The Slave Trade, Domestic And Foreign Part 20

Mr. McCulloch insists that agriculture is less profitable than manufactures and trade, and his countrymen insist that all the world outside of England shall be one great farm, leaving to England herself the use of all the various natural agents required in manufactures and commerce, that they may remain poor while she becomes rich. There is in all this a degree of selfishness not to be paralleled, and particularly when we reflect that it involves a necessity on the part of all other nations for abstaining from those scientific pursuits required for the development of the intellect, and which so naturally accompany the habit of a.s.sociation in towns, for the purpose of converting the food, the wool, the hides, and the timber of the farmer into clothing and furniture for his use. It is the policy of barbarism, and directly opposed to any advance in civilization, as will be fully seen when we examine into its working in reference to any particular trade or country.

The annual average production of cotton is probably seventeen hundred millions of pounds, or less than two pounds per head for the population of the world; and certainly not one-tenth of what would be consumed could they find means to pay for it; and not one-tenth of what would be good for them; and yet it is a drug, selling in India at two and three cents per pound, and commanding here at this moment, notwithstanding the abundance of gold, but eight or nine cents, with a certainty that, should we again be favoured, as we were a few years since, with a succession of large crops, it will fall to a lower point than it ever yet has seen: a state of things that could not exist were the people of the world to consume even one-third as much as would be good for them. Why do they not? Why is it that India, with her hundred millions of population, and with her domestic manufacture in a state of ruin, consumes of British cottons to the extent of only sixteen cents per head--or little more, probably, than a couple of yards of cloth? To these questions an answer may perhaps be found upon an examination of the circ.u.mstances which govern the consumption of other commodities; for we may be quite certain that cotton obeys precisely the same laws as sugar and coffee, wine and wheat. Such an examination would result in showing that when a commodity is at once produced at or near the place of growth in the form fitting it for use, the consumption is invariably large; and that when it has to go through many and distant hands before being consumed, it is as invariably small. The consumption of sugar on a plantation is large; but if it were needed that before being consumed it should be sent to Holland to be refined, and then brought back again, we may feel well a.s.sured that there would not be one pound consumed on any given plantation where now there are twenty, or possibly fifty. The consumption of cotton on the plantation is very small indeed, because, before being consumed, 'it has to be dragged through long and muddy roads to the landing, thence carried to New Orleans, thence to Liverpool, and thence to Manchester, after which the cloth has to be returned, the planter receiving one bale for every five he sent away, and giving the labour of cultivating an acre in exchange for fifty, sixty, or eighty pounds of its product. If, now, the people who raised the cotton were free to call to their aid the various natural agents of whose service it is the object of the British system to deprive them, and if, therefore, the work of converting it into cloth were performed on the ground where it was raised, or in its neighbourhood, is it not clear that the consumption would be largely increased? The people who made the cloth would be the consumers of numerous things raised on the plantation that are now wasted, while the facility of converting such things into cloth would be a bounty on raising them; and thus, while five times the quant.i.ty of cotton would be consumed, the real cost--that is, the labour cost--would be less than it is for the smaller quant.i.ty now used. So, too, in India. It may be regarded as doubtful if the quant.i.ty of cotton to day consumed in that country is one-half what it was half a century since--and for the reason that the number of people now interposed between the consumer and the producer is so great. The consumption of wine in France is enormous, whereas here there is scarcely any consumed; and yet the apparent excess of price is not so great as would warrant us in expecting to find so great a difference.

The real cause is not so much to be found in the excess of price, though that is considerable, as in the mode of payment. A peasant in France obtains wine in exchange for much that would be wasted but for the proximity of the wine-vat, and the demand it makes for the labour of himself and others. He raises milk, eggs, and chickens, and he has fruit, cabbages, potatoes, or turnips, commodities that from their bulky or perishable nature cannot be sent to a distance, but can be exchanged at home. The farmer of Ohio cannot exchange his spare labour, or that of his horses, for wine, nor can he pay for it in peaches or strawberries, of which the yield of an acre might produce him hundreds of dollars--nor in potatoes or turnips, of which he can obtain hundreds of bushels; but he must pay in wheat, of which an acre yields him a dozen bushels, one-half of which are eaten up in the process of exchange between him and the wine-grower. Whenever the culture of the grape shall come to be established in that State, and wine shall be made at home, it will be found that the _gallons_ consumed will be almost as numerous as are now the _drops_. Look where we may, we shall find the same result. Wherever the consumer and the producer are brought into close connection with each other, the increase of consumption is wonderful, even where there is no reduction in the nominal price; and wherever they are separated, the diminution of consumption is equally wonderful, even where there is a reduction of the nominal price--and it is so because the facility of exchange diminishes as the distance increases. A man who has even a single hour's labour to spare may exchange it with his neighbour for as much cotton cloth as would make a shirt; but if the labour market is distant, he may, and will, waste daily as much time as would buy him a whole piece of cotton cloth, and may have to go shirtless while cotton is a drug. When the labour market is near, land acquires value and men become rich and free. When it is distant, land is of little value and men continue poor and enslaved.

