The essential injustice of slavery lies in withholding the legitimate use of those means for self-development which are the inalienable right of every creature born with potentialities for personality. It becomes a national crime when the public conscience in any age recognizes in a group or an individual potentialities for the exercise of rights or the discharge of social functions with a rational regard for the well-being of society as a whole, and yet through powerful class interests refuses to give legal recognition to those rights. The paradox of the slaveholder's position and the fundamental injustice of it appear even in the slave codes and the arguments used in defense of the "peculiar institution." The slave codes treated the slave in one clause as a chattel, an irrational thing, and yet proceed to embody in the same code regulations against learning to read and write, theft, and murder, thus acknowledging that the slave is both rational and moral. Laws against teaching slaves were passed in South Carolina in 1834, in Georgia, 1829, Louisiana, 1829, Alabama, 1830 and Virginia, 1849. As a result of this negation of his personality the slave thought and acted solely in terms of the social mind of the white. Hence the prevailing idea of the slave, "massa can do no wrong."[345] The slave had no social consciousness, no ethical code apart from that of the white master; his self-determining powers of personality had no scope for expression or development. He looked down with infinite scorn upon the "poor white trash" which had no entree into his master's circle and he pitied the free Negro because his lack of a master gave him no social standing. To have a Negro overseer was a disgrace. Olmsted overheard the following conversation between two Negroes: "Workin' in a tobacco factory all de year roun', an' come Christmas, only twenty dollars! Workin' mighty hard too--up to twelve o'clock o'night very often--_an' den to hab a nigger oberseah_!" "A nigger!" "Yes dat's it yer see. Wouldn't care ef it warn't for dat. _Nothin' but a dirty nigger! orderin' 'round, jes' as ef he was a wite man_."[346] To be sure, on the basis of this submerged status of the slave, ties of the greatest intimacy and affection often grew up between master and slave. But the slave's personality was absorbed by that of his master. Petty thefts, deceits and delinquencies of the slave were excused because it was all in the family. The master even felt his slave's acts to be morally his own and condoned them as he would his own foibles. It should never be forgotten that when the Negro made the transition from the artificial and quasi-social status of the slave to a free democratic order, where individual worth and social efficiency determine one's place in society, he was like a child taught to swim with bladders and suddenly deprived of them. "Jove fixed it certain, that whatever day Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away."