52 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE 



who are inferior. . . . The exclusive owners of property 

 ever have been, ever will and perhaps ever ought to be 

 the virtual rulers of mankind." Admitted that the slaves 

 were inferior by nature there could be no injustice in 

 keeping them so by training. "Odium has been cast upon 

 our legislation," wrote Chancellor Harper of the Uni- 

 versity of South Carolina, "on account of its forbidding 

 the elements of education to be communicated to slaves. 

 But, in truth, what injury is done them by this? He who 

 works during the day with his hands does not read in 

 the intervals of his leisure for his amusement or the im- 

 provement of his mind. If there were any chance of their 

 elevating their rank and condition in society, it might 

 be a matter of hardship that they should be denied those 

 rudiments of knowledge which open the way to further 

 attainments." Finally, Fitzhugh in his Sociology "for the 

 South propounded that the state must take care that 

 every man, woman, and child shall have a vocation and 

 useful employment with due support. But for the igno- 

 rant and poor this demands slavery. "In England the 

 duty of the state is to subordinate the owners of the 

 cotton mills to the government, and the workers should 

 be made slaves of the owners who must give them sup- 

 port and kindly treatment. The American government 

 should grant plantations in the West to responsible men 

 and the landless and idle of the eastern states should be 

 attached to these plantations and become the tenants of 

 their masters for life. Slavery will everywhere be abol- 

 ished or everywhere be reinstated." 



Such was the status of the plantation regime and the 

 human factors in cotton culture in 1860. The cotton 

 system had arrived after a long period of development 

 and change. The plantation in America had begun as a 



