012 027 5112 # ^ .^ E 453 .N852 Copy 1 AMERICA FOR FREE WORKING MEN! EEAD! HOW SLAVERy INJURES THE FREE WORKING n^ THE SLAVE-HOLDER THB FREE WORKING-MAN'S WORST ENEMY. By CHABLES NORDHOFF. NEW YOEK : HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE. 1865. / r r. H !g> PAKTS OF THIS PAMPHLET HAVE APPEAKED IN THE EDITOKIAL COLUMNS OF THE NEW YOKK "EVENING POST." '0^ hM^ ^-tkUi ^a*-6uL^ ^^<*^/ i^i*«^ tz z^ 7 How tie Slavelioldefs Injure Free Woflingmen, When a slave commits murder in Virginia, or any of the other Slave States, he is hanged, and his owner is paid for him tlie price lie could have sold him for before the crime was com- mitted. He is paid for the slave out of the treasury of the State ; that is to say, the tax-2>ayers jm y the slaveliolder for Ms slave. When a farmer's bull does mischief and is killed, does the State pay the farmer ? Wlien a farmer's horse becomes unman- ageable and is killed, does the State pay for ]iim ^ Not at all. It is only the slave, the peculiar property of tlie rich, tin- whom the tax-payers are taxed. The poor man's horse or cow may be killed without payment to the owner, FREE WORKINGMEN, AS SLAVE-GrARDS, In the Slave States, whether in the city or in the country, a patrol of the white men is kept up at night — for Avhat i To secure the persons and property of free workingmen i jSTot at all ; but to look after the slaves of the rich : to present tlu^ slaves from running away ; to keep them from visiting strange plantations ; to catch them and bring them back, if the}' stray into the woods. " An ordinance ora-anizinc: and establishincf patrols for the police of slaves in the Parish Court of St. Landry, in Louisiana," which lies before us, describes minutely the or- ganization of such patrols. " Every free white male person, between the ages of 16 and 60," is bound to do patrol duty. The parish (county) is to pay for " all books, blanks, papers, laws, ifec, required for the organization of the patrols." Captains of patrols are to see that the enrollment for this duty includes every man ; and anyone who neglects or refuses to serve, " at 4 HOW SLAVERY INJURES THE FREE WORKINGMAN. any hour of the day or night" which may be appointed, shall be fined or imprisoned. Six pages of the pamphlet are then taken up with defining the powers and duties of the patrols towards the slaves. They have no other duty to perforin, as the title, indeed, asserts. They are " patrols for the police of the slaves." They are not to look out for horse-thieves, or to hunt for stolen cattle ; it is made no part of their duty to guard the lives and property of the white workingmen of the county. " Every free white male, between 16 to 60," in the county is required to mount guard over the peculiar property of the few wealthy planters. Now the parish of St. Landry had, in 1860, according to the census, 10,703 whites, and 11,436 slaves. According to the last census there were 3,953,587 slaves, and somewhat less than 400,- 000 slaveholders in the country — an average of ten slaves to each owner. At that rate the slaves in the parish of St, Laudry would be owned by eleven hundred and forty-three of the 10,703 whites (for children and women own slaves as well as men) ; and the ichole free jpopidation of the county was taxed^ in time, labor, and money, to care for the jproj)erty of a little moi'e than a tenth, and those the wealthiest ])art. Do not suppose that the white workingmen of the Slave States have not felt the oppression of this burden. Where they have been permitted, they have complained. Thus, in an address of Mr. Pierpoint, of Virginia, delivered in 1860, he retnafked : " The clerk or mechanic needs no protection of the law ; he is one of the sovereign hody guard to protect and lieep in suh-^ ordination the master's slaves. Yet his income — the labor of his weary hand and aching head, is taxed two per cent, to buy arms and erect armories in which to manufacture the muni- tions of war, with which to equip himself, to defend the master in his right to his slaves^'' An address to the working people of Yirginia, in 1860, called attention to the fact that " if a bull or a steer of one of our far- mers becomes vicious, so as to be a public nuisance, he is or- dered by the law to be killed, and his loss falls upon his owner, and upon him alone ; but if it happens that a slave of one of the Eastern Yirginia capitalists becomes vicious and commits crime, X^f THE FEEE LABOEER AND THE SLAVE. he is hanged or transported, and it is provided hy law that Ms oione?' shall he paid his assessed value out of the State Treasury. ^^ The appropriation, by the Virginia Legislature, in 1856, for patrols, and as pay to slave owners for vicious slaves hanged or transported, amounted to over forty thousand dollars ! At the same time, every laboring man in the State, with an income above $250 per annum, had to pay a heavy income tax, while the slaves of the rich were almost totally exempted from taxa- tion. THE FKEE LABORER AND THE SLAVE. Mr. Lincoln has been at difierent times reproached by the professed abolitionists, who, as eager as he has been cautious, have charged him with being something like a cold friend to freedom. This opinion of him arises from the fact that there is a diiference between their respective points of view. Thev, as philanthropists, have become accustomed to look chiefly at the wrongs suffered by the slave ; and they seek emancipation as a measure of justice to the blacks. Mr. Lincoln, as a statesman, occupies broader and truer ground ; he desires the emancipation of the slaves as a measure of justice to the free white woi'lc^ ingman / he sees that slavery oppresses not merely the slave, but also the free laborer, wherever it is tolerated, and that the destruction