Thoughts on the Necessity of Improving the Condition of the Slaves in the British Colonies · Chapter 6Thoughts, &c. (5)
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I have now to make my remarks upon this account. It shows us clearly how Mr. Steele made a part of his profits. These profits consisted first of a saving of expense in his husbandry, which saving was not made by others. He had his land holed at one-fourth of the usual rate. Let us apply this to all the other operations of husbandry, such as weeding, deep hoeing, &c. in a large farm of nearly eight hundred acres, like his, and we shall see how considerable the savings would be in one year. His Negroes again did not counterfeit sickness as before, in order to be excused from labour, but rather wished to labour in order to obtain the reward. There was therefore no crowding to the hospitals. This constituted a second source of saving; for they who were in the hospitals were maintained by Mr. Steele without earning any thing, while they who were working in the field left to their master in their work, when they went home at night, a value equal at least to that which they had received from him for their day's labour. But there was another saving of equal importance, which Mr. Steele calls a saving of time, but which he might with more propriety have called a saving of season. This saving of season, he says, was worth more than double the premium; and so it might easily have been. There are soils, every farmer knows, which are so constituted, that if you miss your day, you miss your season; and, if you miss your season, you lose probably half your crop. The saving, therefore, of the season, by having a whole crop instead of half an one, was a third source of saving of money. Now let us put all these savings together, and they will constitute a great saving or profit; for as these savings were made by Mr. Steele in consequence of his new plan, and were therefore not made by others, they constituted an extraordinary profit to him; or they added to the profit, whatever it might have been, which he used to receive from the estate before his new plan was put in execution.
But I discover other ways in which Mr. Steele was benefited, as I advance in the perusal of his writings. It was impossible to overlook the following passage: "Now," says he (alluding to his new system), "every species of provisions raised on the plantations, or bought from the merchants, is charged at the market-price to the copyhold-store, and discharged by what has been paid on the several accounts of every individual bond-slave; whereas for all those species heretofore, I never saw in any plantation-book of my estates any account of what became of them, or how they were disposed of, nor of their value, other than in these concise words, they were given in allowance to the Negroes and stock. Every year, for six years past, this great plantation has bought several hundred bushels of corn, and was scanty in all ground-provisions, our produce always falling short. This year, 1790, since the establishment of copyholders, though several less acres were planted last year in Guinea corn than usual, yet we have been able to sell several hundred bushels at a high price, and we have still a great stock in hand. I can place this saving to no other account, than that there is now an exact account kept by all produce being paid as cash to the bond-slaves; and also as all our watchmen are obliged to pay for all losses that happen on their watch, they have found it their interest to look well to their charge; and consequently that we have had much less stolen from us than before this new government took place."
Here then we have seen another considerable source of saving to Mr. Steele, viz. that he was not obliged to purchase any corn for his slaves as formerly. My readers will be able to judge better of this saving, when I inform them of what has been the wretched policy of many of our planters in this department of their concerns. Look over their farming memoranda, and you will see sugar, sugar, sugar, in every page; but you may turn over leaf after leaf, before you will find the words provision ground for their slaves. By means of this wretched policy, slaves have often suffered most grievously. Some of them have been half-starved. Starvation, too, has brought on disorders which have ultimately terminated in their death. Hence their masters have suffered losses, besides the expense incurred in buying what they ought to have raised upon their own estates, and this perhaps at a dear market: and in this wretched predicament Mr. Steele appears to have been himself when he first went to the estate. His slaves, he tells us, had been reduced in number by bad management. Even for six years afterwards he had been obliged to buy several hundred bushels of corn; but in the year 1790 he had sold several hundred bushels at a high price, and had still a great stock on hand. And to what was all this owing? Not to an exact account kept at the store (for some may have so misunderstood Mr. Steele); for how could an exact account kept there, have occasioned an increase in the produce of the earth? but, as Mr. Steele himself says, to the establishment of his copyholders, or to the alteration of the condition of his slaves. His slaves did not only three times more work than before, in consequence of the superior industry he had excited among them, but, by so doing, they were enabled to put the corn into the earth three times more quickly than before, or they were so much forwarder in their other work, that they were enabled to sow it at the critical moment, or so as to save the season, and thus secure a full crop, or a larger crop on a less number of acres, than was before raised upon a greater. The copyholders, therefore, were the persons who increased the produce of the earth; but the exact account kept at the store prevented the produce from being misapplied as formerly. It could no longer be put down in the general expression of "given in allowances to the Negroes and the stock;" but it was put down to the copyholder, and to him only, who received it. Thus Mr. Steele saved the purchase of a great part of the provisions for his slaves. He had formerly a great deal to buy for them, but now nothing. On the other hand, he had to sell; but, as his slaves were made, according to the new system, to maintain themselves, he had now the whole produce of his estate to dispose of. The circumstance therefore of having nothing to buy, but every thing to sell, constituted another source of his profits.
