THE ECONOMY OF VIRGINIA.
An Englishman will cross three thousand miles of sea, and, landing in
our Free States, find, under a different sky and climate, a people
speaking the same language, influenced by the same literature, giving
allegiance to the same common law, and with not very dissimilar tastes,
manners, or opinions, on the whole, to those of his own people. What
most strikes him is an apparent indifference to conditions of living
which he would at home call shabby. He will find men, however, at whose
homes he will hardly see anything, either of substance, custom, or
manner, by which he would know that he was out of England, and if he
asks how these manage to get waiters who do not smell of the stable;
and grooms who keep stirrups bright; roofs which do not leak; lawns
which are better than stubble fields; walks which are not grassy;
fences which do not need shoreing up; staunch dogs; clean guns; strong
boots and clothes that will go whole through a thicket; the true answer
will be, by taking double the pains and paying double as much as would
be necessary to secure the same results in England, and that few men
are willing or able to do this.
I make half a day’s journey southward here, and I find, with an
equal resemblance between the people and those I left, an indifference
to conditions of living, which Mrs. Stowe’s Ophelia describes as
“shiftless,” and which makes the same sort of impression on my mind,
as the state of things at the North does upon an Englishman’s. But,
in this case, there has been no change in the skies; I wear the same
clothing, or if I come from the low sea-board and, going in-land, gain
elevation, I need some better protection against cold. I also find
exceptions; how are they to be accounted for? The first step does not
seem difficult. In this well-provided, hospitable, and most agreeable
household, for instance, there are four times as many servants as in
one which would otherwise be as similar as possible to it at the North;
to say nothing of the governess, or of the New York plumber, who has
been at work here for a month; or of the doctor, who, having come
fifteen miles to lance the baby’s gums, stays of course to dine with
us; or of the German, who I am told—such is the value of railroads even
at a distance—left Richmond only at nine o’clock last night, and having
tuned the piano, will return in time for his classes there to-morrow;
or of the patent chain-pump pedlar, whose horses have been knocked
up in crossing the swamp; or of the weekly mail-carrier, who cannot
go on till the logs which have floated off the bridge are restored.
Mr. T. means soon, he tells me, to build a substantial bridge there,
because his nearest respectable neighbors are in that direction. His
nearest neighbours on this side of the creek, by the way, he seems
to regard with suspicion. They live in solitary cabins, and he don’t
think they do a day’s work in a year; but they somehow manage to
always have corn enough to keep themselves from starving, and as they
certainly don’t raise half enough for this, the supposition is that
his negroes steal it and supply it in exchange for whisky. Clearly
the negroes do get whisky, somewhere; for even their preacher, who
has been a capital blacksmith, and but for this vice would be worth
$2500, was taken with delirium tremens last Sunday night, and set one
of the outhouses on fire, so that the energetic Mr. T., who will have
things right about his “place,” has determined to get rid of him, and
will have him sold for what he will fetch at the sheriff’s sale at the
County House to-morrow; and Prior, the overseer, must go to Richmond
immediately, to see about a new blacksmith, for the plumber says that
until one is got he must stand idle, and the ploughs are all needing
repair. A less energetic man would keep old Joe, in spite of his vice,
on account of his old wife and many children, and out of regard to the
spiritual interests of his flock, for when not very drunk, old Joe is
reckoned the best preacher in five counties. But Mr. T. is determined
to live like a gentleman; he is not going to have the hoofs of his
thorough-breds spoiled; and he will have hot and cold water laid on;
and he tells Prior that if he can find a first-rate shoer, young,
healthy, active, and strong, and handy at anything in the way of his
trade, not to lose him, if he has to go as high as $250, for the year;
or, if necessary, he will buy such an one outright, at any fair price,
if he can have him on trial for a month. If there is none in market, he
must try to induce that Scotchman who hung the bells to come up again
for a few days. “Treat him like a gentleman,” he says, “and tell him he
will be paid whatever he asks, and make as if it were a frolic.”
$250 a year, and a man’s board and clothing, with iron, coal, and,
possibly, doctor’s bills to be added, is certainly a high price to pay
for the blacksmith’s work of a single farm. This exceptional condition,
then, it is obvious on the face of things, is maintained at an enormous
expense, not only of money, but of nerve, time, temper, if not of
humanity, or the world’s judgment of humanity. There is much inherited
wealth, a cotton plantation or two in Mississippi and a few slips of
paper in a broker’s office in Wall Street, that account for the comfort
of this Virginia farmer, as, with something of the pride which apes
humility, he likes to style himself. And after all he has no road on
which he can drive his fine horses; his physician supposes the use of
chloric ether, as an anasthetic agent, to be a novel and interesting
subject of after-dinner eloquence; he has no church within twenty
miles, but one of logs, attendance on which is sure to bring on an
attack of neuralgia with his wife, and where only an ignorant ranter of
a different faith from his own preaches at irregular intervals; there
is no school which he is willing that his children should attend; his
daily papers come weekly, and he sees no books except such as he has
especially ordered from Norton or Stevens.
This being the exception, how is it with the community as a whole?
As a whole, the community makes shift to live, some part tolerably, the
most part wretchedly enough, with arrangements such as one might expect
to find in a country in stress of war. Nothing which can be postponed
or overlooked, without immediate serious inconvenience, gets attended
to. One soon neglects to inquire why this is not done or that; the
answer is so certain to be that there is no proper person to be got to
do it without more trouble (or expense) than it is thought to be worth.
Evidently habit reconciles the people to do without much, the permanent
want of which would seem likely to be intolerable to those who had it
in possession. Nevertheless, they complain a good deal, showing that
the evil is an increasing one. Verbal statements to the same effect as
the following, written by a Virginian to the ‘Journal of Commerce,’ are
often heard.
“Hundreds of farmers and planters, mill owners, tobacconists,
cotton factories, iron works, steam-boat owners, master builders,
contractors, carpenters, stage proprietors, canal boat owners,
railroad companies, and others, are, and have been short of hands
these five years past, in Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas.
They pay $150 or $200 a year each hand, and his board, and
stealing, and if that hand be present or absent, sick or well, it
is all the same. His clothes cost say $30 more, and in many cases
the hirer has to pay his policy of life insurance.”
For all that, labourers are being constantly sent away. I have not
been on or seen a railroad train, departing southward, that it did not
convey a considerable number of the best class of negro labourers, in
charge of a trader who was intending to sell them to cotton-planters.