of slavery would be the emancipation, not only of tlie slave, but of the whole down-trodden working class. The system of bond-labor is antagonistic to that of free lcd)or, and breeds in the masters a contempt for the workingman, as well as for his vocation. This is perfectly natural, and indeed unavoid- able. The slam-ovmer is a competitor in the slave-marJcet against the free lOorMngman. He lives upon the labor of his slaves, and he regards with dislike the free laborers who come into the market to bid against him and the labor he controls. This fact is notorious in the South. It has long attracted the attention of free white workingmen there, but they have been too weak to resist the powerful slave-holders. In 1860, Eobert C. Tharin, of Alabama, once a law-partner of the notorious William L. Yancey, endeavored to setup a newspaper called the JSi'on-Slaveholder, to urge the passage of a law forbid- ding the employment of slaves except in agricultural labor and as 6 HOW SLAVEEY INJURES THE FEEE WOKKINGMAN. servants. He thus soiiglit to protect the free mechanics, and secure them employment. For this Mr. Tharin was summarily driven from the State. Mr. Tharin, exposing tlie sopistries of William L. Yancey, writes : " He had seen the rich man's negro ' come in contact' with the poor white blacksmith, the poor white bricklayer, carpenter, wheelright, and agriculturist. He had seen the ])re;ference in- variably given to the rich viands negro in all such pursuits and trades ; like me, he had heard the com2)laints of the poor wliite mechanic of the South against this very negro equality the rich planters were rapidly bringing about. These things he had heard and seen in Charleston, l^ew Orleans, Mobile, Montgomery, and Wetumpka. " Have not the x^lanters/c^r years condemned every mechanic in the South to negro equality f exclaims Mr. Tharin. "I never envied the planters of Wetumpka, or, indeed, of any part of the South. My dislike to them arose from their contemptible meanness, their utter disregard of decency, their supercilious arrogance, and their daily usurpations of powers and privileges at variance with my riglits, and the rights of my class." FREE WOEKINGMEN MUST GIVE WAY TO SLAVES. In 1853 the free mechanics of Concord, Cabarras county, North Carolina, held a meeting, at which they complained that the ''■ wealthy owners of slave mechanics were in the habit of under- bidding them in contracts^'' The free mechanic who led in this movement was driven from the town. A Long Island carpenter removed to a southern town ; he was asked for an estimate for certain work in his trade. The person who proposed to have it done demurred at the price, and remarked that he cotdd do better to buy a caiyenter, let him do the Work and sell him again when it was done. The free carpenter, being a man of sense, packed up his tools and returned to l^cw York, where a rich man cannot buy a carpenter and sell him again. Olmsted relates, in his " Texas Journey," tliat at Austin, the capital of the state, the German mechanics complained that when the labor for building the state capital was given out, many of them came with offcrB, but were underbid by the 2T9 FEEE WORKINGMEN MUST GIVE WAT TO SLAVES. owners of slave-'ineohmiios. But whea the free mechanics had left town, in search of employment elsewhere, the slave owners threw up their contracts, and, having no longer any opposition, obtained new contracts at advanced prices. In the iron mines and furnaces near the Cumberland river, in Tennessee, before the war, several thousand men found em^ ployment — but almost without an exception they were slaves. One company had a capital of $700,000 — and owned seven hun- dred slaves. Of eourse an equal number of free loorhnen were robbed of employment, and had either to starve, or emigrate to tJie Free States, as so many thousands have done. THE " FAT " FOK THE SLAVE, AKD THE " LEAN " FOR THE FKEE W()RKINGMAX. Printers call that work which is most quickly and easily done, and which is the best paid, " fat ; " that which is hard to do aud poorly paid, they call "lean."" ISTow, in all mechanical and other labor performed in the Slave States, the slave constantly gets the best, the easiest — the fat • the free mechanic or laborer, if he is employed at all, gets only the leavings of the slave, the lea7i. This comes about, because the slave-owner is a wealthy and influential man, who is able to select the lightest tasks for his slave ; by this the slave-owner of course makes the greatest profit, and incurs the least expense. But the free white work- inofman must stand aside, or take that task which the slave-owner will not have. In Yirginia, a wealthy slave-owner told Olmsted that he used Ilussey's reaper rather than McCormick's, because " it was more readily repaired by the slave-blachsmith on the farm." Another planter in Virginia employed a gang of Irishmen in draining some land. Bat mark the reasons he gave for this use of free labor. " It's dangerous work" (unwholesome), said he ; " and a negro's life is too valuable to he risked at it. If a negro dies, it is a considerable loss, you know." This slaveholder did not care how many Irishmen died in his malarious ditches. So, too, on the southwestern steamboats, slaves are employed to do the lightest and least dangerous labor / but Irish and German free worhingmen are employed to perform the exhausting and dan- 8 now SLAVEKY I2irJURES THE FREE WOEKINGMAN. gerous ivorh. Thus, on tlie Alabama river, Olmsted observed tliat slaves were sent npon tlie bank to roll down cotton bales, bnt Irislimen w^ere kept below to drag tliem away. The mate of tlie boat said, by way of explanation, " The niggers are worth too much to be risked here ; if the Paddies are Icnocked over- loard, or