35 8 Civilization and Decay 



t 



reversed. An infinitely more important cause, as 

 Mr. Adams himself shows, was the immense dam- 

 age done to the Italian husbandman by the importa- 

 tion of Asiatic and African slaves ; which was in all 

 probability the chief of the causes that conspired 

 to ruin him. He was forced into competition with 

 races of lower vitality; races tenacious of life, who 

 possessed a very low standard of living, and who 

 furnished to the great slave-owner his cheap labor. 

 Mr. Adams shows that the husbandman was affected, 

 not only by the importation of vast droves of slaves 

 to compete with him in Italy, but by the competition 

 with low-class labor in Egypt and elsewhere. These 

 very points, if developed with Mr. Adams's skill, 

 would have enabled him to show in a very striking 

 manner the radical contrast between the present po- 

 litical and social life of civilized States, and the polit- 

 ical and social life of Rome during what he calls the 

 capitalistic or closing period. At present, the min- 

 ute that the democracy becomes convinced that the 

 workman and the- peasant are suffering from compe- 

 tition with cheap labor, whether this cheap labor 

 take the form of alien immigration, or of the impor- 

 tation of goods manufactured abroad by low-class 

 workingmen, or of commodities produced by con- 

 victs, it at once puts a stop to the competition. We 

 keep out the Chinese, very wisely; we have put an 

 end to the rivalry of convict contract labor with free 

 labor; we are able to protect ourselves, whenever 

 necessary, by heavy import duties, against the effect 

 of too cheap labor in any foreign country ; and, final- 



