5i6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Although the production of tobacco had made slavery a great 

 economical success in the limited field where the best product was 

 to be had, it is doubtful if the institution would have attained to 

 any widespread importance but for the development of another 

 form of planting — that of cotton. Thus, in Kentucky, where the 

 crops, with the exception of a coarse tobacco, are the same as in 

 the other iSTorthern States of the Union, the institution, despite the 

 long-continued scarcity of labor, never attained any very great 

 development. The slaves were generally used for household serv- 

 ice, but to no great extent in the fields, and in such employment 

 only in the districts where the soil was of such great fertility that 

 large quantities of grain were raised for export. In one third of 

 that Commonwealth negroes were, and remain to this day, quite 

 unknown. The invention of the cotton gin ended all hope that 

 slavery might be limited to a part of the seacoast region, for nearly 

 all of the lowland regions of the South, as well as some of the up- 

 land country north to the southern border of Kentucky and Vir- 

 ginia, are admirably suited to that crop — producing, indeed, a bet- 

 ter " staple " than that of any other country. This industry, even 

 more than that of raising tobacco, called for abundant labor which 

 could be absolutely commanded and severely tasked in the season 

 of extreme heats. For this work the negro proved to be the only 

 fit man, for while the whites can do this work they prefer other 

 employment. Thus it came about that the power of slavery in 

 this country became rooted in its soil. The facts show that, based 

 on an ample foundation of experience, the judgment of the South- 

 ern people was to the effect that this creature of the tropics was a 

 better laborer in their fields than the men of their own race. Much 

 has been said about the dislike of the white man for work in asso- 

 ciation with negroes. The failure of the whites to have a larger 

 share in the agriculture of the South has been attributed to this 

 cause. This seems to me clearly an error. The dislike to the 

 association of races in labor is, in the slaveholding States, less than 

 in the JSTorth. There can be no question that if the Southern folk 

 could have made white laborers profitable they would have pre- 

 ferred to employ them, for the reason that the plantations would 

 have required less fixed capital for their operation. The fact was 

 and is that the negro is there a better laboring man in the field 

 than the white. Under the conditions he is more enduring, more 

 contented, and more trustworthy than the men of our own race. 



The large development of the cotton industry in this country 

 came after the importation, of negroes from Africa had ceased to 

 be as completely unrestricted as it was at first. The prohibition 

 of the trafiic came indeed before the needs of laborers in the more 