get their hachs hrdke^ nobody loses anything.'''' Alfred E. Matthews, of Starke county, Ohio, in his " Journal of his Flight" from Mississippi, in 1861, remarks: '■'■ I have seen free white mechanics obliged to stand aside while their families were suffering for the necessaries of life, when slave mechanics, owned ly rich and influential men, coidd get lylenty of worTc ; and I have heard these same white mechanics breathe the most bitter curses against the institution of slavery and the slave aristocracy." In his journal at Columbus, Mississippi, he writes : " Business is very dull. Many of the free white mechanics have nothing to do, and there is a great deal of suffering amongst them. Most of what little work is to be done is given to the slave mechanics. An intelligent carpenter, an acquaintance of one of the persons in the office where I was engaged, came up one day and told his friend that his family were suffering for provisions ; he had no money, and could not get work at anytliing. He assured me this was the case with others of his acquaintance." This was in a town of three thousand five hundred inhabitants. SLAVES AEE TRAINED TO MECHANICAL PUESIJITS. On a rice plantation in South Carolina the planter showed Mr. Olmsted " shops and sheds at which blacksmiths, carpenters, and other mechanics — all slaves — were at work." Of course, this planter emjfloyed no free mechanics. Indeed, the writer of this pamphlet was told by a M^ealthy Alabamian in 1860, that ^7ie ^Z«?^fer5 in his region were determined to discontinue alto- geiher the employment of free mechanics. " On my own place," said this person, " I have now slave carpenters, slave blacksmiths, and slave wheelrights, and thus 7 am indei^endent office me- chanics.'''' These instances, culled from southern life, show the bearing of the slave system upon the free working population. The planters do not need the assistance of the free laboring class ; they despise it, and discourage it. What is the result ? Let ^f/^ SLAVES ARE TRAINED TO MECHANICAL PURSITITS. 9 ^' mudsill" Hammond, Governor of South Carolina, bear wit- ness. In an address before the South Carolina Institute, some years ago, he said : " According to the best calculations which, in the absence of statistic facts, can be made, it is believed that of the three hun- dred thousand wliite inhabitants of South Carolina there are not less than lifty thousand whose industry, such as it is, is not in the present condition of things, and does not promise here- after, such a support as every white person in this country is and feels himself entitled to." In another part of his address he said : " Eighteen or at most nineteen dollars will cover the whole necessary annual cost of a full supply of wholesome and palatable food, purchased in the market," for one person in South Carolina. It would seem, therefore, that so completely had the slave system robbed the free %oorldncjman of the oj^portunity to make an honest liveli- hood, that one-sixth of the free white po^pulation of South Ca- rolina could not earn even the jMtry sum of eighteen dollars per annum ! So completely have the slaveholders monopolized the labor market for their slaves ! The bitter hatred of the " free white" in the South for the negro has been often spoken of. Does any one wonder at it, when he considers that these free men feel the wrongs they puffer, but are too ignorant to trace them to their sources ? They hate the slaves, but if they were somewhat more intelligent they would hate the slaveholders, who are the authors of all their woes. It is because Mr. Lincoln, himself a southern man, and a son of one of the oppressed and expatriated free workingmen of the South, understands this, that he will not suffer the re-esta- blishment of the iniquitous class of monopolists of labor, whose hatred for free workingmen has dragged the country into a civil war. He aims, not so much to free the slave, as to free the loorhingmen. He sees, as a stateman, that a system which degrades and discourages free labor, and whose supporters hate and refuse to employ free workingmen, is ruinous to the prosperity of the country, and is necessarily the parent of constant dissensions, the fruitful source of hatreds, jealousies and heart-burnings. He knows as a stateman, that the security of free government rests upon the virtue, intelligence and prosperity of the working class ; 2 10 HOW SLAVERY INJURES THE FREE WORKINGMAN. and that if we desire the perpetuity of our Union and liberties, ^ve must sweep out of tlie way a system whose constant and ne- cessary tendency is to impoverish and debase the free workingman. WllM FliEE ANOKKIXGMEX HATE THE SLAVES. Tliey hate the slaves because slavery oppresses them. Turn where he will, the southern free meohanio and laborer Jinds the negro slave preferred lefore him. The planter has his slave blacksmith, his slave carpenter, his slave wheelwright, his slave engineer, if he needs one. It is now as it was in Marion's day, who said : " The people of Carolina form two classes— the rich and the poor. The poor are generally very poor, because, not heing necessary to the rich^ who have slaves to do all their woi'l\ they get no employment from them." The slaveholders have the political power ; they look only to their own interests ; and e\en Adhere they have established ma- nufactures, they have given work l)y preference to slaves over fi-ee men and women. " We are heginmng to laanvfacture with slaves'' wrote Governor Hammond of South Carolina, in 1845, to Thonuis Clarkson. A writer in the Augusta Constitutionalist. (pioted approvingly by De Bow, in 1852, said, " for manufectur- ino' in the hot and lower latitudes, slaves are peculiarly quahfied, ami the time is approching when they will