteenth century slave and negro had become well-nigh synonymous terms. [1] From Doyle's "English Colonies in America." By permission of the publishers, Henry Holt & Co. NEW ENGLAND BEFORE THE PILGRIM FATHERS LANDED (1614) BY CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH[1] In the moneth of Aprill, 1614, with two Ships from London, of a few Marchants, I chanced to arriue in New-England, a parte of Ameryca, at the Ile of Monahiggan, in 43-1/2 of northerly latitude: our plot was there to take Whales and make tryalls of a Myne of Gold and Copper. If those failed, Fish and Furres was then our refuge, to make our selues sauers howsoeuer: we found this Whale fishing a costly conclusion: we saw many, and spent much time in chasing them; but could not kill any: They beeing a kinde of Iubartes, and not the Whale that yeeldes Finnes and Oyle as wee expected. For our Golde, it was rather the Masters deuice to get a voyage that proiected it, then any knowledge hee had at all of any such matter. Fish & Furres was now our guard: & by our late arriual, and long lingring about the Whale, the prime of both those seasons were past ere wee perceiued it; we thinking that their seasons serued at all times: but wee found it otherwise; for, by the midst of Iune, the fishing failed. Yet in Iuly and August some was taken, but not sufficient to defray so great a charge as our stay required. Of dry fish we made about 40000. of Cor fish about 7000.