According to returns made by the Census Bureau to the Secretary of the
Treasury, the gross value of the productions of the United States for
1860 was $3,900,000,000: namely,--the product of Manufactures, the
Mechanic Arts, Mining, and the Fisheries, $1,900,000,000; the product
of Agriculture, $2,000,000,000.
It is a well-understood principle of political economy, that the
annual product of a country is the source from which internal taxes
are to be derived.
The nation is to be considered a partnership, the several members
engaged in the various departments of business, and producing annually
products of the value of $3,900,000,000, which are distributed among
the partners, affording to each a certain share of profit. The firm is
out of debt, but a sudden emergency compels an investment, in a new
and not immediately profitable branch of business, of $1,500,000,000,
which sum the firm borrows. As the consequence of this liability, the
firm must afterward incur an annual additional expense as follows:
$100,000,000 for the payment of members not engaged in productive
labor, $90,000,000 for interest upon the debt incurred, and $60,000,000
for a sinking-fund which shall pay the debt in less than twenty years.
It is absolutely necessary for the future prosperity of the business of
the firm, that this immense investment, so unexpectedly called for,
shall be made to pay. How shall this problem be solved?
Large sums are confusing, and tend to prevent a clear understanding of
the matter; therefore let the nation be represented by Uncle Sam, an
active, middle-aged man, owning a farm and a factory, of which the
annual product is $40,000. The largest and best portion of his farm is
very badly cultivated; no intelligent laborers can be induced to remain
upon it, owing to certain causes, easily removable, but which, being
an easy-going man, well satisfied with his income as it has been,
Uncle Sam has been unwilling to take hold of with any determination.
Suddenly and without notice, he is compelled to borrow $15,000, and
spend it upon this portion of his farm; and he then finds, while
expending the money for another object and not a profitable one, he can
remove the only obstacle which prevented his obtaining a full supply
of the best and most intelligent labor, and that he can very soon
increase his annual product to $42,500. The increase of $2,500 each
year will enable him to pay his additional clerks, to meet the interest
on his liabilities, and to accumulate a sinking-fund sufficient to pay
his debts before his children come of age. He will be able to take some
comfort and satisfaction in his agricultural laborers; he will have a
larger amount of cotton to spin and to sell than ever before, and so
much wool, that, instead of being obliged to buy one-third the amount
required by his factory, as he has heretofore done, he will have more
than he can spin; and lastly, he will be able to raise fruit, to make
wine, to produce indigo, cochineal, and a great variety of articles
never produced on his farm before.
What sound business-man would not thus regulate his investment, when
compelled to make it, even though he had been unwilling to borrow the
money for the simple purpose of making such an improvement?
If a farm and factory, which badly managed produce $40,000 annually,
can by good management be made to produce $42,500, and can be very
much increased in value and ease of management by the process, the
owner had better borrow $15,000 to accomplish the object, and the tax
upon him of $2,500 required to meet the interest and sink the principal
will be no burden. That is the whole problem,--no more, no less.
We have been driven into a war to maintain the boundaries of our farm;
in so doing we shall probably spend $1,500,000,000. It behooves us not
only to meet the expenditure promptly, but to make the investment pay.
We have but to increase the annual product of the country six and
one-half per cent, and we shall meet the tax for expenses, interest,
and sinking-fund, and be as well off as we now are, provided the tax be
equitably assessed.
This increase can be made without any increase in the number of
laborers, by securing a larger return from those now employed, and by
the permanent occupation of the fertile soil of the South by a large
portion of the Union army, as settlers and cultivators, who have
heretofore spent their energies upon the comparatively unproductive
soil of the North.
Slavery is the one obstacle to be removed in order to render this war a
paying operation.
Under the false pretence that the climate of the South is too hot for
white men to labor in the fields, the degradation involved in
field-labor in a Slave State excludes intelligent cultivators from the
cotton-fields, a very large portion of which have a climate less hot
and less unsuitable for white men than that of Philadelphia, while
there is not a river-bottom in the whole South in which the extremes of
heat during the summer are so great as in St. Louis. Slave-labor
cultivates, in a miserable, shiftless manner, less than two per cent,
of the area of the Cotton States; and upon this insignificant portion a
crop of cotton has been raised in one year worth over $200,000,000.
There is ample and conclusive evidence to be found in the statistics of
the few well-managed and well-cultivated cotton-plantations, that
skilful, educated farmers can get more than double the product to the
hand or to the acre that is usually obtained as the result of
slave-labor.
Again, it will be admitted that $350 per annum is more than an average
return for the work of a common laborer on an average New England farm,
including his own support.
It is capable of demonstration from, actual facts that an average
laborer, well directed, can produce a gross value of $1,000 per annum,
upon the uplands of Georgia and South Carolina, in the cultivation of
cotton and grain. Negro slaves under a negro driver, with no white man
on the premises, have produced this result in Hancock County, Georgia,
upon lands previously considered worthless, with a system of
cultivation singular and exceptional in that region, but common in all
well-cultivated sections, namely, a simple rotation of crops and a
moderate amount of manure.
