Context: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/815/pg815-images.html#link2HCH0048

Transcription of image

It is true that in Kentucky the planters are not obliged to pay wages to the slaves whom they employ; but they derive small profits from their labor, whilst the wages paid to free workmen would be returned with interest in the value of their services. The free workman is paid, but he does his work quicker than the slave, and rapidity of execution is one of the great elements of economy. The white sells his services, but they are only purchased at the times at which they may be useful; the black can claim no remuneration for his toil, but the expense of his maintenance is perpetual; he must be supported in his old age as well as in the prime of manhood, in his profitless infancy as well as in the productive years of youth. Payment must equally be made in order to obtain the services of either class of men: the free workman receives his wages in money, the slave in education, in food, in care, and in clothing. The money which a master spends in the maintenance of his slaves goes gradually and in detail, so that it is scarcely perceived; the salary of the free workman is paid in a round sum, which appears only to enrich the individual who receives it, but in the end the slave has cost more than the free servant, and his labor is less productive.

  • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    I like how this is so mask off that you are unsure whether this is a pro-slavery argument attempting to portray slavery in a positive light as less exploitative than wage labor, or if this is someone who thought that slavery wasn’t exploitative enough and an even more exploitative system had to be adopted instead.

    I mean i guess that’s an academic distinction since in either case whoever wrote this should get the wall.

    • 🏳️‍⚧️ 新星 [she/they]@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      The author makes this claim a few pages earlier:

      It is not for the good of the negroes, but for that of the whites, that measures are taken to abolish slavery in the United States.

      It seems to me that this argument is trying to show why whites would think abolishing slavery to be a benefit in a capitalist economy.