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Does argument, that the condition of free-labourers is, on the whole,
better than that of slaves, or that simply they are generally better fed,
and more comfortably provided, seem to any one to be
unnecessary? Many of our newspapers, of the largest circulation,
and certainly of great influence among people—probably not very
reflective, but certainly not fools—take the contrary for granted,
whenever it suits their purpose. The Southern newspapers, so far as
I know, do so, without exception. And very few Southern writers, on
any subject whatever, can get through a book, or even a business or
friendly letter, to be sent North, without, in some form or other,
asserting that Northern labourers might well envy the condition of the
slaves. A great many Southern gentlemen—gentlemen whom I
respect much for their moral character, if not for their faculties of
observation—have asserted it so strongly and confidently, as to shut
my mouth, and by assuring me that they had personally observed
the condition of Northern labourers themselves, and really knew that
I was wrong, have for a time half convinced me against my long
experience. I have, since my return, received letters to the same
effect: I have heard the assertion repeated by several travellers, and
even by Northerners, who had resided long in the South: I have
heard it publicly repeated in Tammany Hall, and elsewhere, by
Northern Democrats: I have seen it in European books and journals:
I have, in times past, taken its truth for granted, and repeated it
myself. Such is the effect of the continued iteration of falsehood.
Since my return I have made it a subject of careful and extended
inquiry. I have received reliable and unprejudiced information in the
matter, or have examined personally the food, the wages, and the
habits of the labourers in more than one hundred different farmers’
families, in every Free State (except California), and in Canada. I
have made personal observations and inquiries of the same sort in
Great Britain, Germany, France, and Belgium. In Europe, where
there are large landed estates, which are rented by lordly proprietors
to the peasant farmers, or where land is divided into such small
portions that its owners are unable to make use of the best modern
labour-saving implements, the condition of the labourer, as respects
food, often is as bad as that of the slave often is—never worse than
that sometimes is. But in general, even in France, I do not believe it
is generally or frequently worse; I believe it is, in the large majority of
cases, much better than that of the majority of slaves. And as
respects higher things than the necessities of life—in their
intellectual, moral, and social condition, with some exceptions on
large farms and large estates in England, bad as is that of the mass
of European labourers, the man is a brute or a devil who, with my
information, would prefer that of the American slave. As to our own
labourers, in the Free States, I have already said enough for my
present purpose.
But it is time to speak of the extreme cases, of which so much use
has been made, in the process of destroying the confidence of the
people of the United States in the freedom of trade, as applied to
labour.
In the year 1855, the severest winter ever known occurred at New
York, in conjunction with unprecedentedly high prices of food and
fuel, extraordinary business depression, unparalleled marine
disasters, and the failure of establishments employing large numbers
of men and women. At the same time, there continued to arrive,
daily, from five hundred to one thousand of the poorer class of
European peasantry. Many of these came, expecting to find the
usual demand and the usual reward for labour, and were quite
unprepared to support themselves for any length of time unless they
could obtain work and wages. There was consequently great
distress.
We all did what we thought we could, or ought, to relieve it; and with
such success, that not one single case of actual starvation is known
to have occurred in a close compacted population of over a million,
of which it was generally reported fifty thousand were out of
employment. Those who needed charitable assistance were, in
nearly every case, recent foreign immigrants, sickly people, cripples,
drunkards, or knaves taking advantage of the public benevolence, to
neglect to provide for themselves. Most of those who received
assistance would have thrown a slave’s ordinary allowance in the
face of the giver, as an insult; and this often occurred with more
palatable and suitable provisions. Hundreds and hundreds, to my
personal knowledge, during the worst of this dreadful season,
refused to work for money-wages that would have purchased them
ten times the slave’s ordinary allowance of the slave’s ordinary food.
In repeated instances, men who represented themselves to be
suffering for food refused to work for a dollar a day. A labourer,
employed by a neighbour of mine, on wages and board, refused to
work unless he was better fed. “What’s the matter,” said my
neighbour; “don’t you have enough?” “Enough; yes, such as it is.”
“You have good meat, good bread, and a variety of vegetables; what
do you want else?” “Why, I want pies and puddings, too, to be sure.”
Another labourer left another neighbour of mine, because, as he
alleged, he never had any meat offered him except beef and pork;
he “didn’t see why he shouldn’t have chickens.”
And these men went to New York, and joined themselves to that
army on which our Southern friends exercise their pity—of labourers
out of work—of men who are supposed to envy the condition of the
slave, because the “slave never dies for want of food.”[38]
In the depth of winter, a trustworthy man wrote us from Indiana:—
“Here, at Rensselaer, a good mechanic, a joiner or
shoemaker, for instance—and numbers are needed here
—may obtain for his labour in one week:
2 bushels of corn.
1 bushel of wheat.
5 pounds of sugar.
½ pound of tea.
10 pounds of beef.
25 pounds of pork.
1 good turkey.
3 pounds of butter.
1 pound of coffee.
1 bushel of potatoes.