plantation stocked with
100 slaves, men, women, and piccaninnies,
at 8500 each, $50,000
Interest at 8 per cent., a low rate
for the South, 4,000
Customary allowance for life insurance
or mortality, 1,000
Overseer's wages, 1,000
House and provisions, 500
Doctor's fees, hospital, and medicines, 500
Renewal and repairs of negro quarters, 500
Clothing and food, at $1 per week
for each slave, 5,200
______
12,700
_Credit_.
Increase to keep good the mortality, 2
Annual gain, 2-335/1000, say 3
Gain, 5, at $500 2,500
Net cost, 10,200
The usual allowance for field hands is one-third,--allow it to be forty
in a hundred, the cost of each would be $255 per annum, or $21.25 per
month.
Let each one make his own allowance for the disadvantage of having the
larger portion of the capital of a State locked up in a tool which would
do more and better work if recognized as a man and representing no
invested capital. How much productive industry would there be in New
England, if every laborer or mechanic cost his employer $800 to $1500
before he could be set to work, and if each one who undertook to labor
upon his own account, and was not so purchased, were stigmatized and
degraded and termed 'mean white trash?'
It will again be objected that the theory of the cotton planter is to
raise all the food and make all the clothing on the plantation. The
cultivation of cotton in the best manner is described by Southern
writers as a process of _gardening_. Now what would be thought of a
market gardener at the North who should keep a large extra force for the
purpose of spinning yarn on a frame of six to ten spindles, and weaving
it up on a rude hand loom?