Thus it is evident that, great as is the need for more labourers here,
there is a still greater demand for them to raise cotton; and in
order to supply this demand, the Virginians suffer the most extreme
inconvenience. The wonder is, that their own demand for labour is not
supplied by free labourers. But it appears that where negro slavery
has long existed, certain occupations are, by custom, assigned to the
slaves, and a white man is not only reluctant to engage himself in
those occupations, but is greatly disinclined to employ other whites in
them. I have often asked: “Why do you not employ white men?” (for this
or that purpose for which slaves could not be procured;) and, almost
always, the reply has been given in a tone which indicated a little
feeling, which, if I do not misapprehend it, means that the employment
of whites in duties upon which slaves are ordinarily employed is felt
to be not only humiliating to the whites employed, but also to the
employer.
Nor is this difficulty merely a matter of sentiment. I have been
answered: “Our poor white men will not do such work if they can very
well help it, and they will do no more of it than they are obliged
to. They will do a few days’ work when it is necessary to provide
themselves with the necessaries of life, but they are not used to
steady labour; they work reluctantly, and will not bear driving; they
cannot be worked to advantage with slaves, and it is inconvenient
to look after them, if you work them separately.” And then, when I
push the inquiries by asking, why not send North and get some of our
labourers? “Well—the truth is, I have been used to driving niggers,
and I don’t think I could drive white men. I should not know how to
manage them.” So far as I understand the matter, then, Virginia is in
this position: there are slaves enough in most of the country to mainly
exclude white labourers from labouring men’s occupations and to make
the white people dependent on slave-labour for certain things; but the
slaves being drawn off almost as fast as they grow up to grow cotton
in the more Southern States, and those which remain being managed with
almost as much regard for this demand as for the local demand for
labour, this local demand is not systematically provided for; and even
if there were the intention to provide for it, there are no sufficient
means to do so, as the white population increases in number much more
rapidly than the slave.[17] I do not mean that no whites are employed
in the ordinary occupations of slaves in Virginia. In some parts there
are few or no slaves, and the white people who live in these parts,
of course do not live without having work done; but even in these
districts it is hardly possible to find men or women, who are willing
and able to serve others well and faithfully, on wages. In some parts
white working men also drift in slowly from the Free States, but they
are too few and scattered to perceptibly affect the habits of the
people and customs of the country, while they rapidly adapt themselves
to these habits and customs. Thus it is questionable if as yet they
do not add more to the general demand for labour than they supply to
reduce it.
Still, it is where slaves remain in the greatest numbers,
proportionately to the whites, that the scarcity of labourers, or what
is practically the same thing, the cost of getting desirable work
done, is most obvious. Schools, churches, roads, bridges, fences,
houses, stables, are all more frequent, and in better repair, where the
proportion of whites to slaves is large, than in the “negro counties,”
as some are popularly designated, from the preponderance of the slave
population in them. I find this observation confirmed by an examination
of the Census returns and other documents.
In the North-western counties, Cabell, Mason, Brooke, and Tyler, in
or adjoining which there are no large towns, but a free labouring
population, with slaves in ratio to the freemen as one to fifteen only,
the value of land is over seven dollars and three quarters an acre.
In Southampton, Surrey, James Town and New Kent, in which the slave
population is as 1 to 2·2, the value of land is but little more than
half as much—$4.50 an acre.
The value of land of course rises with its availability to contribute
to the wants of men, and it can only be made available as labour can be
applied to it.
In Surrey, Prince George, Charles City, and James, adjoining counties
on James River, and originally having some of the most productive soil
in the State, and now supplied with the public conveniences which have
accrued in two hundred years of occupation by a civilized and Christian
community, the number of slaves being at present, to that of whites as
1 to 1·9, the value of land is but $6 an acre.
In Fairfax, another of the first settled counties, and in which,
twenty-years ago, land was even less in value than in the James River
counties, it is now become worth twice as much.
The slave population, once greater than that of whites, has been
reduced by emigration and sale, till there are now less than half as
many slaves as whites. In the place of slaves has come another sort
of people. The change which has taken place, and the cause of it, is
thus simply described in the Agricultural Report of the County to the
Commissioner of Patents.[18]
“In appearance, the county is so changed in many parts, that a
traveller who passed over it ten years ago would not now recognize
it. Thousands and thousands of acres had been cultivated in
tobacco by the former proprietors, would not pay the cost, and
were abandoned as worthless, and became covered with a wilderness
of pines. These lands have been purchased by Northern emigrants;
the large tracts divided and subdivided and cleared of pines; and
neat farm-houses and barns, with smiling fields of grain and grass
in the season, salute the delighted gaze of the beholder. Ten
years ago it was a mooted question whether Fairfax lands could be
made productive; and if so, would they pay the cost? This problem
has been satisfactorily solved by many, and in consequence of the
above altered state of things school-houses and churches have
doubled in number.”
The following substantiates what I have said of the inavailability of
the native whites for supplying the place of the negroes exported to
the cotton plantations.
_From the Patent Office Report for 1847._
“As to the price of labour, our mechanics charge from one to
two dollars a day. As to agricultural labour, we have none. Our
poor are poor because _they will not work_, therefore are seldom
employed.
“CHAS. YANCEY,
“_Buckingham Co., Virginia._”
The sentence, “As to agricultural labour, we have none,” must mean no
free labour, the number of slaves in this county being according to the
Census 8,161, or nearly 3,000 more than the whole white population.
There are also 250 free negroes in the county.
_From a Correspondent of the ‘American Agriculturist,’ Feb. 14,
1855._
“As to labourers, we work chiefly slaves, not because they are
cheaper, but rather because they are the only _reliable_ labour we
can get. The whites here engage to work for _less price than the
blacks_ can be got for; yet they will not work well, and _rarely
work out the time specified_. If any of your friends come here and
wish to work whites, I would advise them by all means to bring
them with them; for our white labourers are far inferior to our
blacks, and our black labour is far inferior to what we read and
hear of your labourers.
“C. G. G.
“_Albemarle Co., Virginia._”
In Albemarle there are over thirteen thousand slaves to less than
twelve thousand whites.