What the other particular profits of Mr. Steele were I can no where find, neither can I find what were his particular expenses; so as to be enabled to strike the balance in his favour. Happily, however, Mr. Steele has done this for us himself, though he has not furnished us with the items on either side.—He says that "from the year 1773 to 1779 (he arrived in Barbadoes in 1780), his stock had been so much reduced by ill management and wasteful economy, that the annual average neat clearance was little more than one and a quarter per cent. on the purchase. In a second period of four years, in consequence of the exertion of an honest and able manager, (though with a further reduction of the stock, and including the loss from the great hurricane,) the annual average income was brought to clear a little above two per cent.; but in a third period of three years from 1784 to 1786 inclusive, since the new mode of governing the Negroes, (besides increasing the stock, and laying out large sums annually in adding necessary works, and in repairs of the damages by the great hurricane,) the estate has cleared very nearly four and a quarter per cent.; that is, its annual average clearance in each of these three periods, was in this proportion; for every 100l. annually cleared in the first period the annual average clearance in the second period was 158l. 10s., and in the third period was 345l. 6s. 8d." This is the statement given by Mr. Steele, and a most important one it is; for if we compare what the estate had cleared in the first, with what it had cleared in the last of these periods, and have recourse to figures, we shall find that Mr. Steele had more than tripled the income of it, in consequence of his new management, during his residence in Barbadoes. And this is in fact what he says himself in words at full length, in his answer to the 17th question proposed to him by the committee of the Privy-council on the affairs of the slave trade. "In a plantation," says he, "of 200 slaves in June 1780, consisting of 90 men, 82 women, 56 boys, and 60 girls, though under the exertions of an able and honest manager, there were only 15 births, and no less than 57 deaths, in three years and three months. An alteration was made in the mode of governing the slaves. The whips were taken from all the white servants. All arbitrary punishments were abolished, and all offences were tried and sentence passed by a Negro court. In four years and three months after this change of government, there were 44 births, and only 41 deaths, of which ten deaths were of superannuated men and women, some above 80 years old. But in the same interval the annual neat clearance of the estate was above three times more than it had been for ten years before!!!"
Dr. Dickson, the editor of Mr. Steele, mentions these profits also, and in the same terms, and connects them with an eulogium on Mr. Steele, which is worthy of our attention. "Mr. Steele," says he, "saw that the Negroes, like all other human beings, were to be stimulated to permanent exertion only by a sense of their own interests in providing for their own wants and those of their offspring. He therefore tried rewards, which immediately roused the most indolent to exertion. His experiments ended in regular wages, which the industry he had excited among his whole gang enabled him to pay. Here was a natural, efficient, and profitable reciprocity of interests. His people became contented; his mind was freed from that perpetual vexation and that load of anxiety, which are inseparable from the vulgar system, and in little more than four years the annual neat clearance of his property was more than tripled." Again, in another part of the work, "Mr. Steele's plan may no doubt receive some improvements, which his great age obliged him to decline"—"but it is perfect, as far as it goes. To advance above 300 field-negroes, who had never before moved without the whip, to a state nearly resembling that of contented, honest and industrious servants, and, after paying for their labour, to triple in a few years the annual neat clearance of the estate,—these, I say, were great achievements for an aged man in an untried field of improvement, pre-occupied by inveterate vulgar prejudice. He has indeed accomplished all that was really doubtful or difficult in the undertaking, and perhaps all that is at present desirable either for owner or slave; for he has ascertained as a fact, what was before only known to the learned as a theory, and to practical men as a paradox, that the paying of slaves for their labour does actually produce a very great profit to their owners."
I have now proved (as far as the plan[15] of Mr. Steele is concerned) my third proposition, or the probability that emancipation would promote the interests of those who should adopt it; but as I know of no other estate similarly circumstanced with that of Mr. Steele, that is, where emancipation has been tried, and where a detailed result of it has been made known, I cannot confirm it by other similar examples. I must have recourse therefore to some new species of proof. Now it is an old maxim, as old as the days of Pliny and Columella, and confirmed by Dr. Adam Smith, and all the modern writers on political economy, that the labour of free men is cheaper than the labour of slaves. If therefore I should be able to show that this maxim would be true, if applied to all the operations and demands of West Indian agriculture, I should be able to establish my proposition on a new ground: for it requires no great acuteness to infer, that, if it be cheaper to employ free men than slaves in the cultivation of our islands, emancipation would be a profitable undertaking there.
