Page:Frank Owen - Rare Earth, 1931.djvu/119

 aside at the call of commerce. Religion is all very well for most folks as long as it does not interfere with other and more lucrative pursuits.

The Mind of a Slave Trader would have been a wonderful field for Freudian exploration. What did a Slave Trader talk about when he returned to his own family after a particularly profitable voyage? Did he tell about the poor black wretches who had been snatched from their forest peace, thrown into the hold of his fetid ship, a festering, stinking, disease-racked vessel of untold horrors, to be later sold in the open market like so many hogs? No distinction made between husbands and wives, mothers and daughters. Families wantonly broken up. The noble white man guiding the destinies of savages. Did he tell his youngest boy sitting perched upon his knee of the odd lot of children he had sold that day? If genealogies gave more than dates and names there are few of us who would care to brag about our noble ancestry. It is well to remember that the worst blot on American