Before proceeding further, it would be well for the reader to look around his own neighbourhood, and see how many exchanges are even now made that could not be made by people that were separated even ten or twenty miles from each other, and how many conveniences and comforts are enjoyed in exchange for both labour and commodities that would be wasted but for the existence of direct intercourse between the parties--and, then to satisfy himself if the same law which may be deduced from the small facts of a village neighbourhood, will not be found equally applicable to the great ones of larger communities.

Having reflected upon these things, let him next look at the present condition of the cotton trade, and remark the fact that scarcely any of the wool produced is consumed without first travelling thousands of miles, and pa.s.sing through almost hundreds of hands. The places of production are India, Egypt, Brazil, the West Indies, and our Southern States. In the first, the manufacture is in a state of ruin. In the second, third, and fourth, it has never been permitted to have an existence; and in the last it has but recently made an effort to struggle into life, but from month to month we hear of the stoppage or destruction of Southern mills, and the day is apparently now not far distant when we shall have again to say that no portion of the cotton crop can be consumed in the cotton-growing region until after it shall have travelled thousands of miles in quest of hands to convert it into cloth.

Why is this? Why is it that the light and easily transported spindle and loom are not placed in and about the cotton fields? The planters have labour, _that is now wasted_, that would be abundant for the conversion of half their crops, if they could but bring the machinery to the land, instead of taking the produce of the land to the machinery. Once brought there, it would be there for ever; whereas, let them carry the cotton to the spindle as long as they may, the work must still be repeated. Again, why is it that the people of India, to whom the world was so long indebted for all its cotton goods, have not only ceased to supply distant countries, but have actually ceased to spin yarn or make cloth for themselves? Why should they carry raw cotton on the backs of bullocks for hundreds of miles, and then send it by sea for thousands of miles, paying freights, commissions, and charges of all kinds to an amount so greatly exceeding the original price, to part with sixty millions of pounds of raw material, to receive in exchange eight or ten millions of pounds of cloth and yarn?

Is it not clear that the labour of converting the cotton into yarn is not one-quarter as great as was the labour of raising, the cotton itself? Nevertheless, we here see them giving six or eight pounds of cotton for probably a single one of yarn, while labour unemployed abounds throughout India. Further, Brazil raises cotton, and she has spare labour, and yet she sends her cotton to look for the spindle, instead of bringing the spindle to look for the cotton, as she might so readily do. Why does she so? The answer to these questions is to be found in British legislation, founded on the idea that the mode of securing to the people of England the highest prosperity is to deprive all mankind, outside of her own limits, of the power to mine coal, make iron, construct machinery, or use steam, in aid of their efforts to obtain food, clothing, or any other of the necessaries of life.

This system is directly opposed to that advocated by Adam Smith. Not only, said he, is it injurious to other nations, but it must be injurious to yourselves, for it will diminish the productiveness of both labour and capital, and will, at the same time, render you daily more and more dependent upon the operations of other countries, when you should be becoming more independent of them. His warnings were then, as they are now, unheeded; and from his day to the present, England has been engaged in an incessant effort utterly to destroy the manufactures of India, and to _crush every attempt elsewhere to establish any compet.i.tion with her for the purchase of cotton_. The reader will determine for himself if this is not a true picture of the operations of the last seventy years. If it is, let him next determine if the tendency of the system is not that of enslaving the producers of cotton, white, brown, and black, and compelling them to carry all their wool to a single market, in which one set of masters dictates the price at which they _must_ sell the raw material and _must_ buy the manufactured one. Could there be a greater tyranny than this?

