CHAPTER VII.
COTTON SUPPLY AND WHITE LABOUR IN THE COTTON CLIMATE.
Mr. Russell,[1] although he clearly sees the calamity of the
South, fully accepts the cotton planter's opinion, that, after all,
the system of slavery is a necessary evil attending upon the
great good of cheap cotton. He says: "If the climate had
admitted of the growing of cotton on the banks of the Ohio,
we should have seen that slavery possessed as great advantages
over free labour in the raising of this crop as it does in that of
tobacco." If this is so, it is important that it should be well
understood why it is so as precisely as possible.
In his Notes on Maryland, Mr. Russell (p. 141) says: "Though a slave may, under very favourable circumstances, cultivate twenty acres of wheat and twenty acres of Indian corn, he cannot manage more than two acres of tobacco. The cultivation of tobacco, therefore, admits of the concentration of labour, and thus the superintendence and management of a tobacco plantation will be more perfect and less expensive than a corn one." And this is the only explanation he offers of the supposed advantage of slave labour in the cultivation of tobacco (and of consequence in the cultivation of cotton). The chief expense of raising Indian corn is chargeable to planting and tillage, that of tobacco to the seedbed, the transplanting and nursing of the young plants (which is precisely similar to the same operation with cabbages), the hand-weeding, the
- ↑ "North America, its Agriculture and Climate," by Robert Russell, Kilwhiss. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1857.
