wance for the disadvantage of having the
larger portion of the capital of a State locked up in a tool which would
do more and better work if recognized as a man and representing no
invested capital. How much productive industry would there be in New
England, if every laborer or mechanic cost his employer $800 to $1500
before he could be set to work, and if each one who undertook to labor
upon his own account, and was not so purchased, were stigmatized and
degraded and termed 'mean white trash?'

It will again be objected that the theory of the cotton planter is to
raise all the food and make all the clothing on the plantation. The
cultivation of cotton in the best manner is described by Southern
writers as a process of _gardening_. Now what would be thought of a
market gardener at the North who should keep a large extra force for the
purpose of spinning yarn on a frame of six to ten spindles, and weaving
it up on a rude hand loom? Would this not be protection to home industry
in its most absurd extreme? But this is the plantation system.

The correctness of the estimate of cost can be tested in some degree by
the rates at which able-bodied slaves are hired out. Many lists can be
found in Southern papers; the latest found by the writer is in De Bow's
_Review_ of 1860.

A list of fourteen slaves, comprising 'a blacksmith, his wife, eight
field hands, a lame negro, an old man, an old woman and a young woman,'
were hired out for the year 1860, in Claiborne Parish, La., at an
average of $289 each, the highest being $430 for the blacksmith, and
$171 for 'Juda, old woman.'

The Southern States have thus far retained almost a monopoly of the
cotton trade of the civilized world by promptly furnishing a fair supply
of cotton of the best quality, and at prices which defied competition
from the only region from which it was to be feared, viz., India. This
monopoly has been retained, notwithstanding the steadily increasing
demand and higher prices of the last few years.

Improvements in machinery have enabled manufacturers to pay full wages
to their operatives, both in this country and in England, and to pay
higher prices for their cotton than they did a few years since, without
materially enhancing the cost of their goods, the larger product of
cloth from a less number of hands and the saving of waste offsetting the
higher price of cotton; but it is not probable that the cost of labor
upon cotton goods can be hereafter materia