Above
all, reader, I beg of you to read the dispassionate and calmly written
_Cotton Kingdom_ of Frederick Law Olmstead, recently published by Mason
Brothers, of New York. You will there find the fact set forth by closest
observation that the negroes in part are indeed lazy vagabonds, but that
the majority, when allowed to work for themselves, and when free, _do_
work, and that right steadily. In the Virginia tobacco factories slaves
can earn on an average as much money for themselves, in the 'over hours'
allowed them, as the manufacturer pays their owner for their services
during the day. There are cases in which slaves, hired for one hundred
dollars a year, have made for themselves three hundred.[A]
[Footnote A: 'If the slaves be emancipated, what with their own natural
ability and such aids and appliances as the government and 20,000,000 of
people in the North can furnish, I do not believe but that they will get
employment, and pay, and, of course, subsistence.'--HON. GEORGE S.
BOUTWELL.]
But the vagabond surplus,--the minority? Is it possible that with Union
or disunion before us we can hesitate as to taking on this incumbrance?
In a hard-working land vagabonds must die off,--'tis a hard case, but
the emergency for the white men of this and a coming age is much harder.
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