To fully understand the working of the system in diminishing the power to consume, let us apply elsewhere the same principle, placing in Rochester, on the Falls of the Genesee, a set of corn-millers who had contrived so effectually to crush all attempts to establish mills in other parts of the Middle States, that no man could eat bread that had not travelled up to that place in its most bulky form, coming back in its most compact one, leaving at the mill all the refuse that might have been applied to the fattening of hogs and cattle--and let us suppose that the diagram on the following page represented the corn trade of that portion of the Union.

Wagons and / Producers of food / Consumers of food in those states > < in="" those="" states="" ochester="" mills="">

Now, suppose all the grain of half a dozen States had to make its way through such a narrow pa.s.sage as is above indicated, is it not clear that the owners of roads, wagons, and mills would be masters of the owners of land? Is it not clear that the larger the crops the higher would be freights, and the larger the charge for the use of mills, the smaller would be the price of a bushel of wheat as compared with that of a bag of meal? Would not the farmers find themselves to be mere slaves to the owners of a small quant.i.ty of mill machinery? That such would be the case, no one can even for a moment doubt--nor is it at all susceptible of doubt that the establishment of such a system would diminish by one-half the consumption of food, throughout those States, and also the power to produce it, for all the refuse would be fed at and near Rochester, and the manure yielded by it would be totally lost to the farmer who raised the food. The value of both labour and land would thus be greatly diminished. Admitting, for a moment, that such a system existed, what would be the remedy? Would it not be found in an effort to break down the monopoly, and thus to establish among the people the power to trade among themselves without paying, toll to the millers of Rochester? a.s.suredly it would; and to that end they would be seen uniting among themselves to induce millers to come and settle among them, precisely as we see men every where uniting to bring schools and colleges to their neighbourhood, well a.s.sured that a small present outlay is soon made up, even in a pecuniary point of view, in being enabled to keep their children at home while being educated, instead of sending them abroad, there to be boarded and lodged, while food is wasted at home that they might eat, and chambers are empty that they might occupy. Education thus obtained costs a parent almost literally nothing, while that for which a child must go to a distance is so costly that few can obtain it. Precisely so is it with food and with cloth. The mere labour of converting grain into flour is as nothing when compared with that required for its transportation hundreds of miles; and the mere labour required for the conversion of cotton into cloth is as nothing compared with the charges attendant upon its transportation from the plantation to Manchester and back again. Commercial centralization looks, however, to compelling the planter to pay treble the cost of conversion, in the wages and profits of the people employed in transporting and exchanging the cotton.

Admitting that the grain and flour trade were thus centralized, what would be the effect of a succession of large crops, or even of a single one? Would not the roads be covered with wagons whenever they were pa.s.sable, and even at times when, they were almost impa.s.sable?

Would not every one be anxious to antic.i.p.ate the apprehended fall of prices by being early in the market? Would not freights be high? Would not the farmer, on his arrival in Rochester, find that every store-house was filled to overflowing? Would not storage be high?

Would he not approach the miller, cap in hand, and would not the latter receive him with his hat on his head? a.s.suredly such would be the case, and he would hear everywhere of the astonishing extent of "the surplus"--of how rapidly production was exceeding consumption--of the length of time his grain must remain on hand before it could be ground--of the low price of flour, &c. &c.;--and the result would be that the more grain carried to market the less would be carried back, and _the less he would be able to consume_; and at last he would arrive at the conclusion that the only effect of large crops granted him by the bounty of Heaven was that of enriching the miller at his expense, by compelling him to allow more toll for the privilege of creeping through the hole provided for him by the miller. He would pray for droughts and freshets--for storms and frosts--as the only means of escape from ruin.

The reader may determine for himself if this is not a fair picture of the cotton trade? Do the planters profit by good crops? a.s.suredly not.

The more they send to market the less they receive for it. Do they profit by improvements in the transportation of their commodity?

Certainly not. With the growth of railroads, cotton has fallen in price, and will not this day command on the plantation near as much, per pound, as it did before the railroad was invented. In India, the cost of transportation from the place of production to England has fallen in the last forty years sevenpence,[142] and yet the grower of cotton obtains for it one-third less than he did before--receiving now little more than two cents, when before he had from three to four. Who profits by the reduction of cost of transportation and conversion?

_The man who keeps the toll-gate through which it pa.s.ses to the world_, and who opens it only gradually, so as to permit the increased quant.i.ty to pa.s.s through slowly, paying largely for the privilege.