Among the native Virginians I find most intelligent men, very ready to
assert that slavery is no disadvantage to Virginia, and, as necessary
to the maintenance of this assertion, that slave-labour is no clearer
than free-labour, that is, than free-labour would be, if slavery did
not exist. It is even said—and, as I have shown, it is practically
true, at least wherever slavery has not in a great measure withdrawn
from the field—that white labour cannot live in competition with
slave-labour. In other words, the holder of slave-labour controls
the local market for labour, and the cost of slave-labour fixes the
cost of everything which is produced by slave-labour. But it is a
mistake which the Virginians generally make, when they jump from this
to the conclusion that slave-labour is therefore cheaper under all
circumstances than free-labour. It is evident that slaves are valuable
for another purpose than to supply the local demand for their labour,
namely, to supply the demand of the cotton planter; consequently
those slaves which are employed to supply the local demand, must be
employed either at a loss, or at what they are worth to the cotton
planter. Whether this is more or less than free-labour would cost if
the field were open, can only be ascertained by comparing the cost
of slave-labour in Virginia with the cost of free-labour in the Free
States.
An exact comparison on a large scale I cannot find the means of making,
but I have taken a great many notes which lead me with confidence to a
few important general conclusions.
_Wages._—Many thousand slaves have been hired in Eastern Virginia
during the time of my visit. The wages paid for able working men—sound,
healthy, in good condition, and with no especial vices, from twenty to
thirty years old—are from $110 to $140; the average, as nearly as I can
ascertain, from very extended inquiry, being $120 per year, with board
and lodging, and certain other expenses. These wages must represent
exactly the cost of slave-labour, because any considerations which
would prevent the owner of a slave disposing of his labour for those
wages, when the labour for his own purposes would not be worth as much,
are so many hindrances upon the free disposal of his property, and
thereby deduct from its actual value, as measured with money.
As the large majority of slaves are employed in agricultural labour,
and many of those, hired at the prices I have mentioned, are taken
directly from the labour of the farm, and are skilled in no other,
these wages represent the cost of agricultural labour in Eastern
Virginia.
In New York, the usual wages for similar men, if Americans, white or
black, are exactly the same in the money part; for Irish or German
labourers the most common wages are $10 per month, for summer, and $8
per month, for winter, or from $96 to $120 a year, the average being
about $108.
The hirer has, in addition to paying wages for the slave, to feed and
to clothe him; the free labourer requires also to be boarded, but not
to be clothed by his employer. The opinion is universal in Virginia,
that the slaves are better fed than the Northern labourers. This is,
however, a mistake, and we must consider that the board of the Northern
labourer would cost at least as much more as the additional cost of
clothing to the slave. Comparing man with man, with reference simply to
equality of muscular power and endurance, my final judgment is, that
the wages for common labourers are twenty-five per cent. higher in
Virginia than in New York.
_Loss from disability of the labourer._—This to the employer of free
labourers need be nothing. To the slave-master it is of varying
consequence: sometimes small, often excessively embarrassing, and
always a subject of anxiety and suspicion. I have not yet made the
inquiry on any plantation where as many as twenty negroes are employed
together, that I have not found one or more of the field-hands not at
work, on account of some illness, strain, bruise, or wound, of which he
or she was complaining; and in such cases the proprietor or overseer
has, I think, never failed to express his suspicion that the invalid
was really as well able to work as anyone else on the plantation. It
is said to be nearly as difficult to form a satisfactory diagnosis of
negroes’ disorders as it is of infants’, because their imagination of
symptoms is so vivid, and because not the smallest reliance is to be
placed on their accounts of what they have felt or done. If a man is
really ill, he fears lest he should be thought to be simulating, and
therefore exaggerates all his pains, and locates them in whatever he
supposes to be the most vital parts of his system.
Frequently the invalid slaves neglect or refuse to use the remedies
prescribed for their recovery. They conceal pills, for instance, under
their tongue, and declare that they have swallowed them, when, from
their producing no effect, it will be afterwards evident that they have
not. This general custom I heard ascribed to habit, acquired when they
were not very ill, and were loth to be made quite well enough to have
to go to work again.
Amusing incidents, illustrating this difficulty, I have heard narrated,
showing that the slave rather enjoys getting a severe wound that lays
him up:—he has his hand crushed by the fall of a piece of timber, and
after the pain is alleviated, is heard to exclaim, “Bress der Lord—der
haan b’long to masser—don’t reckon dis chile got no more corn to hoe
dis yaar, no how.”
Mr. H., of North Carolina, observed to me, in relation to this
difficulty, that a man who had had much experience with negroes could
generally tell, with a good deal of certainty, by their tongue, and
their pulse, and their general aspect, whether they were really ill or
not.
“Last year,” said he, “I hired out one of my negroes to a railroad
contractor. I suppose that he found he had to work harder than he would
on the plantation, and became discontented, and one night he left the
camp without asking leave. The next day he stopped at a public-house,
and told the people he had fallen sick working on the railroad, and was
going home to his master. They suspected he had run away, and, as he
had no pass, they arrested him and sent him to the jail. In the night
the sheriff sent me word that there was a boy, who said he belonged to
me, in the jail, and he was very sick indeed, and I had better come and
take care of him. I suspected how it was, and, as I was particularly
engaged, I did not go near him till towards night, the next day. When
I came to look at him, and heard his story, I felt quite sure that he
was not sick; but, as he pretended to be suffering very much, I told
the sheriff to give him plenty of salts and senna, and to be careful
that he did not get much of anything to eat. The next day I got a
letter from the contractor, telling me that my nigger had run away,
without any cause. So I rode over to the jail again, and told them to
continue the same treatment until the boy got a good deal worse or a
good deal better. Well, the rascal kept it up for a week, all the time
groaning so, you’d think he couldn’t live many hours longer; but, after
he had been in seven days, he all of a sudden said he’d got well, and
wanted something to eat. As soon as I heard of it, I sent them word to
give him a good paddling,[19] and handcuff him, and send him back to
the railroad. I had to pay them for taking up a runaway, besides the
sheriff’s fees, and a week’s board of the boy to the county.”
But the same gentleman admitted that he had sometimes been mistaken,
and had made men go to work when they afterwards proved to be really
ill; therefore, when one of his people told him he was not able to
work, he usually thought, “Very likely he’ll be all the better for a
day’s rest, whether he’s really ill or not,” and would let him off
without being particular in his examination. Lately he had been getting
a new overseer, and when he was engaging him, he told him that this was
his way. The overseer replied, “It’s my way, too, now; it didn’t use
to be, but I had a lesson. There was a nigger one day at Mr. ——’s who
was sulky and complaining; he said he couldn’t work. I looked at his
tongue, and it was right clean, and I thought it was nothing but damned
sulkiness, so I paddled him, and made him go to work; but, two days
after, he was under ground. He was a good eight hundred dollar nigger,
and it was a lesson to me about taming possums, that I ain’t agoing to
forget in a hurry.”
