to those of 1815-16; and from an area of cultivation that, because of the unceasing exhaustion of the soil, had been again enormously extended.* Such being the case, it may well be doubted if the actual quantity of money, or money's worth, that reached the planter in exchange for these 1,034,000,000, was much more than twice as great as that his predecessors had received for 80,000,000. Making the smallest allowance for additional transportation, he was here giving three pounds for the same money that before had been received for one.

1850-1851

average, pounds 781,000,000

$92,000,000

The great fact is here presented to us, that the less cotton the planter sends to market, the more money he obtains in exchange for it. In this case, there is a saving of internal transportation, as compared with 1849, upon 245,000,000, and an increase of gross receipt amounting to $26,000,000. Allowing for the additional freight, as compared with 1821, the producer was now not giving more than two pounds for the price received before for one.

*The following paragraph is from a speech of a distinguished citizen of Alabama, and exhibits the action of the system in a State that but forty years since had no existence :

"I can show you, with sorrow, in the older portions of Alabama, and in my native county of Madison, the sad memorials of the artless and exhausting culture of cotton. Our small planters, after taking the cream off their lands, unable to restore them by rest, manures, or otherwise, are going further West and South in search of other virgin lands, which they may and will despoil and impoverish in like manner. Our wealthier planters, with greater means and no more skill, are buying out their poorer neighbors, extending their plantations, and adding to their slave force. The wealthy few, who are able to live on smaller profits, and to give their blasted fields some rest, are thus pushing off the many who are merely independent. Of the twenty millions of dollars annually realized from the sales of the cotton crop of Alabama, nearly all not expended in supporting the producers is reinvested in land and negroes. Thus, the white population has decreased, and the slave increased almost puri passu, in several counties of our State. In 1825, Madison county cast about 3000 votes; now, she cannot cast exceeding 2300. In traversing that county, one will discover numerous farmhouses, once the abode of industrious and intelligent freemen, now occupied by slaves, or tenantless, deserted, and dilapidated; he will observe fields, once fertile, now unfenced, abandoned, and covered with those evil harbingers, foxtail and broomsedge; he will see the moss growing on the mouldering walls of once thrifty villages, and will find one only master grasps the whole domain' that once furnished happy homes for a dozen white families. Indeed, a country in its infancy, where fifty years ago scarce a forest tree had been felled by the axe of the pioneer, is already exhibiting the painful signs of senility and decay apparent in Virginia and the Carolinas."-C. C. Clay.

For the exhaustion and poverty of South Carolina, one of the older States, see ante, p. 88.

1852

pounds 1,093,000,000

$88,000,000

Here is an increase of 312,000,000 of pounds requiring to be transported, accompanied with a diminution of gross receipt amounting to $4,000,000; and a diminution of net receipt that cannot be estimated at less than $10,000,000. As compared with 1815-16, the planter must here have been giving five pounds for the price he before had received for one.

-

The course of things above described is without a parallel in the In the natural order of affairs, the cultivator profits by the improvements in the machinery of conversion, his products rising in their price as the finished commodities fall-rags becoming dearer as paper becomes cheaper — and wool going up as cloth goes down. Here, however, all is different. In the forty years above referred to, each and every one has brought with it an improvement in the modes of converting cotton into cloth, until at length the labor of a single person is more productive than that of four or five had been before; and yet, so far are these improvements from having been attended with any increase of price, that we find the planters giving steadily more and more cotton for less money - and thus affording the most conclusive proof of a tendency towards barbarism.

The cause of all this being, as we are told, that too much cotton is produced, the planters hold meetings with a view to reduction in the quantity; and yet, from year to year, the crop grows larger; the area over which it requires to be grown becomes more and more extended; and the net proceeds decline in the proportion they bear to the population of the States in which it is produced. In 1815, that population amounted to 2,250,000, whereas in 1850, it exceeded 6,000,000. In the first, the gross proceeds of 80,000,000 pounds were $20,500,000; whereas, in 1849, 1,026,000,000, with all the vast increase of freight, were given for $66,000,000; and the total gross proceeds of the crop could but little have exceeded $80,000,000. Struggle as the planter may, the case is still the same he being required to give from year to year more cotton for less money; and that, too, in defiance of a great natural law in virtue of which he should have more money for less cotton.

