American Negro Slavery Part 28

"one of the earliest and one of the most enduring forms of poverty," and again as "the original and universal form of bankruptcy." Smart deals with it only as concerns the care of workingmen's children: "The one good thing in slavery was the interest of the master in the future of his workers.

The children of the slaves were the master's property. They were always at least a valuable a.s.set.... But there is no such continuity in the relation between the employer [of free labor] and his human cattle. The best-intentioned employer cannot be expected to be much concerned about the efficient upkeep of the workman's child when the child is free to go where he likes.... The child's future is bound up with the father's wage. The wage may be enough, even when low, to support the father's efficiency, but it is not necessarily enough to keep up the efficiency of the young laborer on which the future depends."[22] Loria deals more extensively with slavery as affected by the valuation of labor,[23] and Gibson[24] examines elaborately the nature of hypothetically absolute slavery in a.n.a.lyzing the earnings of labor. The contributions of both Loria and Gibson will be used below. The economic bearings of the inst.i.tution in history still await satisfactory a.n.a.lysis.

[Footnote 21: J.S. Nicholson, _Principles of Political Economy_ (New York, 1898), I, 221, 391.]

[Footnote 22: William Smart, _The Distribution of Income_ (London, 1899), pp. 296, 297.]

[Footnote 23: Achille Loria, _La Cost.i.tutione Economica Odierna_ (Turin, 1899), chap. 6, part 2.]

[Footnote 24: Arthur H. Gibson, _Human Economics_ (London, 1909).]

CHAPTER XIX

BUS

An expert accountant has well defined the property of a master in his slave as an annuity extending throughout the slave's working life and amounting to the annual surplus which the labor of the slave produced over and above the cost of his maintenance.[1] Before any profit accrued to the master in any year, however, various deductions had to be subtracted from this surplus. These included interest on the slave's cost, regardless of whether he had been reared by his owner or had been bought for a price; amortization of the capital investment; insurance against the slave's premature death or disability and against his escape from service; insurance also for his support when incapacitated whether by illness, accident or old age; taxes; and wages of superintendence. None of these charges would any sound method of accounting permit the master to escape.

[Footnote 1: Arthur H. Gibson, _Human Economics_ (London, 1909), p. 202.

The substance of the present paragraph and the three following ones is mostly in close accord with Gibson's a.n.a.lysis.]

The maintenance of the slave at the full rate required for the preservation of l.u.s.ty physique was essential. The master could not reduce it below that standard without impairing his property as well as lessening its immediate return; and as a rule he could shift none of the charge to other shoulders, for the public would grant his workmen no dole from its charity funds. On the other hand, he was often induced to raise the scale above the minimum standard in order to increase the zeal and efficiency of his corps. In any case, medical attendance and the like was necessarily included in the cost of maintenance.

The capital investment in a slave reared by his master would include charges for the insurance of the child's mother at the time of his birth and for her deficit of routine work before and afterward; the food, clothing, nurse's care and incidentals furnished in childhood; the surplus of supplies over earnings in the period of youth while the slave was not fully earning his own keep and his overhead charges; compound interest on all of these until the slave reached adolescence or early manhood; and a proportion of similar charges on behalf of other children in his original group who had died in youth. In his teens the slave's earnings would gradually increase until they covered all his current charges, including the cost of supervision; and shortly before the age of twenty he would perhaps begin to yield a net return to the owner.

A slave's highest rate of earning would be reached of course when his physical maturity and his training became complete, and would normally continue until his bodily powers began to flag. This period would extend in the case of male field hands from perhaps twenty-five to possibly fifty years of age, and in the case of artizans from say thirty to fifty-five years. The maximum valuation of the slave as property, however, would come earlier, at the point when the investment in his production was first complete and when his maximum earnings were about to begin; and his value would thereafter decline, first slowly and then more swiftly with every pa.s.sing year, in antic.i.p.ation of the decline and final cessation of his earning power. Thus the ratio between the capital value of a slave and his annual net earnings, far from remaining constant, would steadily recede from the beginning to the end of his working life. At the age of twenty it might well be as ten to one; at the age of fifty it would probably not exceed four to one; at sixty-five it might be less than a parity.

