CAPITAL AND ENTERPRISE. 497 



— a fact universally true, and carrying with it abundant evidence that land owes 

 all its value to liie labor applied lo its improvements.* 



Men who are willing to work seek Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa, and each 

 takes a piece of land that he is lo render valuiiblo by means of his labor, and that 

 constitutes a sort of little savings box, in which he deposits all his wages over 

 and above what is absolutely necessary for the support of himself and his family, 

 as well as all the spare hours and half hours that would otherwise be unem- 

 ployed. Every additional deposit therein tends, as with children who have 

 penny-boxes, to increase his desire of accumulation, and to increase the habit of 

 industry and economy. With the growth of population, the number of tliese little 

 savings banks is steadily increasing, and by degrees a Avealthy community arises, 

 the members of which, by combining their means, are enabled to create money- 

 shops at which poor but honest and industrious men can obtain loans, while ap- 

 plying other portions of those means to the construction of turnpike roads, and 

 ultimately railroads or canals. Wealth attracts wealth ; and every new house, 

 or town, or city, or road, whether of stone or of iron, tends to bring new laborers 

 and to produce new divisions of land, new houses, and new savings boxes, and 

 to cause the construction of new roads and canals. In the South these little 

 savings boxes have no existence. The laborer has no properly, and has no in- 

 ducement to exertion, and his master has no economy. The land is exhausted, 

 and deteriorates in value until at length both laborer and employer are com- 

 pelled, if they would continue to live, to run away from it. In the Hrst case we 

 see the attractive power of wealth, while the second exhibits the repulsive 

 power of constantly increasing poverty. Population diminishes, and land loses 

 the little value it once possessed. 



The people of the South burn the candle at both ends. They offer no induce- 

 ment to economy or exertion on the part of those who labor, and they despise 

 labor too much to acquire, themselves, the habit of employment, bv aid of which 

 they would become economical. In New-England, all work and all spend lib- 

 erally in proportion to their means ; but there is very little waste of either labor 

 or capital. The results of these different modes of action are widely different. 

 The southern planter is like the elephant, who leaves behind him scarcely any 

 record of his existence ; while the Yankee resembles the coral insect, whose la- 

 bors and habits of association are attested by the formation of extensive islands 

 destined, perhaps, at some future time to be combined, by the farther labors of 

 these industrious creatures, into a vast southern continent. Were the people, 

 white and black, of South Carolina swept away, what would remain to give value 

 to the lands? Almost nothing ! Compare, I pray you, the condition in which 

 their successors would stand, with that of an equal number coming at once into 

 possession of Massachusetts, with its towns and cities, its factories and ships, its 

 turnpikes and railroads, and then answer for yourself the question "Why it is 

 that land in the South is so nearly worthless? " 



Mr. Calhoun holds that South Carolina exhibits to the world a model of so- 

 ciety the most perfect that exists. If other people thought so, there would be 

 an influx of population and of wealth. If his countrymen thought so them- 

 selves they icould not run away from it as thei/ do. If it were really so, there 

 would be a gradual diminution in the size of farms or plantations, and an in- 

 crease in the number and quality of houses, whereas the present tendency is di- 

 rectly the reverse. If they wish to continue their society in its present state of 

 perfection, they must resign themselves to constantly increasing depopulation 

 and poverty. If, on the contrary, they desire their lands to become valuable, 

 they must make it the interest of the laborer to work and to economize, by se- 

 curing to him the enjoyment of the results. They must teach the people to make 

 saving funds by aid of which, eventually, railroads and canals will be construct- 

 ed ; and nothing will be done to render property valuable until the whole people 

 shall have acquired an interest in exerting themselves for the accomplishment 



* The United States are the largest landhoklers in the world, and they obtain theii' land on the lowest 

 terms. Neverthelees, they would be ruined by the ownership were it net for ihelr entire exemption 

 from coiitribuiious, in the form of taxes, toward the imprnveincnt of their own property. They sell the 

 be^'t l;inds, and the purchasers psiy the taxes thereon for making roads and buiHing court houses, while 

 making private contributions tor churches, &c. &c , and thus the second, and third, and fourth qualities 

 gradually acquire value equal to $1 '•io per acre, and are sold. But for this, the public lands would bank- 

 rupt the Treasury, although obtained origLually for almost nothing. 

 (1017; 3^ 



