APPENDIX (C.)
COST OF LABOUR IN THE BORDER STATES.
From a native Virginian, who has resided in New York:
"To the Editor of the N. Y. Daily Times.
"Sir—You will not object, I think, to receive an endorsement from a Southern man, of the statements contained in number seven of 'Letters on the Productions, Industry, and Resources of the Southern States' [by Mr. Olmsted], published in your issue on Thursday last * * *
"Where you would see one white labourer on a Northern farm, scores of blacks should appear on the Virginian plantation, the best of them only performing each day one-fourth a white man's daily task, and all requiring an incessant watch to get even this small modicum of labour. Yet they eat as much again as a white man, must have their two suits of clothes and shoes yearly, and although the heartiest, healthiest looking men and women anywhere on earth, actually lose for their owners or employers one-sixth their time on account of real or pretended sickness. Be assured, our model Virginia farmer has his hands full, and is not to be envied as a jolly fox-hunting idler, lording it over 'ranks of slaves in chains.' No, sir; he must be up by 'the dawn's early light,' and head the column, direct in person the commencing operations, urging, and coaxing; must praise and punish—but too glad to reward the meritorious, granting liberty (i. e. leave of absence) often to his own servant, that he dare not take himself, because he must not leave home for fear something will go wrong ere his return. Hence but too many give up, to overseers or other irresponsible persons, the care and management of their estates, rather than undergo such constant annoyance and confinement. Poor culture, scanty crops, and worn-out land, is the inevitable result; and yet, harassed and trammeled as they are, no one but a Southerner regards them with the slightest degree of compassion or even forbearance; and our good friends, the Abolitionists, would have 'all the rest of mankind' rank them with pirates and cut-*throats. But my object in this communication is not to sympathize with nor ask sympathy on behalf of slaveholders. For, however