I shall show, then, that the old maxim just mentioned is true, when applied to the case in our own islands, first, by establishing the fact, that free men, people of colour, in the East Indies, are employed in precisely the same concerns (the cultivation of the cane and the making of sugar) as the slaves in the West, and that they are employed at a cheaper rate. The testimony of Henry Botham, Esq. will be quite sufficient for this point. That gentleman resided for some time in the East Indies, where he became acquainted with the business of a sugar estate. In the year 1770 he quitted the East for the West. His object was to settle in the latter part of the world, if it should be found desirable so to do. For this purpose he visited all the West Indian islands, both English and French, in about two years. He became during this time a planter, though he did not continue long in this situation; and he superintended also Messrs. Bosanquets' and J. Fatio's sugar-plantation in their partners' absence. Finding at length the unprofitable way in which the West Indian planters conducted their concerns, he returned to the East Indies in 1776, and established sugar-works at Bencoolen on his own account. Being in London in the year 1789, when a committee of privy council was sitting to examine into the question of the slave trade, he delivered a paper to the board on the mode of cultivating a sugar plantation in the East Indies; and this paper being thought of great importance, he was summoned afterwards in 1791 by a committee of the House of Commons to be examined personally upon it.
It is very remarkable that the very first sentence in this paper announced the fact at once, that "sugar, better and cheaper than that in the West Indian islands, was produced by free men."
Mr. Botham then explained the simple process of making sugar in the East. "A proprietor, generally a Dutchman, used to let his estate, say 300 acres or more, with proper buildings upon it, to a Chinese, who lived upon it and superintended it, and who re-let it to free men in parcels of 50 or 60 acres on condition that they should plant it in canes for so much for every pecul, 133 lbs., of sugar produced. This superintendant hired people from the adjacent villages to take off his crop. One lot of task-men with their carts and buffaloes cut the canes, carried them to the mill, and ground them. A second set boiled them, and a third clayed and basketed them for market at so much per pecul. Thus the renter knew with certainty what every pecul would cost him, and he incurred no unnecessary expense; for, when the crop was over, the task-men returned home. By dividing the labour in this manner, it was better and cheaper done."
Mr. Botham detailed next the improved method of making sugar in Batavia, which we have not room to insert here. We may just state, however, that the persons concerned in it never made spirits on the sugar estates. The molasses and skimmings were sent for, sale to Batavia, where one distillery might buy the produce of a hundred estates. Here, again, was a vast saving, says Mr. Botham, "there was not, as in the West Indies, a distillery for each estate."
He then proceeded to make a comparison between the agricultural system of the two countries. "The cane was cultivated to the utmost perfection in Batavia, whereas the culture of it in the West Indies was but in its infancy. The hoe was scarcely used in the East, whereas it was almost the sole implement in the West. The plough was used instead of it in the East, as far as it could be done. Young canes there were kept also often ploughed as a weeding, and the hoe was kept to weed round the plant when very young; but of this there was little need, if the land had been sufficiently ploughed. When the cane was ready to be earthed up, it was done by a sort of shovel made for the purpose. Two persons with this instrument would earth up more canes in a day than ten Negroes with hoes. The cane-roots were also ploughed up in the East, whereas they were dug up with the severest exertion in the West. Many alterations," says Mr. Botham, "are to be made, and expenses and human labour lessened in the West. Having experienced the difference of labourers for profit and labourers from force, I can assert, that the savings by the former are very considerable."
He then pointed out other defects in the West Indian management, and their remedies. "I am of opinion," says he, "that the West Indian planter should for his own interest give more labour to beast and less to man. A larger portion of his estate ought to be in pasture. When practicable, canes should be carried to the mill, and cane tops and grass to the stock, in waggons. The custom of making a hard-worked Negro get a bundle of grass twice a day should be abolished, and in short a total change take place in the miserable management in our West Indian Islands. By these means following as near as possible the East Indian mode, and consolidating the distilleries, I do suppose our sugar-islands might be better worked than they now are by two-thirds or indeed one-half of the present force. Let it be considered how much labour is lost by the persons overseeing the forced labourer, which is saved when he works for his own profit. I have stated with the strictest veracity a plain matter of fact, that sugar estates can be worked cheaper by free men than by slaves[16]."
