Page:The cotton kingdom (Volume 1).djvu/29



cost of its transportation, acclimatizing, and breaking in to cotton-culture in Mississippi.

2. The cost of production, or the development of natural wealth in Virginia, is regulated by the cost of slave-labour: (that is to say) the competition of white labour does not materially reduce it; though it doubtless has some effect, at least in certain districts, and with reference to certain productions or branches of industry.

3. Taking infants, aged, invalid, and vicious and knavish slaves into account, the ordinary and average cost of a certain task of labour is more than double in Virginia what it is in the Free States adjoining.

4. The use of land and nearly all other resources of wealth in Virginia is much less valuable than the use of similar property in the adjoining Free States, these resources having no real value until labour is applied to them. (The Census returns of 1850 show that the sale value of farm lands by the acre in Virginia is less than one-third the value of farm lands in the adjoining Free State of Pennsylvania, and less than one-fifth than that of the farm lands of the neighbouring Free State of New Jersey.)

5. Beyond the bare necessities of existence, poor shelter, poor clothing, and the crudest diet, the mass of the citizen class of Virginia earn very little and are very poor—immeasurably poorer than the mass of the people of the adjoining Free States.

6. So far as this poverty is to be attributed to personal constitution, character, and choice, it is not the result of climate.

7. What is true of Virginia is measurably true of all the