That all this is perfectly in accordance with the facts of the ease must be obvious to every reader. The planter becomes rich when crops are short, but then the mill-owner makes but little profit. He is almost ruined when crops are large, but then it is that the mill-owner is enriched--and thus it is that the system produces universal discord, whereas under a natural system there would be as perfect harmony of national, as there is of individual interests.

We may now inquire how this would affect the farmers around Rochester.

The consumption of the Middle States would be largely diminished because of the heavy expense of transporting the wheat to mill and the flour back again, and this would cause a great increase of the surplus for which a market must be elsewhere found. This, of course, would reduce prices, and prevent increase, if it did not produce large diminution in the value of land. The millers would become _millionaires_--great men among their poorer neighbours--and they would purchase large farms to be managed by great farmers, and fine houses surrounded by large pleasure-grounds. Land would become everywhere more and more consolidated, because people who could do so would fly from a country in which such a tyranny existed. The demand for labour would diminish as the smaller properties became absorbed.

Rochester itself would grow, because it would be filled with cheap labour from the country, seeking employment, and because there would be great numbers of wagoners and their horses to be cared for, while porters innumerable would be engaged in carrying wheat in one direction and flour in another. Hotels would grow large, thieves and prost.i.tutes would abound, and morals would decline. From year to year the millers would become greater men, and the farmers and labourers smaller men, and step by step all would find themselves becoming slaves to the caprices of the owners of a little machinery, the whole cost of which would scarcely exceed _the daily loss_ resulting from the existence of the system. By degrees, the vices of the slave would become more and more apparent. Intemperance would grow, and education would diminish, as the people of the surrounding country became more dependent on the millers for food and clothing in exchange for cheap grain and cheaper labour. The smaller towns would everywhere decline, and from day to day the millers would find it more easy so to direct the affairs of the community as to secure a continuance of their monopoly. Local newspapers would pa.s.s away, and in their stead the people throughout the country would be supplied with the Rochester _Times_, which would a.s.sure the farmers that cheap food tended to produce cheaper labour, and the land-owners that if they did not obtain high rents it was their own fault, the defect being in their own bad cultivation--and the more rapid the augmentation of the millers' fortunes, and of the extent of their pleasure-grounds, the greater, they would be a.s.sured, must be the prosperity of the whole people; even although the same paper might find itself obliged to inform its readers that the overgrown capital presented it as

"A strange result of the terrible statistics of society, that there was upon an average one person out of twenty of the inhabitants of the luxurious metropolis every day dest.i.tute of food and employment, and every night without a place for shelter or repose?"--London _Times_.

We have here slavery at home as a consequence of the determination, to subject to slavery people abroad. With each step in the growth of the millers' fortunes, and of the splendour of their residences, land would have become consolidated and production would have diminished, and the whole population would have tended more and more to become a ma.s.s of mere traders, producing nothing themselves, but buying cheaply and selling dearly, and thus deriving their support from the exercise of the power to tax the unfortunate people forced to trade with them; a state of things in the highest degree adverse to moral, intellectual, or political improvement.

The reader may now turn to the extracts from Mr. McCulloch's works already given, (page 240 _ante_,) and compare with them this view of the effects of supposed commercial centralization on this side of the Atlantic. Doing so, he will find it there stated that it is to the consolidation of the land, and to the luxury of the style of living of the great landlords, surrounded, as they, "in most cases" are, by "poor and needy dependants," whose necessities finally compel them to seek in large cities a market for their own labour, and that of their wives and children, that we are to look for an augmentation of "the ma.s.s of wealth and the scale of enjoyment!" Modern British political economy holds no single idea that is in harmony with the real doctrines of Adam Smith, and yet it claims him as its head!

The reader is requested now to remark--

I. That the system of commercial centralization sought to be established by Great Britain is precisely similar to the one here ascribed to the millers of Rochester, with the difference only, that it has for its object to compel all descriptions of raw produce to pa.s.s through England on its way from the consumer and the producer, even when the latter are near neighbours to each other, and England distant many thousand of miles from both.

II. That to carry out that system it was required that all other nations should be prevented from obtaining either the knowledge or the machinery required for enabling them cheaply to mine coal, smelt iron ore, or manufacture machines by aid of which they could command the services of the great natural agents whose value to man is so well described by Mr. McCulloch. (See page 249 _ante_.)

