SECTION LXX.

EMANCIPATION.

As states grow greater and men's manners gentler, the ranks of slavery are less and less liable to be recruited through the agency of war. It then becomes necessary to have recourse to the family to keep up their number, which makes their condition much more endurable, and which supposes that it has been made more endurable in other respects beforehand. Modern states, are, as a rule, larger than the ancient were. The Germans had, long before the time of Charlemagne, treated prisoners of war of German origin more mildly than those of Gallic or Slavic origin. The condition of the latter even improved from the time that nations began to think of making permanent conquests. Since the Slavic wars of the tenth century, certainly since the Lithuanian contests, it seems that prisoners of war were not reduced to slavery.3 Chivalry, men. And so Möser Patriot Phantasien, II, p. 154, seq. Those who with Thaer separate the element of production, "labor" from that of "intelligence," justify slavery on the same principle that Aristotle did, without knowing it. Per contra, see F. G. Schultze, N. Ekonomie (1856), 418.

1

1 Turgot, Sur la Formation etc., § 21. The universal empire of the Romans demonstrated this. Then it was, for instance, that during the wars of Lucullus, a slave cost only four drachmas. (Appian., Bell. Mithr., 78.) Sardi venales: on account of the glutting of the market with Sardinian slaves, made through the victory of Tib. Gracchus, 177, before Christ. Many of the lesser wars of the Romans can be looked upon only as slave-hunts. But the great wars also were followed by uprisings of slaves on account of the many new slaves which they made. Thus 198 in Latium, 196 in Etruria. (Bücher, Aufstände der unfreien Arbeiter von, 143-129, v. Chr., 1874.) During the relatively peaceful periods which preceded many of the Roman revolutions, pirates delivered over great masses of slaves. It frequently happened that several thousand slaves were led to Delos and sold in a single day. (Strabo, XIV, 668.) As emancipation was a measure which people could not make up their minds to adopt, these pirates satisfied a "want" for a time, and this partly explains the otherwise incomprehensible forbearace of the state towards them.

2 Gregor. Turon., III, 15.

Grimm, D. Rechtsalterthümer, 323. It is a strange fact that prisoners of

and allowing prisoners to go free, on their word of honor, contributed largely to this result.

The more productive agriculture is, the more numerous the wants of land owners, the more extensive the division of labor and commercial intercourse become, the easier it is for a large class of the community to obtain support for themselves and families without cultivating land of their own. (Wages.) When exchanges through the medium of money become customary, the chief argument for slavery disappears; and the strong, rich and able man can, without having recourse to force, command the labor of other men. Every further advance in economic culture must necessarily help forward in this direction. Thus, without the plow, for instance, we should all be really only so many gleba adscripti. It is due especially to the ever increasing perfection of tools, machines and operations, that the slave of antiquity was transformed into the serf of the middle ages, and afterwards into the day laborer of modern times. It is more particularly to be remarked, that machines, since 1750, "first made the constitutional liberty of many, instead of the feudal freedom of a few, possible." (Schäffle.)

war were in several remarkable instances sold as slaves in Italy during the fifteenth century. (Sismondi, Hist. des Républiques italiennes, IX, p. 312 seq.; XI, p. 138 seq.) And even in the sixteenth century, the pope allowed those of states opposed to him to be treated in this way. Sismondi, supra, XI, 251; XIII, 485. Raynold, Ann. eccl., 1506, § 25 ff.

4 This graduation of slave, serf and workman, has been carried out especially by Saint Simon, Oeuvres, 328 ff. Even Proudhon admits that the condition of the lower classes is better now than formerly. (Contradictions économiques, ch. X, 2.) Compare M. Chevalier, Cours, I. Leçons 1 and 2, where he shows that our productive power has increased during the last four or five centuries in the production of iron in the proportion of 1 to from 25 to 30; in the preparation of flour since the time of Homer in the proportion of 1: 144; in the production of cotton during the last 70 years in the proportion of 1:320. Aristotle predicted, long ago, that “when the shuttle would move of itself, and plectra of themselves strike the lyre, we should need no more slaves." Polit., 2, 5. Every step of true progress brings us nearer the fulfillment of the prophecy.

SECTION LXXI.

DISADVANTAGES OF SLAVERY.

Slavery promotes the division of labor only in the very) beginning. The more dependent the slave is, the worse he works. Whatever he spoils or allows to go to waste injures only his master. Hence it is that slave-husbandry is only one degree removed from what the Germans call Raubbau, and which means, as nearly as we can translate it, the most thoughtless and wasteful management possible.1 Whatever he consumes is simply so much gain to himself. Industry and skill are injurious to him, because, if remarkable for these qualities, his master exacts more work from him and is more adverse to setting him at liberty. Instead of the numberless incentives of the free workman: care for the future, for his family, honor and comfort, the slave is generally moved by one-the fear of ill-treatment, and to this he gradually becomes insensible. The division of labor demanded by manufactures, and which is to be found for the most part only where each person is at liberty to choose his own avocation, is scarcely supposable where slavery, in the strict sense of the word, prevails. The same is true of the spirit of invention and improvement. And even where the milder glebæ

8

The North American planters employed coarse tools rather than fine ones, mules rather than horses, because their slaves took so little care of them.

