SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
43 
No one can doubt that hundreds of millions in civilized, 
and seini-civilized nations are at work for themselves as 
free laborers, or for others as hirelings, or as slaves, or as 
apprentices for a term of years, or life. Nor can there 
be a reasonable doubt that each of these forms of human 
industry has prevailed for hundreds and thousands of 
years, by the force of some law which operates indepen- 
dently of revolutions in governments, and in defiance of 
the schemes of enthusiasts. If self-employment and free- 
labor are better for all than to work for wages, or be a ser- 
vant for life, why did not tire early experience of man- 
kind lead all to adopt exclusively this most advantageous 
system of industry % No other good reason for preferring 
a life of comparative dependence as a servant to that of 
an independent worker for one's self, can be given except 
to affirm that the subordinate position requires less mental 
care, less anxiety, and less responsibility ; and it is, there- 
fore, preierred by minds of an inferior grade, God has 
not given to all that degree of intellectual force necessary to 
raise them above a subordinate position in providing for 
their own animal wants. 
From this state of things there is no appeal ; and, there- 
fore, when the philosopher Greeley and the Tribune un- 
dertook, a few years since, to carry into practical opera- 
tion Fourpjer’s theory of a general proprietorship and 
association of laboring families, by which all “hired help” 
was to be happily dispensed with, the scheme un-iformly 
failed. Neither “phalanxes,”' nor the most ingenious as- 
sorting of trades and professions with a view to suit all 
tastes, and all proclivities, can alter the essential ele- 
ments of human nature. 
Some men are, apparently, born to command; some to 
excel as master workmen, and become the employers of 
thousands; some attain to the distinction of being faith- 
ful and reliable hired men ; and some are happy to be ex- 
empt from all business cares, like wages or the providing 
for a family, and labor for life as an apprentice who never 
-ets through learning his trade. In this country, the last 
n::..n:ed persons are miscalled 
Between these different forms of productive industry 
there is really less antagonism and greater nroduction, 
taun there would be under any other conceivable arrange- 
ment. It is the arrangement of God not of man. Nlake 
all who are servants for life, and. all hired persons, inde- 
pendent of their employers, with their present defective 
labor, and mankind would compete together with less di- 
versity of jDroducts, and a smaller quantity; and at the 
same time, their common wants would in no respect be 
abated. The people of England wanted not a pound less 
sugar after they unwittingly changed the industrial re- 
lations of the laborers on their West India Islands; and 
yet, these laborers, when licenced not to work by the 
British Parliament, found themselves utterly incapable of 
making a tithe of tlte sugar which they made before. 
Negroes cannot work miracles more than white people; 
and it would have required supernatural power to give to 
the officious change of labor on these sugar plantations 
any other than a ruinous result. The experiment was 
precipitate, and based on two ideas, both of which are 
ialse. One was that common field hands will do more 
and better work as hirelings than as servants for life; and 
the other was the popular notion that the relation of mas- 
ter and apprentice for life is morally w'rong and a public 
evil. ‘The'*wri»Bg and the public evil lie at the door of all 
who have a private standard of ethics which differs essen- 
tially from that of the Bible ; and who will not permit 
employers and employed to pursue in peace those indus- 
trial arrangements which long experience proves to be 
best for all parties. If it were entirely practicable to send 
out of the planting States every negro, it would be difficult 
to find either at home or abroad, three and a half millions 
of laboring people who would, or who could produce an 
equal quantity of cotton, rice and sugar. These great 
staples are among the necessaries of civilized life; and in 
no other way than by negro labor ns now directed and 
controlled y can the present supply he maintained. Na 
other agricultural labor in this country is so remunerative 
or is managed with equal skill, all the reports of larger re- 
turns ni the free States to the contrary notwithstanding. 
Their agricultural statistics are exceedingly defective, and 
greatly over estimate the value of Northern staples. 
First ; They estimate their corn, oats, hay, pasturage and 
all other food for domestic animals, at a high figure. 
Secondly : They claim full credit for all the slaughtered 
animals grown and fed on the crops named, which are 
thus estimated tvnee^ox the benefit of Northern tillage and 
husbandry. 
Thirdly: They not only count the hay and grass that 
form milk, and then price the latter at some millions, but 
this milk appears again in the account once as cheese, 
and again as butter, and still again in pork made from 
whey and buttermilk. Hay and grass are re-esiimated 
in wool and sheep, in horses, mules, cattle, and j^attly in 
swine. 
Neither Southern cotton, rice, tobacco, nor sugar is thus 
over-estimated ; and, consequently, the great staples of 
the planting States are made to compare unfavorably with 
those of the fanning States. Isolate the apprentice labor 
of the South from that of hired persons both North and 
South, and the. latter in both sections will be found less 
remunerative than the former. To understand the reason 
of this, you should study closely the causes that enable 
one who has a cotton mill in Massachusetts or elsewhere, 
operated by fifty hands, to undersell goods made in a fami- 
ly by only five hands. Possibly these five laborers may 
be better informed, and work harder than the average of 
the fifty ; but much sound economy is entirely practicable 
in the larger establishment which is wholly impracticable 
in the smaller one. So obvious and important is this dif- 
ference in manufactures, that the system is rapidly extend- 
ing from cotton mills of fifty up to five- hundred operatives. 
At the North, the well known principle of extensively 
combining the productive powers ofman is far less applied 
to agriculture than to the mechanical arts; while at the 
South the reverse is true. We have but few large manu- 
facturing establishments of any kind. Our plantations, 
however, often give employment to fifty times more opeh 
ratives than are seen on Northern farms. It is absurd to 
contend that a system of rural industry is bad in itself, 
and unprofitable, so long as the laborers are, to all human 
appearance, happier than any other equal number of farm 
operatives in any country ; and at the same time, their erh- 
ployers command the best markets in the world for their 
staples, in spite of all competition, backed by mountains 
of prejudice against their system of productive industry. 
It is suicidal for honest labor in one form to attack equal- 
ly honest labor in another form; for their interests are 
identical. Each has its peculiar advantages to compensate 
for its acknowledged disadvantages. The parental care 
and guardianship which belong to the apprentice system 
for life, and the mutual confidence it inspires, make it 
triumph over all opposition, not so much by the wit of 
man, nor the strength of numbers, as fi'om the fact that 