The liability of women, especially, to disorders and irregularities
which cannot be detected by exterior symptoms, but which may be easily
aggravated into serious complaints, renders many of them nearly
valueless for work, because of the ease with which they can impose upon
their owners. “The women on a plantation,” said one extensive Virginian
slaveowner to me, “will hardly earn their salt, after they come to the
breeding age: they don’t come to the field, and you go to the quarters,
and ask the old nurse what’s the matter, and she says, ‘Oh, she’s not
well, master; she not fit to work, sir;’ and what can you do? You have
to take her word for it that something or other is the matter with her,
and you dare not set her to work; and so she lay up till she feels like
taking the air again, and plays the lady at your expense.”
I was on a plantation where a woman had been excused from any sort of
labour for more than two years, on the supposition that she was dying
of phthisis. At last the overseer discovered that she was employed
as a milliner and dressmaker by all the other coloured ladies of the
vicinity; and upon taking her to the house, it was found that she had
acquired a remarkable skill in these vocations. She was hired out the
next year to a fashionable dress-maker in town, at handsome wages; and
as, after that, she did not again “raise blood,” it was supposed that
when she had done so before, it had been by artificial means. Such
tricks every army and navy surgeon is familiar with.
The interruption and disarrangement of operations of labour, occasioned
by slaves “running away,” frequently causes great inconvenience and
loss to those who employ them. It is said to often occur when no
immediate motive can be guessed at for it—when the slave has been well
treated, well fed, and not over-worked; and when he will be sure to
suffer hardship from it, and be subject to severe punishment on his
return, or if he is caught.
This is often mentioned to illustrate the ingratitude and especial
depravity of the African race. I should suspect it to be, if it cannot
be otherwise accounted for, the natural instinct of freedom in a man,
working out capriciously, as the wild instincts of domesticated beasts
and birds sometimes do.
But the learned Dr. Cartwright, of the University of Louisiana,
believes that slaves are subject to a peculiar form of mental disease,
termed by him _Drapetomania_, which, like a malady that cats are liable
to, manifests itself by an irrestrainable propensity to _run away_;
and in a work on the diseases of negroes, highly esteemed at the South
for its patriotism and erudition, he advises planters of the proper
preventive and curative measures to be taken for it.
He asserts that, “with the advantage of proper medical advice, strictly
followed, this troublesome practice of running away, that many negroes
have, can be almost entirely prevented.” Its symptoms and the usual
empirical practice on the plantations are described: “Before negroes
run away, unless they are frightened or panic-struck, they become sulky
and dissatisfied. The cause of this sulkiness and dissatisfaction
should be inquired into and removed, or they are apt to run away
or fall into the negro consumption.” When sulky or dissatisfied
without cause, the experience of those having most practice with
_drapetomania_, the Doctor thinks, has been in favour of “whipping
them _out of it_.” It is vulgarly called, “whipping the devil _out of
them_,” he afterwards informs us.
Another droll sort of “indisposition,” thought to be peculiar to the
slaves, and which must greatly affect their value, as compared with
free labourers, is described by Dr. Cartwright, as follows:—
“DYSÆSTHESIA ÆTHIOPICA, or Hebetude of Mind and Obtuse Sensibility
of Body. * * * From the careless movements of the individuals
affected with this complaint, they are apt to do much mischief,
which appears as if intentional, but is mostly owing to the
stupidness of mind and insensibility of the nerves induced by
the disease. Thus they break, waste, and destroy everything they
handle—abuse horses and cattle—tear, burn, or rend their own
clothing, and, paying no attention to the rights of property,
steal others to replace what they have destroyed. They wander
about at night, and keep in a half-nodding state by day. They
slight their work—cut up corn, cane, cotton, and tobacco, when
hoeing it, as if for pure mischief. They raise disturbances with
their overseers, and among their fellow-servants, without cause
or motive, and seem to be insensible to pain when subjected to
punishment. * * *
“When left to himself, the negro indulges in his natural
disposition to idleness and sloth, and does not take exercise
enough to expand his lungs and vitalize his blood, but dozes out a
miserable existence in the midst of filth and uncleanliness, being
too indolent, and having too little energy of mind, to provide
for himself proper food and comfortable clothing and lodging. The
consequence is, that the blood becomes so highly carbonized and
deprived of oxygen that it not only becomes unfit to stimulate the
brain to energy, but unfit to stimulate the nerves of sensation
distributed to the body. * * *
“This is the disease called _Dysæsthesia_ (a Greek term expressing
the dull or obtuse sensation that always attends the complaint).
When roused from sloth by the stimulus of hunger, he takes
anything he can lay his hands on, and tramples on the rights as
well as on the property of others, with perfect indifference. When
driven to labour by the compulsive power of the white man, he
performs the task assigned to him in a headlong, careless manner,
treading down with his feet or cutting with his hoe the plants he
is put to cultivate—breaking the tools he works with, and spoiling
everything he touches that can be injured by careless handling.
Hence the overseers call it ‘rascality,’ supposing that the
mischief is intentionally done. * * *
“The term, ‘rascality,’ given to this disease by overseers, is
founded on an erroneous hypothesis, and leads to an incorrect
empirical treatment, which seldom or never cures it.”
There are many complaints described in Dr. Cartwright’s treatise, to
which the negroes, in slavery, seem to be peculiarly subject.
“More fatal than any other is congestion of the lungs,
_peripneumonia notha_, often called cold plague, etc. * * *
“The _Frambæsia_, Piam, or Yaws, is a _contagious_ disease,
communicable by contact among those who greatly neglect
cleanliness. It is supposed to be communicable, in a modified
form, to the white race, among whom it resembles pseudo syphilis,
or some disease of the nose, throat, or larynx. * * *
“Negro-consumption, a disease almost unknown to medical men of
the Northern States and of Europe, is also sometimes fearfully
prevalent among the slaves. ‘It is of importance,’ says the
Doctor, ‘to know the pathognomic signs in its early stages, not
only in regard to its treatment, but to detect impositions, as
negroes afflicted with this complaint are often for sale; the
acceleration of the pulse, on exercise, incapacitates them for
labour, as they quickly give out, and have to leave their work.
