John 18 years of age $1,500 Dick 21 years of age 1,400 Jerry 38 years of age 700 Major 50 years of age 480 Charles 31 years of age 1,155 John Jr 18 years of age 1,140 Billy 31 years of age 1,100 Isabella 40 years, with 3 children, ages 11, 5 and 2 1,610 Rebecca 30 years, with 3 children, ages 11, 6 and 4 2,410 Lucy 18 years of age, with infant 1,280 Davidella 31 years of age 1,220 Mary Ann 31 years of age 835 Patience 18 years of age 1,350 Catharine 15 years of age 1,130 Such a series of prices would show beyond a reasonable doubt that the value of slaves was determined entirely by the increasing demand for slaves in the lower South and was in no way an indication of the value of slave labor within Kentucky. As was pointed out earlier in this chapter, the labor value of an agricultural slave in the State steadily decreased after about the year 1830. Was slavery profitable to the Kentucky planters? In the many debates on the slavery question which took place after 1830 no one ever stood out in the affirmative. The only ones to discuss the economic side of the issue were those in opposition to slavery. As has often been said of the Kentucky situation, "the program was to use negroes to raise corn to feed hogs to feed negroes, who raised more corn to feed more hogs." Tobacco was the largest crop raised in the State and corn came next. Neither proved to be peculiarly adapted to slave labor. There were few large plantations in the State where it could be made advantageous. What Negro work there was to be done was never confined to any particular kind of cultivation but was used in the manner of farm labor today in the State. Squire Turner, of Madison County, in the Constitutional Convention of 1849 made a careful summary of the existing economic problems of slavery. "There are," said he, "about $61,000,000 worth of slave property in the state which produces less than three per cent profit on the capital invested, or about half as much as the moneyed capital would yield. There are about 200,000 slaves in Kentucky. Of these about seventy-five per cent are superannuated, sick, women in unfit condition for labor, and infants unable to work, who yield no profit. Show me a man that has forty or fifty slaves on his estate, and if there are ten out of that number who are available and valuable, it is as much as you can expect. But my calculation allows you to have seventy-five per cent who are barely able to maintain themselves, to pay for their own clothing, fuel, house room and doctor's bills. Is there any gentleman who has a large