72 FREE AND SLAVE LABOR. [CHAP. XXV. 



the blacks, he might be far more instrumental in forwarding the 

 cause of civilization and Christianity by remaining at home, for 

 the negroes like a preacher of their own race. 



The colored domestic servants are treated with great indul 

 gence at Tuscaloosa. One day some of them gave a supper to a 

 large party of their friends in the house of a family which we 

 visited, and they feasted their guests on roast turkeys, ice-creams, 

 jellies, and cakes. Turkeys here cost only seventy-five cents, or 

 about three shillings the couple, prepared for the table ; the price 

 of a wild turkey, an excellent bird, is twenty-five cents, or one 

 shilling. After calculating the interest of the money laid out in 

 the purchase of the slaves, and the price of their food, a lawyer 

 undertook to show me that a negro cost less than an English 

 servant ; &quot; but, as two blacks do the work of only one white, it 

 is a mere delusion,&quot; he said, to imagine that their labor is not 

 dearer.&quot; It is usual, moreover, not to exact the whole of their 

 time for domestic duties. I found a footman, for example, work 

 ing on his own account as a bootmaker at spare hours, and another 

 getting perquisites by blacking the students shoes. 



That slave labor is more expensive than free, is an opinion 

 which is certainly gaining ground in the higher parts of Alabama, 

 and is now professed openly by some northerners who have settled 

 there. One of them said to me, &quot; Half the population of the 

 south is employed in seeing that the other half do their work, arid 

 they who do work, accomplish half what they might do under a 

 better system.&quot; &quot; We can not,&quot; said another, &quot; raise capital 

 enough for new cotton factories, because all our savings go to buy 

 negroes, or, as has lately happened, to feed them, when the crop 

 is deficient.&quot; A white bricklayer had lately gone from Tusca 

 loosa to serve an apprenticeship in his trade at Boston. He had 

 been earning there 2 dollars a day, by laying 3000 bricks daily. 

 A southern planter, who had previously been exceedingly boastful 

 and proud of the strength of one of his negroes (who could, in 

 fact, carry a much greater weight than this same white brick 

 layer), was at first incredulous when he heard of this feat, for his 

 pattern slave could not lay more than 1000 bricks a day. 



During my absence on the geological excursion above mention- 