le sought as the ope- rative most to le 2)1'^^' ''red and depended on. I could name factories in South Carolina, Alabama and Georgia, where the success of hlach labor has been encouraging." At the Saluda Factory, near Columbia, South Carolina, so long ago as 1851, one hundred and twenty-eight operatives were employed— a/^ slaves. " Slaves not sufficiently strong to work in the cotton lields can attend to the looms and spindles," wrote the superin- tendent of this mill ; and he showed liow these slaves under- worked the free whites : '^ Averaf'-e cost of a slave operative, per annum 8T5 " kvcrage cost of a white operative, at least 106 " Difference $31 " Or over thirty per cent, saved in the labor alone by using only the weakly and deformed slaves." ^f/ WHY FREE WORKINGMEN HATE THE SLAVES, H Free labor is killed hy such unnatural comrpetition . A writer upon manufactures in the South, in 1852, compared the wages paid to operatives in Tennessee with those in Lowell ; " In Lowell, labor is paid the fair compensation of eighty cents per day for men, and two dollars per week for women, while in Tennessee the average compensation for labor does not exceed fifty cents per day for men, and one dollar and twenty-five cents per M'eek for women." Another writer said : " A female operative in the jSTew England cotton factories receives from ten to twelve dollars per month; tliis is more than a female slave generally hires for in the southwest P This was twelve years ago. But he goes on to explain how the slaveholder^ monopolizing the labor of his slaves, has the power to control the labor market and underlid the free worhman under any circuinstances. " It matters notliing to him (the slaveholder) how low others can produce the article ; he can produce it lower still, so long as it is the best use he can make of his labor, and so long as that labor is worth keeping." That is to say, a free white mechanic is at the mercy of his neighbor, the capitalist, in a slave state, because, if the ca- pitalist does not like his price, he can " go and huy a carpenter and sell him again when the work is cloned Thus, while it is true that in the long run and on the average free labor is always cheaper than slave labor, the capitalist who monopolizes the slave labor is able to drive out or starve out the free laborer^ over whom he and his slaves have an unfair advantage. The slaveholders used to boast that there were no " strikes" in the South— here we see the reason. The writer we have quoted adds : " It is a fact that slaves learn hlacksmithing , carpentering, hoot and shoemahing, and in fact cdl handicraft trades, with as much facility as white men y and. 21r. Deering of Georgia, has employed slaves in his cotton factory for many years vnth de- cided success.^^ PKEE WORKINGMEN ARE " PESTS TO SOCIETY.'' Olmstead, when he asked in the slave states why the white laboring men were not employed, was told that they were not hired " because you cannot drive- them as you do a slave." The aristocratic slave-owner refuses to employ a ujorhnan whom he 12 now SLAVEEY INJURES THE FEEE WORKINGMAN. cannot flog and curse. On a rice plantation in Soiitli Carolina he found a slave engineer^ for whose education in that profession his owner had paid five hundred dollars to a steam-engine builder. This slave machinist, an able man, lived hetter than any laboring free white man in the district. His master, who also owned slave blacksmiths, carpenters, and other mechanics, did not employ a single freeman.^ except an overseer. But an estate of the same size and value in a free state would have given employment to twenty- five or thirty white mechanics of different trades, not to speak of a large number of free laborers. By the census of 1850 it appears that the average wages of the female operatives in the Georgia cotton factories were $7 39 per per month ; in Massachusetts it was $11 57 per month. Kew England factory girls were induced by the special ofler of high wages to go to Georgia to work in newly-established cotton factories, but they found the position so unpleasant, owing to the general degradation of the laboring class, they were very soon forced to return. ISTor shall we wonder at this when we read the following sentiment, which appeared in the Charleston Standard, in 1855 : " JL large portion of the mechanical force that migrate to the South are a curse instead of a blessing ; they are generally a worthless, unprinciijled class, enemies to our peculiar institution (slavery), and formidable barriers to the success of our native mechanics (slaves). Not so, however, with another class who migrate southward — we mean that class known as merchants ; they are generally intelligent and trustworthy, and they seldom fail to discover their true interests. They become slaveholders and landed proprietors ; and in ninety-nine cases out of a hun- dred they are better qualified to become constituents of our institution than a certain class of our native born, who from want of capacity are perfect drones in society, continually carp- ing about slave comp>etition. * * * The mechanics, the most of them, are yests to society, dangerous among the slave popula- tion, and ever ready to form combinations against the interests of the slaveholder.-' Is it strange that the ignorant, neglected, despised free white workingman of the slave states hates the slave ? He feels that the slave injures him in every possible way ; the slave robs him FKEE WOKKINGMEN ARE " PESTS TO SOCIETY." 