Page:The American Slave Trade (Spears).djvu/122

 cost, we understand, was 30,000 dollars; and that the fitting out, and expenses of every description for the voyage, including the value of the return cargo, was estimated at $60,000 more. The number of negroes brought back, as has been before stated, was 860; and they are said to have been sold at 340 dollars per head, producing the sum of nearly 300,000 dollars; of which therefore two-thirds was net profit." That was in 1838-39.

As far back as 1827, the captain of a small slave would receive $2,000 for a round trip requiring six months' time, while the mate got $1,000. To fully appreciate how much money that was to a ship's officers one has to remember that even now there are plenty of captains of schooners and barks of a thousand tons capacity who receive but $75 or 580 a month, although wages all around are fifty per cent. higher, and even more. The captains of transatlantic liners to-day receive from $2,000 to $3,000 a year, whereas the captain of a little ninety-ton slaver got $2,000 in six months. The liner that cost, say, a million dollars will carry first-class passengers in luxurious staterooms and furnish abundant meals for from $100 to $150 for the passage, and $125 is a fair average price for superb accommodations on the most expensive ves. sel. The average profit on a slave after the year 1825 was not less than $250, or twice the price of a firstclass passage on a ship costing a million. To make the contrast absolutely fair we should say that the slaver who received $340 per head, and paid but $20 in Africa received $320 for transporting the slave to Cuba. His net profit was reduced to, say, $250 by the expenses of the voyage, just as the steam liner's