This induces their owners to sell them, although they may not
know the cause of their inability to labour. Many of the negroes
brought South, for sale, are in the incipient stages of this
disease; they are found to be inefficient labourers, and are sold
in consequence thereof. The effect of superstition—a firm belief
that he is poisoned or conjured—upon the patient’s mind, already
in a morbid state (dysæsthesia), and his health affected from hard
usage, over-tasking or exposure, want of wholesome food, good
clothing, warm, comfortable lodging, with the distressing idea
(sometimes) that he is an object of hatred or dislike, both to his
master or fellow-servants, and has no one to befriend him, tends
directly to generate that erythism of mind which is the essential
cause of negro-consumption.’ * * * ‘Remedies should be assisted by
removing the _original cause_ of the dissatisfaction or trouble of
mind, and by using every means to make the patient comfortable,
satisfied, and happy.’”
Longing for home generates a distinct malady, known to physicians as
_Nostalgia_, and there is a suggestive analogy between the treatment
commonly employed to cure it and that recommended in this last advice
of Dr. Cartwright.
_Discipline._—Under the slave system of labour, discipline must
always be maintained by physical power. A lady of New York, spending
a winter in a Southern city, had a hired slave-servant, who, one day,
refused outright to perform some ordinary light domestic duty required
of her. On the lady’s gently remonstrating with her, she immediately
replied: “You can’t make me do it, and I won’t do it: I aint afeard of
you whippin’ me.” The servant was right; the lady could not whip her,
and was too tender-hearted to call in a man, or to send her to the
guard-house to be whipped, as is the custom with Southern ladies, when
their patience is exhausted, under such circumstances. She endeavoured,
by kindness and by appeals to the girl’s good sense, to obtain a
moral control over her; but, after suffering continual annoyance and
inconvenience, and after an intense trial of her feelings, for some
time, she was at length obliged to go to her owner, and beg him to come
and take her away from the house, on any terms. It was no better than
having a lunatic or a mischievous and pilfering monomaniac quartered on
her.[20]
But often when courage and physical power, with the strength of the
militia force and the army of the United States, if required, at the
back of the master, are not wanting, there are a great variety of
circumstances that make a resort to punishment inconvenient, if not
impossible.
Really well-trained, accomplished, and docile house-servants are
seldom to be purchased or hired at the South, though they are found in
old wealthy families rather oftener than first-rate English or French
servants are at the North. It is, doubtless, a convenience to have even
moderately good servants who cannot, at any time of their improved
value or your necessity, demand to have their pay increased, or who
cannot be drawn away from you by prospect of smaller demands and kinder
treatment at your neighbour’s; but I believe few of those who are
incessantly murmuring against this healthy operation of God’s good law
of supply and demand would be willing to purchase exemption from it, at
the price with which the masters and mistresses of the South do. They
would pay, to get a certain amount of work done, three or four times
as much, to the owner of the best sort of hired slaves, as they do to
the commonest, stupidest Irish domestic drudges at the North, though
the nominal wages by the week or year, in Virginia, are but little more
than in New York.
The number of servants usually found in a Southern family, of any
pretension, always amazes a Northern lady. In one that I have visited,
there are exactly three negroes to each white, the negroes being
employed solely in the house.
(A Southern lady, of an old and wealthy family, who had been for some
time visiting a friend of mine in New York, said to her, as she was
preparing to return home: “I cannot tell you how much, after being in
your house so long, I dread to go home, and to have to take care of our
servants again. We have a much smaller family of whites than you, but
we have twelve servants, and your two accomplish a great deal more,
and do their work a great deal better than our twelve. You think your
girls are very stupid, and that they give you much trouble: but it is
as nothing. There is hardly one of our servants that can be trusted to
do the simplest work without being stood over. If I order a room to
be cleaned, or a fire to be made in a distant chamber, I never can be
sure I am obeyed unless I go there and see for myself. If I send a girl
out to get anything I want for preparing the dinner, she is as likely
as not to forget what is wanted, and not to come back till after the
time at which dinner should be ready. A hand-organ in the street will
draw all my girls out of the house; and while it remains near us I have
no more command over them than over so many monkeys. The parade of a
military company has sometimes entirely prevented me from having any
dinner cooked; and when the servants, standing in the square looking
at the soldiers, see my husband coming after them, they only laugh,
and run away to the other side, like playful children.[21] And, when I
reprimand them, they only say they don’t mean to do anything wrong, or
they won’t do it again, all the time laughing as though it was all a
joke. They don’t mind it at all. They are just as playful and careless
as any wilful child; and they never will do any work if you don’t
compel them.”)
The slave employer, if he finds he has been so unfortunate as to hire
a sulky servant, who cannot be made to work to his advantage, has no
remedy but to solicit from his owner a deduction from the price he has
agreed to pay for his labour, on the same ground that one would from a
livery-stable keeper, if he had engaged a horse to go a journey, but
found that he was not strong or skilful enough to keep him upon the
road. But, if the slave is the property of his employer, and becomes
“rascally,” the usual remedy is that which the veterinary surgeon
recommended when he was called upon for advice how to cure a jibing
horse: “_Sell_ him, my lord.” “Rascals” are “sent South” from Virginia,
for the cure or alleviation of their complaint, in much greater numbers
than consumptives are from the more Northern States.
“How do you manage, then, when a man misbehaves, or is sick?” I have
been often asked by Southerners, in discussing this question.
If he is sick, I simply charge against him every half day of the time
he is off work, and deduct it from his wages. If he is careless, or
refuses to do what in reason I demand of him, I discharge him, paying
him wages to the time he leaves. With new men in whom I have not
confidence, I make a written agreement, before witnesses, on engaging
them, that will permit me to do this. As for “rascality,” I never
had but one case of anything approaching to what you call so. A man
insolently contradicted me in the field: I told him to leave his job
and go to the house, took hold and finished it myself, then went to the
house, made out a written statement of account, counted out the balance
in money due to him, gave him the statement and the money, and told him
he must go. He knew that he had failed of his duty, and that the law
would sustain me, and we parted in a friendly manner, he expressing
regret that his temper had driven him from a situation which had been
agreeable and satisfactory to him. The probability is, that this single
experience educated him so far that his next employer would have no
occasion to complain of his “rascality;” and I very much doubt if any
amount of corporeal punishment would have improved his temper in the
least.