13 of work ; tlie slave deprives him of "bread and clothing for his children ; the slave gets the easiest tasks, the free laborer the hardest and most dangerous ; the slave steps before him when- ever he looks for a job, and has the preference everywhere, because he is the tool of a capitalist lohose influence and wealth enable him to grasp — for his own benefit — whatever might be of advantage to the free mechanic or laborer. The capitalist, in a slave state, is a man with a hundred black arms, all bare, all eagerly seeking work, all ready to work for less than a free man can support his family decently upon. The capitalist is a hundred-armed workman, with enough social influence to command work for all his hundred arms, to the exclusion of the honest free mechanic and laborer. The slave, in the hands of this capitalist, is the most dangerous enemy the free workman can have. Suppose a job of work for twenty mechanics is to be given out in a southern town— twenty free men offer themselves— but a slave-owner comes, with the prestige of great wealth, with liis social influence and his p»olitical power, and he gets the preference for liis twenty slaves, the profits of whose labor go to mciTce him ricJier^ lahile Ids free neighbors grow poorer. It is not strange that the southern free working- men resent this monstrous wrong — but it is lamentable that they make the error of hating the tools with which the wrong is done, and not those who use these helpless tools, and the iniquitous system which permits it. It is as though a martyr should abhor only the thumb-screws which torture him, but regard kindlj^ the executioner who applies them ; it is as though a western traveller should complain of the scalping knife, but love the Indian savage who uses it. It is the slave-holder who wrongs the free workingman. It is the slave system which oppresses him. Make the slave free and he is no longer your fatal competitor ; take the slaves away from the capitalist, and he has no longer the power to rob you of work and bread. Free the negroes, and you redeem the free white working-class from the domination of the selfish capitalists, and make tlie blacks themselves harmless to you. It is only while they are slaves that the negroes injure the white working men. 14 HOW SLAVERY INJTJEES THE FEEE WORKINGMAN. HOW FREE WOEKIXGMEN ARE OVERTAXED IN SLAVE STATES. We have shown how the slave-labor system robs the free workingman, the free mechanic and laborer, of employment and bread, and thus keeps him poor and helpless — or drives him into the free states. But the subjection of free labor in slave states does not stop there. Kot only is the free workingman con- demned by the monopolists of slave labor to idleness and pov- erty, but his children are held in ignorance ; his political rights are cunningly abridged ; the products of his labor are forced to bear an unequal burden of taxation ; and he — the non-slave- holding workingman — is compelled by the laws to mount guard over the slaves of his wealthy neighbor, or else to pay for such a guard. Thus he is injured in every interest, for the benefit of the slaveholder. In the free states of the Union a poor man's vote counts aS much as his wealthy neighbor's, and the millionaire enjoys no special political privileges over the carpenter who builds his house, or tlie blacksmith who shoes his horse. We are accus- tomed to think this a good system, but how is it in tlie slave states? Take Yirginia as an example. There, while in one branch of the Legislature men are represented, in the other money and slaves have also a large representation. So great was this political power of wealth, that before the war ten thoumnd lohite men — slaveholders — in Eastern Fir- glnia had as much powder — as many votes — in the Senate, as forty thousand white men — non-slavebolders — of Western Vir- ginia. How did the slaveholders, tlie aristocrats of Eastern Virginia, use this power ? They exempted a great yart of their peculiar property from taxation^ and laid the burden of taxes upon the free w^orkingmen of the state. They enacted a law by which all slaves under twelve years of age were exempted from taxation altogether — hut they taxed the calves, the colts, the lamhs^ of the farmers. They limited the tax upon slaves over twelve years to one dollar and twenty cents per head ; but they taxed a trader with a capital of only six hundred dollars, sixty dollars for his first year's license, and a heavy duty on his sales after- wards. The slave property of Yirginia, before the war, paid about xfS HOW FEEE WOEKINGMEN ARE OVERTAXED IN SLAVE STATES. 15 $300,000 per annum taxes — but if it had teen taxed as other property was, according to value, it woidd have contrihuted one million three hundred thousand dollars per annum ! Tlie odd million was raised by extra taxes on tlie earnings of the free laborers. Not only tins — the products of slave labor were also exempted from taxation. Tobacco, corn, wheat and oats were not taxed ; but the product of free labor, consisting of cattle, hogs, sheep, &c., was heavily taxed ; as were also the earnings of free labor'ing men, who were obliged to pay an income tax. It was asserted by Mr. Peirpoint, in 1860, that " upwards of two hun- dred and thirty million dollars of the Virginia slaveholders' capital in slaves was exempted from taxation^ But while the slave owner was so protected, see how it fared with the free laborer? Ev^ery free mechanic, artisan, or laborer of whatever kind, who was in the employment of any person, was obliged, by a special law, to pay an income tax of one-half of one per cent, if his income did not exceed $250 : of one per cent, if his income was under $500 ; of one and a half per cent, if it was under §1,000, and two per cent, if he earned over $1,000. Our workingmen think the United States income tax onerous ; but that, at least, exempts the man who earns less than $600, The Virginia slaveholders exempted only themselves ! They taxed the poor, but left the the rich to pay