SOUTHERN AGRICULTURE, 1790-1860 281 



the negro slave rather than the land the investment made it easy 

 and inexpensive for the planter to remove from one part of the 

 country to the other. Capital and labor were united in the per- 

 son of the negro slave, and the planter who had once decided to 

 emigrate found it easy to take his property with him. 



The part played by compulsory labor in the cultivation of the 

 cotton plant previous to 1 860 was so great as to almost completely 

 identify in the mind of the observer the two institutions, the 

 culture of cotton and negro slavery. Slave labor was not con- 

 fined to the cultivation of cotton, it is true. In the rice swamps 

 of Georgia and the Carolinas and on the sugar plantations of 

 Louisiana, slaves did nearly all the work, and they also formed a 

 large proportion of the labor force of the Kentucky, Maryland 

 and Virginia tobacco plantations. But the number of acres de- 

 voted to the production of these crops was comparatively small, 

 and the number of negro slaves employed in their cultivation in 

 1850 was scarcely more than equal to the total number of slaves 

 in the United States in 1790, before the real movement in favor 

 of cotton had begun. The increase in the slave population after 

 1790 was absorbed mainly by the cotton industry, and we have 

 already noted the wonderful effect which the expansion of this 

 industry had upon the price of slaves. 



Although in the majority of cases the planter worked the 

 plantation with his own negroes, the hiring of slaves from their 

 master by the year was not unusual. The price paid varied, of 

 course, not only with the age, sex and working ability of the 

 slave, but also according to the section of the country. By an 

 investigation made by the Bureau of Agriculture at Washington 

 at the close of the war, it was ascertained that the average prices 

 paid for agricultural labor in i860 were about as shown in the 

 table on the following page. 



Numerous estimates have been made as to the cost of maintain- 

 ing a slave throughout the year. Obviously there is a wide room 

 for disagreement here, for many varying factors need to be con- 

 sidered. On large plantations the average cost was less than on 

 the small ones. Some planters raised enough com and made 

 enough pork to feed the negroes througl)Out the year, while others ' 