“_Sogering._”—That slaves have to be “humoured” a great deal, and that
they very frequently cannot be made to do their master’s will, I have
seen much evidence. Not that they often directly refuse to obey an
order, but when they are directed to do anything for which they have
a disinclination, they undertake it in such a way that the desired
result is sure not to be accomplished. They cannot be driven by fear
of punishment to do that which the labourers in free communities do
cheerfully from their sense of duty, self-respect, or regard for their
reputation and standing with their employer. A gentleman who had some
free men in his employment in Virginia, that he had procured in New
York, told me that he had been astonished, when a dam that he had been
building began to give way in a freshet, to see how much more readily
than negroes they would obey his orders, and do their best without
orders, running into the water waist-deep, in mid-winter, without any
hesitation or grumbling.
The manager of a large candle-factory in London, in which the labourers
are treated with an unusual degree of confidence and generosity, writes
thus in a report to his directors:—
“The present year promises to be a very good one as regards
profit, in consequence of the enormous increase in the demand
for candles. No mere driving of the men and boys, by ourselves
and those in authority under us, would have produced the sudden
and very great increase of manufacture, necessary for keeping
pace with this demand. It has been effected only by the hearty
good-will with which the factory has worked, the men and boys
making the great extra exertion, which they saw to be necessary
to prevent our getting hopelessly in arrears with the orders, as
heartily as if the question had been, how to avert some difficulty
threatening themselves personally. One of the foremen remarked
with truth, a few days back: ‘To look on them, one would think
each was engaged in a little business of his own, so as to have
only himself affected by the results of his work.’”
A farmer in Lincolnshire, England, told me that once, during an
extraordinary harvest season, he had a number of labourers at work
without leaving the field or taking any repose for sixty hours—he
himself working with them, and eating and drinking only with them
during all the time. Such services men may give voluntarily, from
their own regard to the value of property to be saved by it, or for
the purpose of establishing their credit as worth good wages; but
to require it of slaves would be intensely cruel, if not actually
impossible. A man can work excessively on his own impulse as much
easier than he can be driven to by another, as a horse travels easier
in going towards his accustomed stable than in going from it. I
mean—and every man who has ever served as a sailor or a soldier will
know that it is no imaginary effect—that the actual fatigue, the waste
of bodily energy, the expenditure of the physical capacity, is greater
in one case than the other.
Sailors and soldiers both, are led by certain inducements to place
themselves within certain limits, and for a certain time, both defined
by contract, in a condition resembling, in many particulars, that of
slaves; and, although they are bound by their voluntary contract and by
legal and moral considerations to obey orders, the fact that force is
also used to secure their obedience to their officers, scarcely ever
fails to produce in them the identical vices which are complained of in
slaves. They obey the letter, but defeat the intention of orders that
do not please them; they are improvident, wasteful, reckless: they sham
illness, and as Dr. Cartwright gives specific medical appellations to
discontent, laziness, and rascality, so among sailors and soldiers,
when men suddenly find themselves ill and unable to do their duty in
times of peculiar danger, or when unusual labour is required, they are
humorously said to be suffering under an attack of the powder-fever,
the cape-fever, the ice-fever, the coast-fever, or the reefing-fever.
The counteracting influences to these vices, which it is the first
effort of every good officer to foster, are, first, regard to duty;
second, patriotism; third, _esprit du corps_, or professional pride;
fourth, self-respect, or personal pride; fifth, self-interest, hope of
promotion, or of bounty, or of privileges in mitigation of their hard
service, as reward for excellence. Things are never quickly done at
sea, unless they are done with a will, or “cheerly,” as the sailor’s
word is—that is, cheerfully. An army is never effective in the field
when depressed in its _morale_.
None of these promptings to excellence can be operative, except in a
very low degree, to counteract the indolent and vicious tendencies of
the Slavery, much more pure than the slavery of the army or the ship,
by which the exertions of the Virginia labourer are obtained for his
employer.
Incidents, trifling in themselves, constantly betray to a stranger
what must be the necessary consequences. The catastrophe of one such
occurred since I began to write this letter. I requested a fire to
be made in my room, as I was going out this morning. On my return, I
found a grand fire—the room door having been closed upon it, and, by
the way, I had to obtain assistance to open it, the lock being “out of
order.” Just now, while I was writing, down tumbled upon the floor, and
rolled away close to the valance of the bed, half a hodfull of ignited
coal, which had been so piled up on the grate, and left without a
fender or any guard, that this result was almost inevitable. And such
carelessness of servants you have momentarily to notice.
But the constantly-occurring delays, and the waste of time and labour
that you encounter everywhere, are most annoying and provoking to a
stranger. At an hotel, for instance, you go to your room and find
no conveniences for washing; ring and ring again, and hear the
office-keeper ring again and again. At length two servants appear
together at your door, get orders, and go away. A quarter of an hour
afterwards, perhaps, one returns with a pitcher of water, but no
towels; and so on. Yet as the servants seem anxious to please, it can
only result from want of system and order.
Until the negro is big enough for his labour to be plainly profitable
to his master, he has no training to application or method, but only
to idleness and carelessness. Before the children arrive at a working
age, they hardly come under the notice of their owner. An inventory of
them is taken on the plantation at Christmas; and a planter told me
that sometimes they escaped the attention of the overseer and were not
returned at all, till twelve or thirteen years old. The only whipping
of slaves I have seen in Virginia, has been of these wild, lazy
children, as they are being broke in to work. They cannot be depended
upon a minute, out of sight.
You will see how difficult it would be, if it were attempted, to
eradicate the indolent, careless, incogitant habits so formed in
youth. But it is not systematically attempted, and the influences
that continue to act upon a slave in the same direction, cultivating
every quality at variance with industry, precision, forethought, and
providence, are innumerable.
It is not wonderful that the habits of the whole community should
be influenced by, and be made to accommodate to these habits of its
labourers. It irresistibly affects the whole industrial character of
the people. You may see it in the habits and manners of the free white
mechanics and trades-people. All of these must have dealings or be in
competition with slaves, and so have their standard of excellence made
low, and become accustomed to, until they are content with slight,
false, unsound workmanship. You notice in all classes, vagueness in
ideas of cost and value, and injudicious and unnecessary expenditure of
labour by a thoughtless manner of setting about work.[22] For instance,
I noticed a rivet loose in my umbrella, as I was going out from my
hotel during a shower, and stepped into an adjoining shop to have it
repaired.