nothing. ENORMOUS AND UNEQUAL TAXA.TION OF FREE WOEKINGMEN IN VIRGINIA. See how this act worked. In Wheeling there were employed in 1859 about 1,500 free men in the iron mills; these earned an average of $400 per annum each. On this they had to pay one per cent. — four dollars — making $6,000 per annum ; besides eighty cents poll tax, $1,200 more; total $7,200, drawn from 1,500 free laboring men. Now this tax was equal to that levied on six thousand slaves. That is to say, each free workman was taxed four times as heavily as a slave. But take note of this : the owner of the slave was not only very lightly taxed for his property in him ; he paid no income tax at all. That is to say, the net income from the labor of six thousand 16 now SLAVEEY IXJUEES THE FREE WORKINGMAJT. slaves might be reckoned in those times at |900,00Grper annum. On this the masters, the capitalists, who received this sum, paid not a cent of income-tax ! Or, take another example : a foreman in a factory earned $1,100 per annum; he had to pay §22 80 income tax to the State. But a slave-owning capitalist paid no more than that as his tax on nineteen slaves ; he trained them to mechanical work — hired them out in such manner that they threw nineteen free mechanics out of employment — and on the proceeds of the labor of these nineteen slaves, amounting to $5,T00 per annuui, he was taxed not a single^cent ! " There are many poor men in this State," said Mr. Pierpoint in 1860, " getting 75, 80, 90, and 100 cents per day, with iamilies to support, who all have to pay, in addition to the income tax, for everything they own on the face of the earth, forty cents on a hundred dollars, while the slaveholder only pays 10 cents on the hundred dollars' worth of slaves ! " " The income tax levied by the slaveholders upon the small iucomes of free mechanics," Mr. Pierpoint said, " will eat out the very vitals of all the manufacturing energy of the State." ]^or were the free mechanics the only suiferers. " The farmer in Western Virginia (not a slaveholder) who 12 years ago paid his tax with 15 dollars, now pays $60, with little increase in actual vahie." Only the slaveholders were exempted! Thus was slave labor encouraged and free labor made penal in the South. Thus, to use Marion's words, the poor became poorer and the rich richer. Thus free mechanics were driven out of the slave states, taxed out, starved out, until, in 1859, Charleston, one of the chief seaports of the South, had not left so much as a single ship-carpenter. Thus was brought about the unhappy condition of the free workingmen, described by Mr. Tarver, in " DeBow's Industrial Resources of the South and Southwest." " The acquisition of a respectable position in the scale of wealth appears so difficult that thej' decline the hopeless pursuit, and many of them settle down into passive idleness, and become the almost passive subjects of all its consequences. An evident deterioration is taking place in this part of the population ; the younger portion of it being less educated, less industrious, and in every point of view less respectable than their ancestors." HOW SLAVES OUT-VOTE FREE WORKINGMEN. 17 HOW SLAVES OUT-VOTE FREE WORKINGMEN. These are tlie effects of the slave labor system upon the unfortunate free laborers who are subject to its influence. Bear in mind that it is not only in Virginia that the free mechanic and laborer is thus wronged, In Louisiana, in South Carolina, in most ot the slave states, slave property is represented and favored in some special manner. In Louisiana the representa^ tion, under the old system, was apportioned according to the whole population — free and slave. Thereby it happened that the thousands of free laborers of Xew Orleans were placed at the mercy of a few enormously wealthy slave-owning capitalists in the sparsely settled river parishes ; and a thousand votes of free mechanics had not so much power in the Legislature as two hundred and fifty jilanters' votes, whose slaves filled ujp a legis- lative district. South Carolina has always been called the model slave state. Her system was and is the admiration of the slaveholding class. There the free laborer was entirely debarred from influence, totally unrepresented. He could v^ote — but not for one of his own class ; only a slave oioner could sei've in the Legislature y only a slave oioner could he governor y and the Legislature, com- posed exclusively of slave owners, appointed the judges, the magistrates, the senators, the electors for President. Xot only this — the Legislature set apart the state CongreS' clonal districts ; and it managed this in such manner that the slaveholding interest was alone represented in Congress. The lower part of the State, where the slaves were most dense, sent four out of the seven representatives to Congress. In the legis- lative apportionment the free workingmen of the State were still more outraged. Five-sixths of the white population, residing in those counties where there were but few slaves, had only seventy- eight out of one hundred and twenty-two representatives in the Legislature — a little more than one-half. The Pendleton district, with over twenty- six thousand white inhabitants, but few slaves, sent but seven members ; the parishes of St. Philip and St. Michael, with less than nineteen thousand whites, but a heavy slave population, sent eighteen. Now take notice of the results of this system upon the free 3 18 JIONV SLAVERY INJURES THE FREE WORKIXGMAN. workinginen. Governor Seabrook, of South Carolina, said, in a message a few years ago : " Education lias been provided by the Legislature hut for one class of the citizens of the State, which is the icealthy class. For the middle and poorer classes of society it has done nothing, since