I shall now show, that the old maxim, which has been mentioned, is true, when applied to the case of our West Indian islands, by establishing a fact of a very different kind, viz. that the slaves in the West Indies do much more work in a given time when they work for themselves, than when they work for their masters. But how, it will be said, do you prove, by establishing this fact, that it would be cheaper for our planters to employ free men than slaves? I answer thus: I maintain that, while the slaves are working for themselves, they are to be considered, indeed that they are, bonâ fide, free labourers. In the first place, they never have a driver with them on any of these occasions; and, in the second place, having all their earnings to themselves, they have that stimulus within them to excite industry, which is only known to free men. What is it, I ask, which gives birth to industry in any part of the world, seeing that labour is not agreeable to man, but the stimulus arising from the hope of gain? What makes an English labourer do more work in the day than a slave, but the stimulus arising from the knowledge, that what he earns is for himself and not for another? What, again, makes an English labourer do much more work by the piece than by the day, but the stimulus arising from the knowledge that he may gain more by the former than by the latter mode of work? Just so is the West Indian slave situated, when he is working for himself, that is, when he knows that what he earns is for his own use. He has then all the stimulus of a free man, and he is, therefore, during such work (though unhappily no longer) really, and in effect, and to all intents and purposes, as much a free labourer as any person in any part of the globe. But if he be a free man, while he is working for himself, and if in that capacity he does twice or thrice more work than when he works for his master, it follows, that it would be cheaper for his master to employ him as a free labourer, or that the labour of free men in the West Indies would be cheaper than the labour of slaves.
That West Indian slaves, when they work for themselves, do much more in a given time than when they work for their masters, is a fact so notorious in the West Indies, that no one who has been there would deny it. Look at Long's History of Jamaica, The Privy Council Report, Gaisford's Essay on the good Effects of the Abolition of the Slave Trade, and other books. Let us hear also what Dr. Dickson, the editor of Mr. Steele, and who resided so many years in Barbadoes, says on this subject, for what he says is so admirably expressed that I cannot help quoting it. "The planters," says he, "do not take the right way to make human beings put forth their strength. They apply main force where they should apply moral motives, and punishments alone where rewards should be judiciously intermixed. They first beslave their poor people with their cursed whip, and then stand and wonder at the tremour of their nerves, and the laxity of their muscles. And yet, strange to tell, those very men affirm, and affirm truly, that a slave will do more work for himself in an afternoon than he can be made to do for his owner in a whole day or more!" And did not the whole Assembly of Grenada, as we collect from the famous speech of Mr. Pitt on the Slave Trade in 1791, affirm the same thing? "He (Mr. Pitt) would show," he said, "the futility of the argument of his honourable friend. He (his honourable friend) had himself admitted, that it was in the power of the colonies to correct the various abuses by which the Negro population was restrained. But they could not do this without improving the condition of their slaves, without making them approximate towards the rank of citizens, without giving them some little interest in their labour, which would occasion them to work with the energy of men. But now the Assembly of Grenada had themselves stated, that, though the Negroes were allowed the afternoon of only one day in every week, they would do as much work in that afternoon when employed for their own benefit, as in the whole day when employed in their masters' service. Now after this confession the House might burn all his calculations relative to the Negro population; for if this population had not quite reached the desirable state which he had pointed out, this confession had proved that further supplies were not wanted. A Negro, if he worked for himself, could do double work. By an improvement then in the mode of labour, the work in the islands could be doubled. But if so, what would become of the argument of his honourable friend? for then only half the number of the present labourers were necessary."