In the buying and selling of nearly all non-human commodities the cost of production, or of reproduction, bears a definite relation to the market price, in that it fixes a limit below which owners will not continue to produce and sell. In the case of slaves, however, the cost of rearing had no practical bearing upon the market price, for the reason that the owners could not, or at least did not, increase or diminish the production at will.[2] It has been said by various anti-slavery spokesmen that many slaveowners systematically bred slaves for the market. They have adduced no shred of supporting evidence however; and although the present writer has long been alert for such data he has found but a single concrete item in the premises. This one came, curiously enough, from colonial Ma.s.sachusetts, where John Josslyn recorded in 1636: "Mr. Maverick's negro woman came to my chamber window and in her own country language and tune sang very loud and shril. Going out to her, she used a great deal of respect towards me, and willingly would have expressed her grief in English. But I apprehended it by her countenance and deportment, whereupon I repaired to my host to learn of him the cause, for that I understood before that she had been a queen in her own countrey, and observed a very humble and dutiful garb used towards her by another negro who was her maid. Mr. Maverick was desirous to have a breed of negroes, and therefore seeing she would not yield to perswasions to company with a negro young man he had in his house, he commanded him, will'd she nill'd she to go to bed to her--which was no sooner done than she kickt him out again. This she took in high disdain beyond her slavery, and this was the cause of her grief."[3]

[Footnote 2: This is at variance with Gibson's thesis which, professedly dealing always in pure hypothesis, a.s.sumes a state of "perfect" slavery in which breeding is controlled on precisely the same basis as in the case of cattle.]

[Footnote 3: John Josslyn, "Account of two Voyages to New England," in the Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society _Collections, XXIII_, 231.]

As for the ante-bellum South, the available plantation instructions, journals and correspondence contain no hint of such a practice. Jesse Burton Harrison, a Virginian in touch with planters' conversation and himself hostile to slavery,[4] went so far as to write, "It may be that there is a small section of Virginia (perhaps we could indicate it) where the theory of population is studied with reference to the yearly income from the sale of slaves," but he went no further; and this, be it noted, is not clearly to hint anything further than that the owners of multiplying slaves reckoned their own gains from the unstimulated increase. If pressure were commonly applied James H. Hammond would not merely have inserted the characteristic provision in his schedule of rewards: "For every infant thirteen months old and in sound health that has been properly attended to, the mother shall receive a muslin or calico frock."[5] A planter here and there may have exerted a control of matings in the interest of industrial and commercial eugenics, but it is extremely doubtful that any appreciable number of masters attempted any direct hastening of slave increase. The whole tone of the community was hostile to such a practice. Masters were in fact glad enough to leave the slaves to their own inclinations in all regards so long as the day's work was not obstructed and good order was undisturbed. They had of course everywhere and at all times an interest in the multiplication of their slaves as well as the increase of their industrial apt.i.tudes. Thus William Lee wrote in 1778 concerning his plantation in Virginia: "I wish particular attention may be paid to rearing young negroes, and taking care of those grown up, that the number may be increased as much as possible; also putting several of the most promising and ingenious lads apprentices to different trades, such as carpenters, coopers, wheelwrights, sawyers, shipwrights, bricklayers, plasterers, shoemakers and blacksmiths; some women should also be taught to weave."[6]

[Footnote 4: _Review of the Slave Question_ (Richmond, 1833), p. 17.]

[Footnote 5: See above, p. 272.]

[Footnote 6: W.C. Ford, ed., _Letters of William Lee_ (Brooklyn, 1891), II, 363, 364.]

But even if masters had stimulated breeding on occasion, that would have created but a partial and one-sided relationship between cost of production and market price. To make the connection complete it would have been requisite for them to check slave breeding when prices were low; and even the abolitionists, it seems, made no a.s.sertion to that effect. No, the market might decline indefinitely without putting an appreciable check upon the birth rate; and the master had virtually no choice but to rear every child in his possession. The cost of production, therefore, could not serve as a nether limit for slave prices at any time.

