Turning to a different theme, Cairnes announced that slave labor, since it
had never been and never could be employed with success in manufacturing or
commercial pursuits, must find its whole use in agriculture; and even there
it required large capital, at the same time that the unthrifty habits
inculcated in the masters kept them from accumulating funds. The
consequence was that slaveholding society must necessarily be and remain
heavily in debt. The imperative confinement of slave labor to the most
fertile soils, furthermore, prevented the community from utilizing any
areas of inferior quality; for slaveholding society is so exclusive that it
either expels free labor from its vicinity or deprives it of all industrial
vigor. It is true that some five millions of whites in the South have no
slaves; but these "are now said to exist in this manner in a condition
little removed from savage life, eking out a wretched subsistence by
hunting, by fishing, by hiring themselves for occasional jobs, by plunder."
These "mean whites ... are the natural growth of the slave system; ...
regular industry is only known to them as the vocation of slaves, and it is
the one fate which above all others they desire to avoid.
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