But the fact, that the slaves in the West Indies do much more work for themselves in a given time than when they work for their masters, may be established almost arithmetically, if we will take the trouble of calculating from authentic documents which present themselves on the subject. It is surprising, when we look into the evidence examined by the House of Commons on the subject of the Slave Trade, to find how little a West Indian slave really does, when he works for his master; and this is confessed equally by the witnesses on both sides of the question. One of them (Mr. Francklyn) says, that a labouring man could not get his bread in Europe if he worked no harder than a Negro. Another (Mr. Tobin), that no Negro works like a day-labourer in England. Another (Sir John Dalling), that the general work of Negroes is not to be called labour. A fourth (Dr. Jackson), that an English labourer does three times as much work as a Negro in the West Indies. Now how are these expressions to be reconciled with the common notions in England of Negro labour? for "to work like a Negro" is a common phrase, which is understood to convey the meaning, that the labour of the Negroes is the most severe and intolerable that is known. One of the witnesses, however, just mentioned explains the matter. "The hardship," says he, "of Negro field-labour is more in the mode than in the quantity done. The slave, seeing no end of his labour, stands over the work, and only throws the hoe to avoid the lash. He appears to work without actually working." The truth is, that a Negro, having no interest in his work while working for his master, will work only while the whip is upon him. I can no where make out the clear net annual earnings of a field Negro on a sugar plantation to come up to 8l. sterling. Now what does he earn in the course of a year when he is working for himself? I dare not repeat what some of the witnesses for the planters stated to the House of Commons, when representing the enviable condition of the slaves in the West Indies; for this would be to make him earn more for himself in one day than for his master in a week. Let us take then the lowest sum mentioned in the Book of Evidence. This is stated to be 14d. sterling per week; and 14d. sterling per week would make 3l. sterling per year. But how many days in the week does he work when he makes such annual earnings? The most time, which any of the witnesses gives to a field slave for his own private concerns, is every Sunday, and also every Saturday afternoon in the week, besides three holidays in the year. But this is far from being the general account. Many of them say that he has only Sunday to himself; and others, that even Sunday is occasionally trespassed upon by his master. It appears, also, that even where the afternoon is given him, it is only out of crop-time. Now let us take into the account the time lost by slaves in going backwards and forwards to their provision-grounds; for though some of these are described as being only a stone's throw from their huts, others are described as being one, and two, and three, and even four miles off; and let us take into the account also, that Sunday is, by the confession of all, the Negro market day, on which alone they can dispose of their own produce, and that the market itself may be from one to ten or fifteen miles from their homes, and that they who go there cannot be working in their gardens at the same time, and we shall find that there cannot be on an average more than a clear three quarters of a day in the week, which they can call their own, and in which they can work for themselves. But call it a whole day, if you please, and you will find that the slave does for himself in this one day more than a third of what he does for his master in six, or that he works more than three times harder when he works for himself than when he works for his master.
I have now shown, first by the evidence of Mr. Botham, and secondly by the fact of Negroes earning more in a given time when they work in their own gardens, than when they work in their master's service, that the old maxim "of its being cheaper to employ free men than slaves," is true, when applied to the operations and demands of West Indian agriculture. But if it be cheaper to employ free men than slaves in the West Indies, then they, who should emancipate their Negroes there, would promote their interest by so doing. "But hold!" says an objector, "we allow that their successors would be benefited, but not the emancipators themselves. These would have a great sacrifice to make. Their slaves are worth so much money at this moment; but they would lose all this value, if they were to set them free." I reply, and indeed I have all along affirmed, that it is not proposed to emancipate the slaves at once, but to prepare them for emancipation in a course of years. Mr. Steele did not make his slaves entirely free. They were copyhold-bond slaves. They were still his freehold property: and they would, if he had lived, have continued so for many years. They therefore, who should emancipate, would lose nothing of the value of their slaves, so long as they brought them only to the door of liberty, but did not allow them to pass through it. But suppose they were to allow them to pass through it and thus admit them to freedom, they would lose nothing by so doing; for they would not admit them to freedom till after a certain period of years, during which I contend that the value of every individual slave would have been reimbursed to them from the increased income of their estates. Mr. Steele, as we have seen, more than tripled the value of his income during his experiment: I believe that he more than quadrupled it; for he says, that he more than tripled it besides increasing his stock, and laying out large sums annually in adding necessary works, and in repairs of the damage by the great hurricane. Suppose then a West India estate to yield at this moment a nett income of 500l. per annum, this income would be increased, according to Mr. Steele's experience, to somewhere about 1700l. per annum. Would not, then, the surplus beyond the original 500l., viz. 1200l. per annum, be sufficient to reimburse the proprietor in a few years for the value of every slave which he had when he began his plan of emancipation? But he would be reimbursed again, that is, (twice over on the whole for every individual slave,) from a new source, viz. the improved value of his land. It is a fact well known in the United States, that a certain quantity of land, or farm, in full cultivation by free men, will fetch twice more money than the same quantity of land, similarly circumstanced, in full cultivation by slaves. Let us suppose now that the slaves at present on any West Indian plantation are worth about as much as the land with the buildings upon it, to which they are attached, and that the land with the buildings upon it would rise to double its former value when cultivated by free men, it follows that the land and buildings alone would be worth as much then, that is, when worked by free labourers, as the land, buildings, and slaves together are worth at the present time.