Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/54

42 production. Men of small capital are kept out of the field; business is mainly in the hands of the rich; property tends to accumulate in few hands. Compare a slave and a free State: in the free population of the former there is less enterprise; less activity of body and mind; less intelligence; less production; less comfort, and less welfare. In the free States an enterprising man whose own hands are not enough for him to work out his thoughts with, can trade in human labour, buying men's work and seeing the result of that work. That is the business of the merchant-manufacturer in all departments. In the present state of society both parties are gainers by the operation. In the South, such a man must buy the labourers before he can use their work, but intelligent labour he cannot thus buy.

Men are born with different tastes and tendencies—some for agriculture,, others for commerce, navigation, manufactures, for science, letters, the arts, useful or elegant. The master is able to command the muscles, not to develope the mind. He directs labour mainly to the coarser operations of husbandry, and makes work monotonous. Uniformity of labour involves a great loss. Political economists know well the misery which happens to Ireland from this source—not to mention others and worse. In Connecticut, every farmer and day-labourer, in his family or person, is a consumer not only of the productions of his own farm or handiwork, but also of tea, coffee, sugar, rice, molasses, salt, and spices; of cotton, woollen, and silk goods, ribbons and bonnets; of shoes and hats; of beds and other furniture; of hardware, tin-ware, and cutlery; of crockery and glass ware; of clocks and jewelry; of books, paper, and the like. His wants stimulate the mechanic and the merchant; they stimulate him in return, all grow up together; each has a market at home, a market continually enlarging and giving vent to superior wares. The young man can turn his hand to the art he likes best. Industry, activity, intelligence, and comfort are the result.

In a slave population the reverse of all this takes place. The "Southern planter" thinks $20 adequate for the yearly support of a slave. Add twenty-five per cent, to his estimate, making the sum $25: then the 3,000,000