An upper limit to the price range was normally fixed by the reckoning of a slave's prospective earnings above the cost of his maintenance. The slave may here be likened to a mine operated by a corporation leasing the property. The slave's claim to his maintenance represents the prior claim of the land-owner to his rent; the master's claim to the annual surplus represents the equity of the stockholders in the corporation. But the ore will some day be exhausted and the dividends cease. Purchasers of the stock should accordingly consider amortization and pay only such price as will be covered by the discounted value of the prospective dividends during the life of the mine. The price of the output fluctuates, however, and the rate of any year's earnings can only be conjectured. Precise reckoning is therefore impracticable, and the stock will rise and fall in the market in response to the play of conjectures as to the present value of the total future earnings applicable to dividends. So also a planter entering the slave market might have reckoned in advance the prospect of working life which a slave of given age would have, and the average earnings above maintenance which might be expected from his labor. By discounting each of those annual returns at the prevailing rate of interest to determine their present values, and adding up the resulting sums, he would ascertain the price which his business prospects would justify him in paying. Having bought a slave at such a price, an equally thoroughgoing caution would have led him to take out a life, health and accident insurance policy on the slave; but even then he must personally have borne the risk of the slave's running away. In practice the lives of a few slaves engaged in steamboat operation and other hazardous pursuits were insured,[7] but the total number of policies taken on their lives, except as regards marine insurance in the coasting slave trade, was very small. The planters as a rule carried their own risks, and they generally dispensed with actuarial reckonings in determining their bids for slaves. About 1850 a rule of thumb was current that a prime hand was worth a hundred dollars for every cent in the current price of a pound of cotton. In general, however, the prospective purchaser merely "reckoned" in the Southern sense of conjecturing, at what price he could employ an added slave with probable advantage, and made his bid accordingly.

[Footnote 7: J.C. Nott, in J.B.D. DeBow, ed., _Industrial Resources of the Southern and Western States_ (New Orleans, 1852), II, 299; F.L. Hoffman, in _The South in the Building of the Nation_ (Richmond, Va. [1909]), 638-655.

_DeBow's Review_, X, 241, contains an advertis.e.m.e.nt of a company offering life and accident insurance on slaves.

A typical policy is preserved in the MSS. division of the Library of Congress. It was issued Dec. 31, 1851, by the Louisville agent of the Mutual Benefit Fire and Life Insurance Company of Louisiana, to T.P.

Linthic.u.m of Bairdstown, Ky., insuring for $650 each the lives of Jack, 26 years old and Alexander, 31 years old, for one year, at the rates of 2 and 2-1/2 per cent, respectively, plus one per cent, for permission to employ the slaves on steamboats during the first half of the period. They were employed as waiters. Jack died Nov. 20, and the insurance was duly paid.]

A slave's market price was affected by s.e.x, age, physique, mental quality, industrial training, temper, defects and vices, so far as each of these could be ascertained. The laws of most of the states presumed a seller's warrant of health at the time of sale, unless expressly withheld, and in Louisiana this warrant extended to mental and moral soundness. The period in which the buyer might apply for redress, however, was limited to a few months, and the verdicts of juries were uncertain. On the whole, therefore, if the buyer were unacquainted with the slave's previous career and with his att.i.tude toward the transfer of possession, he necessarily incurred considerable risk in making each purchase. But in general the taking of reasonable precautions would cause the loss through unsuspected vices in one case to be offset by gains through unexpected virtues in another.