no organized system has been adopted for that purpose. '^ "" '^ '"■ '^ Ten years ago twenty thousand adults, besides children, were unable to read or write, in South Carolina. Has our free school system dispelled any of this ignorance? Are there not reasonable fears to be entertained that the number has increased since that period i " In the Charleston Standard, in Xo\'ember, 1855, was advanced by eminent South Carolinians the atrocious doctrine that the State should educate only its capitalists and the officers and overseers wlio, under the order of the capitalists, should com- mand and direct the laborers. Chaiwellor Harper, one of the foremost men of the State, said, in a public address printed by De Bow, and received with general approval : '" AVould you do a benetit to the horse, or the ox, by giving him a cultivated understanding or tine feelings ? So far as the mere laborer has the pride, the l^nowledge, and the aspiration of a free man, he is unfitted for his situation, and must doubly feel its infelicity.'' And what was the eifect of this system upon the free work- ingnien of the State? Let Governor Hammond, one of its chief citizens, reply. Fifty thousand, he said, a sixth of the white population of the State, icere imahle to earn their living. He added : " Most of them now follow agricultural pursuits, in feeble but injurious conijpetition untli slave labor^ And another writer, Avhose essay on cotton and cotton manufactures at the South is printed by De Bow, remarks that " a degree and extent of poverty and destitution exist in the Southern States among a certain class of people, almost unknown in the manufacturing districts of the Kortli. " '" * Boys and girls by thousands, destitute both of emplo3Mnent and the means of education, grow up to ignorance and poverty, and too many of them to vice and crime." Such are some — but not all — the disabilities imder which the zrs- FEEE WORKINGMEN FLY FROM THE SLAVE STATES. 19 free workingman labors, in a State where the slave-labor system prevails. Deprived of employment, left without education, misrepresented in the legislative halls by men whose interests are opposed to his, and before whom he is powerless, the free laborer grows poorer as his wealthy neighbor grows richer ; and looking at these things we cease to Avonder at the persistent emi- gration from the eastern slave states, westward, of which Mr, Tarver said, speaking of South Carolina, " That necessity must be strong and urgent wliicli induces thirty per cent, of the pop n- lotion of a State, in the short space of ten years, to hreah all the social and individual ties ichich bind man to the place of his hirth, and seek their fortunes in other lands?^ FREE WORKIXGMEN FLY FROM THE SLAVE SJATKS. The slave states are the most sparsely populated of the Fnion : their soil is rich, their climate kindly, they abound in mineral wealth ; everything there favors the workingman — yet the work- ingmen of the free states refuse to go there ; and a co/ista?it and large stream of emigration has set for years, from the slave states into the free states. The free workingmen of the slave states have fled from the oppression and l)light of the slave in- stitution, to the part of the Union where all labor is free and paid. If we take tlie census report of 1S50, we And that the slave states had sent nearly six times as many of their population inta;v" ^j>«5'^w in several counties of our state. In 1825 Madison county cast about three thousand votes ; now she can- not cast more than two thousand three hundred. In travelling that country one will discover numerous farm-houses, once the abode of industrious and intelligent freemen, now occupied hy slaves, or tenantless, deserted, and dilapidated. He will see the moss growing on the mouldering walls of once thrifty villages, and will find ' one only master grasps the whole domain,' that once furnished happy homes for a dozen white families." Thus southern men, themselves slaveholders, bear witness to the causes which lead to the great and constant migration of the most vpJuable class of citizens from the slave to the free states. The agriculturist and the meclianic alike, the blacksmith, tiie carpenter, the farmer, all are " pushed off," to use the expressive phrase of Mr. Clay, to make way for the masters and their slaves. SLAVERY SnrxS THE SOUTH AGAINST GERMANS AND IRISHMEN^. If a considerable part of the white workingm en of the slave states have migrated to the free states, it is equally true that of the thousands of German, Irish and other workingmen who have, with their families, sought our shores, the southern states have received but an insignificant fraction. To the industry and thrift of this part of our population a large share of our prosperity and wealth is owing ; without tlie help of their strong arms, the free states, though thriving and populous, and receiving increase from the South, must have advanced much more slowly than they liave. This fact has been generally re- cognized amongst us. Indeed, m the western states special inducements have been held out to immigrants, so strongly have the people there felt the need of their labor and the advantage of their presence. Consider, then, what has been the loss of the South, which has utterly failed to attract this class, while at the same time it was drained to a considerable extent of its own free working class. If we compare free states with slave states, we find that while BJLAVEEY SHUTS OUT Gi;EMANS AND lEISHMEN. 