Elevate the negro from a state of slavery to the dignity of a free
laborer, and his consumption of manufactured goods increases
enormously. In proof of this may be cited the trade with Hayti, and the
immense increase in the import of manufactured goods into the British
West Indies since emancipation. Slaves are furnished with two suits of
clothes in a year, made from the coarsest and cheapest materials: it is
safe to estimate, that, if the fair proportion of their earnings were
paid them, their demand upon the North for staple articles would be
doubled, while the importations of silks, velvets, and other foreign
luxuries, upon which their earnings have been heretofore lavished by
their masters, would decrease.
The commonly received view of the position of the cotton-planter is
that he is in a chronic state of debt. Such is the fact; not, however,
because he does not make a large amount of profit,--for cotton-planting
is the most profitable branch of agriculture in the United States,--but
because his standard of value is a negro, and not a dollar, and, in the
words of a Southern writer, "He is constantly buying more land to make
more cotton to buy more negroes to cultivate more land to raise more
cotton to buy more negroes," and for every negro he buys he gets
trusted for another. Both himself and his hands are of the least
possible value to the community. By maintaining his system he excludes
cheap labor from the cultivation of cotton,--slave-labor being the
most wasteful and the most expensive of any. He purchases for his
laborers the least possible amount of manufactured articles, and he
wastes his own expenditure in the purchase of foreign luxuries.
Reference has been made to the increase to be expected in the product
of wool, after the removal or destruction of Slavery.
We import annually 30,000,000 pounds of wool, and make little or no use
of the best region for growing wool in the whole country,--the western
slope of the Alleghany and Cumberland Mountains and of the Blue Ridge.
Free laborers will not go there, although few slaves are there to be
found; for they well know that there is no respect or standing for the
free laborer in any Slave State.
Again, throughout the uplands of Georgia, the Carolinas, and Alabama,
it has been proved that sheep can be raised upon the English system
with the greatest success. Upon their light lands, (selling at less
than $1 per acre,) turnips can be raised in great abundance and fed to
sheep in the field, and by the process the fields brought to a point of
fertility, for cotton or grain, equal to the best bottom-lands of
Mississippi or Louisiana. This fact has been sufficiently proved by the
experience of the very few good farmers in Georgia.
The climate of these sections is wonderfully healthy, and is far
better adapted to the production of wool than that of England, the
extremes of heat and cold being far greater, and yet the cold not being
sufficient to prevent the raising of turnips or feeding from the field
in winter. To produce fine fleece-wool, a warm summer and a cool
winter are requisite.
Let any one examine Southern writings upon agriculture, and note the
experience of the few working, sensible cultivators, who, by a system
of rewards and premiums partially equivalent to the payment of wages
to their slaves, have obtained the best results of which Slavery is
capable, and he will realize the immense increase to be expected when
free and intelligent labor shall be applied to Southern agriculture.
We hold, therefore, that by the destruction of Slavery, and by that
only, this war can be made to pay, and taxation become no burden.
By free labor upon Southern soil we shall add to the annual product of
the country a sum more than equal to the whole tax which will be
required to pay interest and expenses, and to accumulate a sinking-fund
which will pay the debt in less than twenty years; while to the North
will come the immensely increased demand for manufactured articles
required by a thrifty and prosperous middle class, instead of the small
demand for coarse, cheap articles required by slaves, and the demand
for foreign luxuries called for by the masters.
The addition of $250,000,000 to the product of the country would be a
gain to every branch of industry; and if the equable system of taxation
by a stamp-tax on all sales were adopted, the burden would not be
felt. The additional product being mostly from an improved system of
agriculture at the South, a much larger demand would exist for the
manufactures of the North, and a much larger body of distributors
would be required.
Let us glance for a moment at the alternative,--the restoration of the
Union without the removal of Slavery.
The system of slave-labor has been shaken to its foundation, and for
years to come its aggregate product will be far less than it has been,
thus throwing upon the North the whole burden of the taxes with no
compensating gain in resources.
Only the refuse of our army could remain in the Slave States, to
become to us in the future an element of danger and not of
security,--the industrious and respectable portion would come back to
the North, to find their places filled and a return to the pursuits of
peace difficult to accomplish.
With Slavery removed, the best part of our army will remain upon the
fertile soil and in the genial climate of the South, forming
communities, retaining their arms, keeping peace and good order with
no need of a standing army, and constituting the _nuclei_ around
which the poor-white trash of the South would gather to be educated in
the labor-system of the North, and thus, and thus only, to become loyal
citizens.
The mass of the white population of the South are ignorant and deluded;
they need leaders, and will have them.
We have allowed them to be led by slaveholders, and are reaping our
reward. Remove Slavery, and their present leaders are crushed out
forever.
Give them new leaders from among the earnest and industrious portion of
our army, and we increase our resources and render taxation no burden,
and we restore the Union in fact and not simply in name.
Leave Slavery in existence, and we decrease our resources, throw the
whole tax upon the North, reinforce the Secession element with the
refuse of our army, and bequeath to our children the shadow of a Union,
a mockery and a derision to all honest men.