The scale and the trend of slave prices are essential features of the regime which most economists have ignored and for which the rest have had too little data. For colonial times the quotations are scant. An historian of the French West Indies, however, has ascertained from the archives that whereas the prices ranged perhaps as low as 200 francs for imported Africans there at the middle of the seventeenth century, they rose to 450 francs by the year 1700 and continued in a strong and steady advance thereafter, except in war times, until the very eve of the French Revolution. Typical prices for prime field hands in San Domingo were 650 francs in 1716, 800 in 1728, 1,160 in 1750, 1,400 in 1755, 1,180 in 1764, 1,600 in 1769, 1,860 in 1772, 1,740 in 1777, and 2,200 francs in 1785.[8]

[Footnote 8: Lucien Peytraud, _L'Esclavage aux Antilles Francaises avant 1789_ (Paris, 1897), pp. 122-127.]

In the British West Indies it is apparent from occasional doc.u.ments that the trend was similar. A memorial from Barbados in 1689, for example, recited that in earlier years the planters had been supplied with Africans at 7 sterling per head, of which forty shillings covered the Guinea cost and 5 paid the freightage; but now since the establishment of the Royal African company, "we buy negroes at the price of an engrossed commodity, the common rate of a good negro on shipboard being twenty pound. And we are forced to scramble for them in so shameful a manner that one of the great burdens of our lives is the going to buy negroes. But we must have them; we cannot be without them."[9] The overthrow of the monopoly, however, brought no relief. In 1766 the price of new negroes in the West Indies ranged at about 26;[10] and in 1788-1790 from 41 to 49. At this time the value of a prime field hand, reared in the islands, was reported to be twice as great as that of an imported African.[11]

[Footnote 9: _Groans of the Plantations_ (1679), p. 5, quoted in W.

Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_ (Cambridge, 1892), II, 278, note.]

[Footnote 10: _Abridgement of the Evidence taken before a Committee of the whole House: The Slave Trade_, no. 2 (London, 1790), p. 37.]

[Footnote 11: "An Old Member of Parliament," _Doubts on the Abolition of the Slave Trade_ (London, 1790), p. 72, quoting Dr. Adair's evidence in the _Privy Council Report_, part 3, Antigua appendix no. II].

In Virginia the rise was proportionate. In 1671 a planter wrote of his purchase of a negro for 26. 10_s_ and said he supposed the price was the highest ever paid in those parts; but a few years afterward a lot of four men brought 30 a head, two women the same rate, and two more women 25 apiece; and before the end of the seventeenth century men were being appraised at 40.[12] An official report from the colony in 1708 noted a great increase of the slave supply in recent years, but observed that the prices had nevertheless risen.[13] In 1754 George Washington paid 52 for a man and nearly as much for a woman; in 1764 he bought a lot at 57 a head; in 1768 he bought two mulattoes at 50 and 61.15_s_ respectively, a negro for 66.10_s_, another at public vendue for 72, and a girl for 49.10_s_.

Finally in 1772 he bought five males, one of whom cost 50, another 65, a third 75, and the remaining two 90 each;[14] and in the same year he was offered 80 for a slave named Will s.h.a.gg whom his overseer described as an incorrigible runaway.[15]

[Footnote 12: P.A. Bruce, _Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century_, II, 88-92.]

[Footnote 13: _North Carolina Colonial Records_, I, 693.]

[Footnote 14: W.C. Ford, _George Washington_ (Paris and New York, 1900), I, 125-127; _Washington as an Employer and Importer of Labor_ (Brooklyn, 1889).]

[Footnote 15: S.M. Hamilton, ed., _Letters to Washington_. IV, 127.]

Scattered items which might be cited from still other colonies make the evidence conclusive that there was a general and substantially continuous rise throughout colonial times. The advances which occurred in the princ.i.p.al British West India islands and in Virginia, indeed, were a consequence of advances elsewhere, for by the middle of the eighteenth century all of these colonies were already pa.s.sing the zenith of their prosperity, whereas South Carolina, Georgia, San Domingo and Brazil, as well as minor new British tropical settlements, were in course of rapid plantation expansion. Prices in the several communities tended of course to be equalized partly by a slender intercolonial slave trade but mainly by the Guineamen's practice of carrying their wares to the highest of the many competing markets.