23 South Carolina had in 1860 but 9,986 foreign born citizens. Massachusetts had 260,114 ; Virginia had but 35,058 foreigners, but Pennsyslania, her neighbor, had 430,505 ; Georgia, the em- pire state of the South, had but 11,671, but Kew York had 998,640 ; Mississippi had only 8,558, but Illinois had 324,643, Tennessee had 21,226, and Kentucky 59,T99 ; but Ohio had 328,254, and Indiana 118,184. Little Ehode Island, with an insignificant territory and a dense population of 133 to the square mile, had attracted 37,394 foreign emigrants ; but jSTorth Carolina, with a milder and more varied climate, a fertile soil, ready access by sea, and the advantage of a profitable fishery and several other special pursuits, not to speak of an immensely greater territory, liad been able to attract to her borders but 3,299 foreign emigrants. N'or must we fail to notice that in tliose states where slavery languished or had but a slender hold, emigrants at once increased in numbers. Maryland had 77,536, nearly seven times as many as Georgia ; Delaware had 9,165, nearly three times as many as Korth Carolina; and Missouri had 160,541, as many within fif- teen thousand as all the slave states east of the Mississippi, ex- cept Maryland and Delaware. That is to say, Missouri, which was in the popular balief certain to become a free state before many years, was able to attract to her soil nearly as many emi- grants as Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North and South Carolina and Virginia together ! Still, slavery told against Missouri when compared with the free states. With a milder climate, immensely greater mineral resources and a nearer and cheaper access to great markets, Missouri had attracted but 13.59 per cent, of foreigners, while Iowa had 15.71 per cent., Minnesota 33.78 per cent., and Wisconsin 35.69 per cent. The census report shows that of the foreign born population the free states have received over eighty-six and one-half per cent., and the slave states less than fourteen. It shows the States which have received the smallest percentage of this accre- tion to be North Carolina, Arkansas, Mississippi, Georgia, and South Carolina — all slave states. And it shows also the singu- lar fact, that while eight foreign emigrants have settled in the free states to one in the slave states, the number of slaves — if we add the insignificant number of free colored — gives just one to every eight of our population. 24 now SLAYEEY INJURES THE FEEE WOEKINGMAN. FKEE WORKINGMEN KEPT OUT OF THE FINEST PART OF THE UNION. Is it no matter to workingmen that they are thus driven out anclhej)t out of the largest, most fertile, and jpleasantest jpart of the Union by the slave-labor system, wliieli there robs them of work, and attacks tlieir rights % In the mild climate of the bor- der slave states, the seasons are longer, the productions more varied ; trades which can be pursued in the lN"orth during only eight or nine months, may be carried on there all the year round ; food is or ought to be cheaper ; the workingman and his family need fewer and less costly clothes ; in many ways the conditions of life are easier, for the mechanic and laborer as well as the farmer, than in the colder Xorth. But that great region the, slavemasters closed against the free loorhing men, and preserved for themselves and their slaves. The climate is not too hot in any of those states for white men and women to labor in the fields. Governor Hammond, of South Carolina, said : " The steady heat of our summers is not so prostrating as the short but sudden and frequent heats of northern summers.'' White men work on the levee in JSTew Orleans in midsummer, and have the severest labor put upon them at that. He who writes this has rolled cotton and sugar upon tlie levee of Xew Orl^eans in the month of July, and screwed cotton in Mobile Bay in August. Dr. Cart- wright, the great apostle of slavery, rightly remarked : " Here in New Orleans the large part of the drudgery — loorli, requir- ing exposure to the sun, as railroad snaking, street paving, dray driving, ditching, and huilding is performed hj white peopled This severe labor was put upon the free white working- men ; the slave-owners reserved the light tasks for their slaves. In Alabama, by the census of 1850, sixty-seven thousand, in Mississippi, fifty-five thousand, in Texas forty-seven thousand white men, non-slaveholders, labored in the fields, and took no hurt. Cotton was cultivated in Texas, before the war, with perfect success, by white men ; the Germans managed even to raise more pounds to the acre, pick it cleaner, and to get a higher price for it, than the neighboring planters. Olmsted mentions an American in Texas who would not employ slave labor, and who, with white men as his help, " produced more bales to the hand than any planter around him." ^f^ THE SOUTHEEN CLIMATE HEALTHFUL. ^5 Tlie mortality reports ot the census show that the southern states are not peculiarly unhealthful. In Alabama, the deaths, per cent., were less than in Connecticut ; in Georgia they are 1.23 per cent., in 'New York, 1.22 ; in South Carolina they are 1.44 percent., in Massachusetts, 1.Y6, which is precisely the same as in Louisiana, notoriously, till General Butler cleaned Kew Orleans and drove out the yellow fever, the most sickly state in the South. Nothing^ therefore^ has heyt free loorkingmen out of thete states — nearer to the great markets of tlie vjorld^ having more dbunclant mineral luealth, and in every way more favorably sit- uated than the cold Northeast and the far away Northwest — except the fatal competition of the slaveowners. To avoid that, millions of workingmen, native and foreign born, have removed to the nortlnvest, until at last the tide of emigration has even trenched upon the inhospitable desert, aud has spread beyond the extreme limits of arable land, and faf beyond the profitable reach of markets. The Xorthwestern farmer has burned his corn because he could not afford to send it to the distant sea- board— ?i'«