16 



DEGRADATION OF LABOR. 



be gentlemen. Again, they revolt from a service which 

 they think degrades them, and are disinclined to labor for 

 others more than is absolutely necessary for their own 

 maintenance. They render their services without any 

 alacrity, and without any desire or effort to have it reward 

 the employer. 



It is owing to this unworthy pride on the part of the 

 white people, and the enervating effect of their example 

 upon the blacks, that the former, as a mass, are almost 

 entirely unproductive, and the latter far less productive 

 than they should be or would be, if within the influence of 

 a healthier public opinion. Between the two, there is no 

 intellect invested in the industry of the island. The 

 planter does not attend personally to the culture of his 

 estates, and, of course, does not avail himself of his superior 

 capacity to select and devise modes of economizing labor, 

 and in multiplying the productive power of his land. The 

 operatives have no interest to diminish the amount of labor 

 required, for that, they fancy, would bring down wages, 

 which are now so low as hardly to be worth collecting 

 after they are earned ; but if they had, they are mostly too 

 ignorant to make the attempt successfully. The whites are 

 generally too proud or too lazy to supervise and teach the 

 black, and if they were not, they also are too ignorant to do it, 

 for they rarely give more thought to the mechanics of their 

 estates, or possess more skill in managing them, than the 