The war for American independence, bringing hard times, depressed all property values, those of slaves included. But the return of peace brought prompt inflation in response to exaggerated antic.i.p.ations of prosperity to follow. Wade Hampton, for example, wrote to his brother from Jacksonborough in the South Carolina lowlands, January 30, 1782: "All attempts to purchase negroes have been fruitless, owing to the flattering state of our affairs in this quarter."[16] The sequel was sharply disappointing. The indigo industry was virtually dead, and rice prices, like those of tobacco, did not maintain their expected levels. The financial experience was described in 1786 by Henry Pendleton, a judge on the South Carolina bench, in words which doubtless would have been similarly justified in various other states: "No sooner had we recovered and restored the country to peace and order than a rage for running into debt became epidemical.... A happy speculation was almost every man's object and pursuit.... What a load of debt was in a short time contracted in the purchase of British superfluities, and of lands and slaves for which no price was too high if credit for the purchase was to be obtained!... How small a pittance of the produce of the years 1783, '4, '5, altho' amounting to upwards of 400,000 sterling a year on an average, hath been applied toward lessening old burdens!... What then was the consequence? The merchants were driven to the exportation of gold and silver, which so rapidly followed; ... a diminution of the value of the capital as well as the annual produce of estates in consequence of the fallen price; ... the recovery of new debts as well as old in effect suspended, while the numerous bankruptcies which have happened in Europe amongst the merchants trading to America, the reproach of which is cast upon us, have proclaimed to all the trading nations to guard against our laws and policy, and even against our moral principles."[17]

[Footnote 16: MS. among the Gibbes papers In the capitol at Columbia, S.C.]

[Footnote 17: _Charleston Morning Post_, Dec. 13, 1786 quoted in the _American Historical Review_, XIV, 537, 538]

The depression continued with increasing severity into the following decade, when it appears that many of the planters in the Charleston district were saved from ruin only by the wages happily drawn from the Santee Ca.n.a.l Company in payment for the work of their slaves in the ca.n.a.l construction gangs.[18] The conditions and prospects in Virginia at the same time are suggested by a remark of George Washington in 1794 on slave investments: "I shall be happily mistaken if they are not found to be a very troublesome species of property ere many years have pa.s.sed over our heads."[19]

[Footnote 18: Samuel DuBose, "Reminiscences of St. Stephen's Parish," in T.G. Thomas, ed., _History of the Huguenots in South Carolina_ (New York, 1887), pp. 66-68.]

[Footnote 19: New York Public Library _Bulletin_, II, 15. This letter has been quoted at greater length at the beginning of chapter VIII above.]

Prices in this period were so commonly stated in currency of uncertain depreciation that a definite schedule by years may not safely be made. It is clear, however, that the range in 1783 was little lower than it had been on the eve of the war, while in 1795 it was hardly more than half as high.

For the first time in American history, in a period of peace, there was a heavy and disquieting fall in slave prices. This was an earnest of conditions in the nineteenth century when advances and declines alternated.

From about 1795 onward the stability of the currency and the increasing abundance of authentic data permit the fluctuations of prices to be measured and their causes and effects to be studied with some a.s.surance.

The materials extant comprise occasional travellers' notes, fairly numerous newspaper items, and quite voluminous ma.n.u.script collections of appraisals and bills of sale, all of which require cautious discrimination in their a.n.a.lysis.[20] The appraisals fall mainly into two groups: the valuation of estates in probate, and those for the purpose of public compensation to the owners of slaves legally condemned for capital crimes. The former were oftentimes purely perfunctory, and they are generally serviceable only as aids in ascertaining the ratios of value between slaves of the diverse ages and s.e.xes. The appraisals of criminals, however, since they prescribed actual payments on the basis of the market value each slave would have had if his crime had not been committed, may be a.s.sumed under such laws as Virginia maintained in the premises to be fairly accurate. A file of more than a thousand such appraisals, with vouchers of payment attached, which is preserved among the Virginia archives in the State Library at Richmond, is particularly copious in regard to prices as well as in regard to crimes and punishments.