III. That this was at first accomplished by means of prohibitions, and that it is now maintained by the most strenuous efforts for cheapening labour, and thus depriving the labourer at home of the power to determine for whom he will work or what shall be his wages.

IV. That the more perfectly this system can be carried out, the more entirely must all other nations limit themselves, men, women and children, to the labour of the field, and the lower must be the standard of intellect.

V. That while the number of agriculturists in other countries must thus be increased, the power to consume their own products must be diminished, because of the great increase of the charges between the producer and the consumer.

VI. That this, in turn, must be attended with an increase in the quant.i.ty of food and other raw materials thrown on the market of Britain, with great increase in the compet.i.tion between the foreign and domestic producers for the possession of that market, and great diminution of prices.

VII. That this tends necessarily to "discourage agriculture" in Britain, and to prevent the application of labour to the improvement of the land.

VIII. That it likewise tends to the deterioration of the condition of the foreign agriculturist, who is thus deprived of the power to improve his land, or to increase the quant.i.ty of his products.

IX. That the smaller the quant.i.ty of commodities produced, the less must be the power to pay for labour, and the less the compet.i.tion for the purchase of the labourer's services.

X. That with the decline in the demand for labour, the less must be the power of consumption on the part of the labourer, the greater must be the tendency to a glut of foreign and domestic produce, in the general market of the world, and the greater the tendency to a further diminution of the labourer's reward.

XI. That, the greater the quant.i.ty of raw produce seeking to pa.s.s through the market of England, the greater must be the tendency to a decline in the value of English land, and the larger the charges of the owners of the mills, ships, and shops, through which the produce must pa.s.s, and the greater their power of acc.u.mulation, at the cost of both labour and land.

XII. That the less the labour applied to the improvement of the soil, the more must the population of the country be driven from off the land, the greater must be the tendency of the latter toward consolidation, and the greater the tendency toward absenteeism and the subst.i.tution of great farmers and day-labourers for small proprietors, with further decline in production and in the demand for labour.

XIII. That with the reduction of the country population, local places of exchange must pa.s.s away; and that labour and land must decline in power as ships, mills, and their owners become more united and more powerful.

XIV. That the tendency of the whole system is, therefore, toward diminishing the value and the power of land, and toward rendering the labourer a mere slave to the trading community, which obtains from day to day more and more the power to impose taxes at its pleasure, and to centralize in its own hands the direction of the affairs of the nation; to the destruction of local self-government, and to the deterioration of the physical, moral, intellectual, and political condition of the people.

In accordance with these views, an examination of the productive power of the United Kingdom should result in showing that production has not kept pace with population; and that such had been the ease we should be disposed to infer from the increasing demand for cheap labour, and from the decline that has unquestionably taken place in the control of the labourer over his own operations. That the facts are in accordance with this inference the reader may perhaps be disposed to admit after having examined carefully the following figures.

In 1815, now thirty-eight years since, the declared value of the exports of the United Kingdom, of British produce and manufacture, was as follows:--

Of woollen manufactures............... 9,381,426 " cotton " ............... 20,620,000 " silk " ............... 622,118 " linen " ............... 1,777,563 And of other commodities.............. 19,231,684 ---------- Total................................. 51,632,791

In the same year there were imported of

Wool.................................. 13,634,000 lbs.

Cotton................................ 99,306,000 "

Silk.................................. 1,807,000 "

Flax.................................. 41,000,000 "

Grain................................. 267,000 qrs.

Flour................................. 202,000 cwts.

b.u.t.ter................................ 125,000 "

Cheese................................ 106,000 "

If to the raw cotton, wool, silk, and flax that were re-exported in a manufactured state, and to the dyeing materials and other articles required for their manufacture, we now add the whole foreign food, as above shown, we can scarcely make, of foreign commodities re-exported, an amount exceeding twelve, or at most thirteen millions, leaving thirty-eight millions as the value of the British produce exported in that year; and this divided among the people of the United Kingdom would give nearly 2 per head.

In 1851 the exports, were as follows:--

Manufactures of wool.................... 10,314,000 " cotton.................. 30,078,000 " silk.................... 1,329,000 " flax.................... 5,048,000 All other commodities................... 21,723,569 ----------- Total................................... 68,492,569

We see thus that nearly the whole increase that had taken place in the long period of thirty-six years was to be found in four branches of manufacture, the materials of which were wholly drawn from abroad, as is shown in the following statement of imports for that year:--