“I can’t do it in less than half an hour, sir, and it will be worth a
quarter,” said the locksmith, replying to inquiries.
“I shouldn’t think it need take you so long—it is merely a rivet to be
tightened.”
“I shall have to take it all to pieces, and it will take me all of half
an hour.”
“I don’t think you need take it to pieces.”
“Yes, I shall—there’s no other way to do it.”
“Then, as I can’t well wait so long, I will not trouble you with it;”
and I went back to the hotel, and with the fire-poker did the work
myself, in less than a minute, as well as he could have done it in a
week, and went on my way, saving half an hour and quarter of a dollar,
like a “Yankee.”
Virginians laugh at us for such things: but it is because they are
indifferent to these fractions, or, as they say, above regarding them,
that they cannot do their own business with the rest of the world;
and all their commerce, as they are absurdly complaining, only goes
to enrich Northern men. A man forced to labour under their system
is morally driven to indolence, carelessness, indifference to the
results of skill, heedlessness, inconstancy of purpose, improvidence,
and extravagance. Precisely the opposite qualities are those which
are encouraged, and inevitably developed in a man who has to make his
living, and earn all his comfort by his voluntarily-directed labour.
“It is with dogs,” says an authority on the subject, “as it is with
horses; no work is so well done as that which is done cheerfully.” And
it is with men, both black and white, as it is with horses and with
clogs; it is even more so, because the strength and cunning of a man
is less adapted to being “broken” to the will of another than that of
either dogs or horses.
_Work accomplished in a given time._—Mr. T. R. Griscom, of Petersburg,
Virginia, stated to me, that he once took accurate account of the
labour expended in harvesting a large field of wheat; and the result
was that one quarter of an acre a day was secured for each able hand
engaged in cradling, raking, and binding. The crop was light, yielding
not over six bushels to the acre. In New York a gang of fair cradlers
and binders would be expected, under ordinary circumstances, to secure
a crop of wheat, yielding from twenty to thirty bushels to the acre, at
the rate of about two acres a day for each man.
Mr. Griscom formerly resided in New Jersey; and since living in
Virginia has had the superintendence of very large agricultural
operations, conducted with slave-labour. After I had, in a letter,
intended for publication, made use of this testimony, I called upon him
to ask if he would object to my giving his name with it. He was so good
as to permit me to do so, and said that I might add that the ordinary
waste in harvesting wheat in Virginia, through the carelessness of the
negroes, beyond that which occurs in the hands of ordinary Northern
labourers, is equal in value to what a Northern farmer would often
consider a satisfactory profit on his crop. He also wished me to
say that it was his deliberate opinion, formed not without much and
accurate observation, that four Virginia slaves do not, when engaged in
ordinary agricultural operations, accomplish as much, on an average, as
one ordinary free farm labourer in New Jersey.
Mr. Griscom is well known at Petersburg as a man remarkable for
accuracy and preciseness; and no man’s judgment on this subject could
be entitled to more respect.
Another man, who had superintended labour of the same character at the
North and in Virginia, whom I questioned closely, agreed entirely with
Mr. Griscom, believing that four negroes had to be supported on every
farm in the State to accomplish the same work which was ordinarily done
by one free labourer in New York.
A clergyman from Connecticut, who had resided for many years in
Virginia, told me that what a slave expected to spend a day upon, a
Northern labourer would, he was confident, usually accomplish by eleven
o’clock in the morning.
In a letter on this subject, most of the facts given in which have
been already narrated in this volume, written from Virginia to the _New
York Times_, I expressed the conviction that, at the most, not more
than one-half as much labour was ordinarily accomplished in Virginia
by a certain number of slaves, in a given time, as by an equal number
of free labourers in New York. The publication of this letter induced
a number of persons to make public the conclusions of their own
experience or observations on this subject. So far as I know, these, in
every case, sustained my conclusions, or, if any doubt was expressed,
it was that I had under-estimated the superior economy of free-labour.
As affording evidence more valuable than my own on this important
point, from the better opportunities of forming sound judgment, which
a residence at different times, in both Virginia and a Free State had
given the writers, I have reprinted, in an Appendix, two of these
letters, together with a quantity of other testimony from Southern
witnesses on this subject, which I beg the reader, who has any doubt of
the correctness of my information, not to neglect.
“_Driving._”—On mentioning to a gentleman in Virginia (who believed
that slave-labour was better and cheaper than free-labour), Mr.
Griscom’s observation, he replied: that without doubting the
correctness of the statement of that particular instance, he was sure
that if four men did not harvest more than an acre of wheat a day, they
could not have been well “driven.” He knew that, if properly driven,
threatened with punishment, and punished if necessary, negroes would
do as much work as it was possible for any white man to do. The same
gentleman, however, at another time, told me that negroes were seldom
punished; not oftener, he presumed, than apprentices were, at the
North; that the driving of them was generally left to overseers, who
were the laziest and most worthless dogs in the world, frequently not
demanding higher wages for their services than one of the negroes whom
they were given to manage might be hired for. Another gentleman told
me that he would rather, if the law would permit it, have some of his
negroes for overseers, than any white man he had ever been able to
obtain in that capacity.
Another planter, whom I requested to examine a letter on the subject,
that I had prepared for the _Times_, that he might, if he could,
refute my calculations, or give me any facts of an opposite character,
after reading it said: “The truth is, that, in general, a slave does
not do half the work he easily might; and which, by being harsh
enough with him, he can be made to do. When I came into possession of
my plantation, I soon found the overseer then upon it was good for
nothing, and told him I had no further occasion for his services: I
then went to driving the negroes myself. In the morning, when I went
out, one of them came up to me and asked what work he should go about.