2 It can never obtain as much labor from the slave, as the fear of losing his situation and of not being able to obtain another, will from the free workman. (Hume.) Marlo, Weltækonomie, 1848, I, 2, 38, grants this to be true only where all the forces of nature are appropriated by occupation, and the number of workmen is greater than the want of workmen.

3 Even in Brazil, only free men are, as a rule, employed as sugar refiners, distillers, teamsters etc. (Koster, Travels in Brazil, 1816, 362.) Storch, Russland unter Alexander I, Heft, 23, p. 255, cites the opinion of an eminent Russian manufacturer, that it would first be necessary to liberate the serf factory-hands. Masters have generally given up employing their own serfs in manufactures, allowed them to seek work for themselves, and only re

4

adscriptio obtains, the division of labor is much hindered. Hence, competent judges all agree on the badness of slave labor; which, as for instance in the United States, was used only where the slaves were crowded together in large numbers and could therefore be easily superintended. And not only are the slaves themselves indolent, but their masters as well; more particularly in slave countries where all labor is considered disgraceful. What must be the national husbandry of a people, one half of whom refuse to do anything that is right and proper, through malice, and the other half through pride! As soon as, on account of increased population and consequent increased consumption, this enormous waste of force can be endured no longer, free workmen become more profitable, not only to themselves and to the whole community, but to the greater number of the individuals who compose it.5 On the Bernstoff estates the quantity of rye harvested before

quired them to pay them a species of tax. When this plan was adopted, it was found that they worked much better. (v. Haxthausen, Studien I, 61, 116.) It was a consequence of slavery that, in antiquity, the very wealthy purchased so little: omnia domi nascuntur! (Petron., 38.)

4 Thus Homer, Od. XVII, 322, in whose time even there were day laborers, dites or condo. (Od. IV, 644; X, 85; XI, 490; XIV, 102. Hesiod, Opera, 602.) And Varro, De Re rust. I, 17, advises that difficult labor should be performed rather by day laborers. Coli rura ab ergastulis pessimum est et quidquid agitur a desperantibus. Plin., H. N. XVIII, 7. Omne genus agri tolerabilius sub liberis colonis, quam sub villicis. (Columella, De Re rust I, 7.) It has been estimated, that, in the West Indies, a negro slave performed only one-third of the work performed by an Englishman in his own country. (B. Edwards, History of the British West Indies, II, 131.) During the one afternoon, in every week, in which the negroes were allowed to work on their own account, they accomplished as much as on other entire days. Edinburgh R. IV, 842. Compare Bentham, Traité de Législation I, 319. Ch. Comte, Traité de Législation, 1827, Livre V.; Cairnes, The Slave-Power, its Character, Career and probable Designs, 1862; Olmsted, Journeys and Explorations in the Cotton Kingdom, 1861.

While the older tyrants had prohibited idleness, Draco and Solon even under pain of degradation (see places in Buchsenschütz, Besitz und Erwerb, 260). Socrates called the pria the sister of Freedom (Aelian, V. H. X, 14), and the ozon the most beautiful of all professions

and after emancipation was as 3:8; of barley-corn as 4:9; of oat-grain as 23:8.6

The owners of serfs, especially, are apt to be very wasteful of their labor, because they imagine that they obtain it gratis. Tucker has made a curious calculation tending to show that when civilization reaches a certain point, the master's self-interest leads to emancipation. In Russia, where there are seventy-five persons to the English square mile, it seemed to him that serfdom was still a good economic speculation. In western Europe, where there were one hundred and ten persons to the square mile, freedom, in all relations of master and servant, he considered more advantageous to all parties. Emancipation began in England in the fourteenth century, when that country had a population of forty to the square mile, and was completed in the seventeenth, when the population was ninetytwo to the square mile. Tucker concludes, that the turning point comes, when the population is relatively to the number of square miles as 66: 1.8 Such a calculation cannot, of course, be universally true. The free workman can usually command a much larger portion of the sum total of economic profits • B. Franklin, Observations concerning the Peopling of New Countries etc., 1751.

'Monument erected to Bernstorff by his peasants, 8, 15. The Zamoiski estates yielded, 17 years after emancipation, three times as much as they did when serfdom prevailed. Coxe, Travels in Poland, I, 22. The transformation of the serfs into hereditary farmers cost Count Bernstorff 100,000 thalers; but the revenue derived from his lands increased in consequence, in twentyfour years, from 3,000 to 27,000 thalers. An English mower can mow a field two and three times as great as a Russian mower in a given time. If the former receives daily wages equivalent to seventy pounds of wheat, and the latter to only twelve, the Englishman's labor is still the cheaper; for he turns out 100 pounds of hay while the latter turns out only eight. Jacob, 43 seq. But the hiring out of serfs in the large cities of Russia yielded less to their masters than in the interior. Storch, Handbuch, II, 286.

8 Tucker, Progress of the United States, 1843, pp. 111 ff. We need not call attention to the inaccuracy of these figures, nor remark how little serviceable for our present purpose an average obtained from the density of population in different parts of Russia, where such densities are themselves so very different, would be.