DEGRADATION OF LABOR. 



11 



more intelligent of the negroes employed by them. The 

 consequence is, that while the cost of labor has been ad- 

 vancing, there has been no advance whatever in the 

 mechanical and implemental economics of the island * 



I could not perceive that sixteen years of freedom had 

 advanced the dignity of labor, or of the laboring classes 

 one particle. That fell legacy which slavery always leaves 

 behind it, I found here, neither wasted nor reduced. The 

 operative occupies a decidedly lower social position in 

 Jamaica now, than he does in South Carolina. The 

 degrading effects of slavery upon free labor are written all 

 over the Slave States of the American Union, and are 

 familiar to all my readers. Those effects, aggravated by 

 the heats of a warmer sun, and mitigated by few of the 

 social and political influences which are constantly operat- 

 ing upon the laboring classes in the United States, I found 



* An incident came under my observation one day in Spanishtown which in 

 part illustrates what I have been saying, and as a commentary upon the habitual 

 indolence of the people, may be worth making- " a note of." I wished to leave 

 that place one morning by the railroad in the seven o'clock train for Kingston, and 

 the evening previous requested my landlady to have a carriage ordered to take me 

 to the cars in season. When I asked in the morning for my carriage, I was told 

 that none could be procured at so early an hour. Upon farther inquiry it appeared 

 that the negroes would not mount their boxes before nine or ten o'clock, and of 

 course the white proprietors would, on no terms, be seen driving a hack. So I 

 was obliged to find my way to the cars as best I could, "with the tandem that 

 nature gave me." If there had been no train of cars leaving Spanishtown at this 

 hour, and no habitual call for coaches thus early, I should have attached less im- 

 portance to the incident, but the failure of my application made it apparent that 

 their indolence wag as obstinate as their pride, and that the dally prospect of a 

 fare was not a sufficient inducement to make either whites or blacks, leave their 

 beds to man a hackney coach at six o'clock in the morning. 