I told him to go into the swamp and cut some wood. ‘Well, massa,’ said
he, ‘s’pose you wants me to do kordins we’s been use to doin’; ebery
nigger cut a cord a day.’ ‘A cord! that’s what you have been used to
doing, is it?’ said I. ‘Yes, massa, dat’s wot dey always makes a nigger
do roun’ heah—a cord a day, dat’s allers de task.’ ‘Well, now, old
man,’[23] said I, ‘you go and cut me two cords to-day.’ ‘Oh, massa! two
cords! Nobody couldn’ do dat. Oh! massa, dat’s too hard! Nebber heard
o’ nobody’s cuttin’ more’n a cord o’ wood in a day, roun’ heah. No
nigger couldn’ do it.’ ‘Well, old man, you have two cords of wood cut
to-night, or to-morrow morning you will have two hundred lashes—that’s
all there is about it. So, look sharp!’ Of course, he did it, and no
negro has ever cut less than two cords a day for me since, though my
neighbours still get but one cord. It was just so with a great many
other things—mauling rails: I always have two hundred rails mauled in a
day; just twice what it is the custom, in our country, to expect of a
negro, and just twice as many as my negroes had been made to do before
I managed them myself.”
This only makes it more probable that the amount of labour ordinarily
and generally performed by slaves in Virginia is very small, compared
with that done by the labourers of the Free States.
Of course, it does not follow that all articles produced by such labour
cost four times as much as in New York. There are other elements of
cost besides labour, as land and fuel. I could not have a bushel of
lime or salt or coal dug for me on my farm at Staten Island at any
price. There are farms in Virginia where either could be obtained by an
hour’s labour.
Yet now, as I think of all the homes of which I have had a glimpse, it
does not seem to me that men who are reputed to be worth $400,000 have
equal advantages of wealth here with those whose property is valued
at a quarter that, in the Eastern Free States; men with $40,000 live
not as well here, all things considered, as men worth $10,000 at the
North; and the farmer who owns half a dozen negroes, and who I suppose
must be called worth $4000, does not approach in his possession of
civilized comfort, the well-to-do working man with us, who rents a
small house, and whose property consists in its furniture, his tools,
skill, and strength, and who has a few hundred dollars laid up in the
Savings-Bank, against a rainy day. I do not need to ask a farmer, then,
any longer why he lifts his stable door into its place, and fastens it
by leaning a log against it, as he evidently has been doing for years.
He cannot afford to buy or hire a blacksmith for his little farm, and
what with going and coming, and paying in corn which must be carried a
number of miles over scarcely passable roads, our thriftiest farmers
would wait for better times, perhaps, before they would take half the
trouble or give a third as much corn as the blacksmith will want for
the job, to save a minute’s time whenever they needed to enter and
leave their stable. And so with everything. Any substantial work costs
so much, not alone in money or corn directly, but in the time and
trouble in effecting the exchange, that the people make shift and do
without it. And this is evidently the case not only with the people as
individuals and families, but in their community. It is more obvious,
if possible, in the condition of the houses of worship, the schools,
the roads, the public conveyances; finally, it accounts for what at
first sight appears the marvellous neglect or waste of the natural
resources of the country, and it no longer surprises me that a farmer
points out a coal bed, which has never been worked, in the bank of a
stream which has never been dammed, in the midst of a forest of fine
timber trees, with clay and lime and sand convenient, and who yet lives
in a miserable smoky cabin of logs on a diet almost exclusively formed
of pounded maize and bacon. Nor, when I ask, if a little painstaking
here and there would not save much waste of fertility, that he should
reply, that inasmuch as land enough, equally good, can be bought for
six dollars an acre, the whole fertile matter can be better lost than
a week’s labour be spent to save all that will not go into this year’s
crop.
To this general rule of make shift, there is but rare exception to the
general rule of the difficulty or expense of accomplishing any ordinary
aim of civilized, in distinction from savage society. I am inclined to
think that there is none in Virginia. There are, however, individuals
and localities and communities and enterprises, upon which the forces
of wealth—including both capital and talent, or energy—seem to have
concentrated, just as we sometimes observe to be the case at the North.
It is true also, as Virginians are fond of asserting, that absolute
destitution of the means of preserving life is more rare than at the
North, but then life is barely preserved with little labour by a naked
savage in the wilderness; and it must be said that a great number, I
almost think a majority, of the Eastern Virginians live but one step
removed from what we should deem great destitution at the North. I am
sure, upon consideration, that this phrase would convey no unjust idea
of the life of the majority of the Virginians, whom I have seen, to the
people of a New England manufacturing town.
I have said that there are points where the forces of wealth seem to
have concentrated. As a rule the farm-labour of a slave accomplishes
not half as much in a day, as at the North; that of a white man,
probably, not a third; that of most mechanics, because of their
carelessness and unfaithfulness, much less than of most at the North,
although they are paid more than there. But it is true, there are
apparent exceptions, and I have been at times a good deal puzzled by
them. Generally a patient study discovers a concealed force. Most
commonly, I think, the explanation is given in the converse of the
maxim that “high wages are the cheapest.” The workman who commands much
more than the ruling rate of wages is hard to be got, and proverbially
accomplishes much more for his employer than the excess of his wages
indicates. The man who cannot command the current rates is the first
to be dropped off on a reduction, the last to be taken on at an
increase of force. As prime field-hand slaves furnish the standard of
labour in Virginia, and the vast majority of labourers are far below
that standard in quality, their labour is paid much less, and it is
of less value relative to its cost. Most of the labouring class of
Virginia are of a quality which our farmers would call “dear at any
price.” If, then, by unusually skilful and energetic management, under
favourable circumstances, the labour of slaves, in certain instances,
seems to accomplish as much for its course as that of free labourers
at the North, it does not follow that results of labour of all kinds
in Virginia do not cost ordinarily, and on average, twice or thrice as
much as in the adjoining Free States.
Whenever I have found unusual efficiency apparent in any enterprise
in Virginia—as sometimes in railroad _construction_, milling, and
mining—I have thus far invariably found the negroes employed to be
picked men, and, when my inquiries have been frankly answered, that
they were working under some unusual stimulus. For instance, a tobacco
manufacturer pays the owner of a valuable negro $140 a year for his
services, undertaking also to feed and clothe him and otherwise care
for his permanent value. He then offers to pay the negro a certain rate
per pound for all the tobacco he works up beyond a certain quantity.
One of the largest manufacturers informed me that he paid seldom less
than $60 a year, and sometimes over $300, to each slave he used, in
addition to the rent paid their masters, which was from $100 to $150
a year. I did not learn the averages, but suppose that, while the
nominal wages for the labour of these slaves was but little more than
the ruling market-rate of $120 a year, their labour really cost the
manufacturer at least double that. Hardly any of the white labour
employed in enterprises which are pursued with energy and efficiency is
native, nor does it ever, so far as I have seen, seem to be established
and at home.