§ 9. We are thus presented with the remarkable fact, that the two chief products of the Union are steadily declining in their power to command money in exchange; and that so far are the farmer and planter from dividing with the consumer of their products the advantages resulting from improved machinery of transportation and conversion, that the latter gets it all, and more the former obtaining less money, the more produce he has to sell. It is asserted, however, that all this is in strict accordance with some great law, in virtue of which every thing tends to become cheap; but a brief examination of the general movement of prices will probably satisfy the reader, that the only law with which it is in accordance is that human one, denounced by Adam Smithhaving for its object the cheapening of the raw products of the earth, the establishment of the supremacy of trade, and the reduction of man to the condition of a mere instrument to be used by the trader-or, in other words, to that of a slave.

The reader has already seen* that the price of sheep's wool in England has doubled in the last eighty years; and that, too, notwithstanding the extraordinary extent to which cotton in that period has been substituted for wool. If there was any commodity whatever by which the theory of reduction of prices could have been supported, this would certainly have been the one; and yet the facts are directly opposed thereto. In France, too, wool has greatly risen. In Germany, it is now so much higher than it was in the olden time, that that country has become a great importer, where formerly it was a large exporter of this commodity. Looking next to silk, we find the following remarkable illustration of the great law that lies at the foundation of all progress in civilization, furnished by the Report on the Commerce and Navigation of France. In that document, we have the official value, established about thirty years since, of all the commodities exported and imported, side by side with their actual value, and are thus enabled to study the changes that are now going on, and measure their extent. How great they are, and how precisely they move in the direction that has been indicated, is shown in the fact, that while sewing silks have fallen from 95 to 53 francs per pound, cocoons have risen from 3 to 14 francs.†

* See ante, p. 96.

Tableau General du Commerce de la France, 1854, p. 82.

Turning now to Mr. Tooke's valuable table of prices in the period from 1782 to 1838, and taking the first and last decades thereof, we obtain the following results :-*

In all these cases, the producer was profiting by the increased facilities of transportation and conversion-obtaining larger prices. for all he had to sell, with constant increase in his power to improve his own machinery, and thus augment the quantity produced; whereas, in those of flour and cotton, he is seen to have been receiving smaller prices, with constantly growing difficulty resulting, as will be shown, from the constant exportation of the elements of which flour and cotton are composed.

We are told, however, that in the case of cotton, the decline of price is a necessary consequence of a growth in the supply exceeding the wants of the world; and therefore it is that the planters hold meetings for the purpose of devising measures tending to the limitation of the quantity to be planted. In so doing, however, they are only repeating the operation performed at an earlier period in Virginia, in reference to tobacco; and thus it is, that like causes produce like effects. The real difficulty is now, as it was then,

*History of Prices, vol. ii. Appendix.

Occasional blanks in Mr. Tooke's tables render it difficult to give the comparative prices with perfect exactness, but they are here given as nearly accurately as possible. In all cases, his second column of prices has been taken- that being generally the most complete.

In this case, the prices are given, duty paid, and the amount of duty had been, in the intermediate period, increased about 20s. per cwt.

Duty free.

Duty, 1s. per pound.

In 1632, the Legislature of Virginia passed a law for limiting the culti vation, and raising the price, of tobacco. In 1639-the price having fallen to threepence a pound the Assembly enacted that half of the crop should be burned. In 1643, premiums were offered with a view to secure the diversification of agricultural employments, and thus raise the price of tobacco. In 1662, the Assembly passed various acts to compel a diversification of industry — enforcing the planting of mulberry-trees, offering premiums for

to be found in the total absence of diversification of employments -producing a necessity for unceasing waste of labor, and unceasing exhaustion of the soil, accompanied by a destruction of the value of the land, and of the man by whom it is cultivated.

The reduction of the price of flour, and of cotton, is not, as the reader has seen, in accordance with any general law. On the contrary, it is in direct opposition to a great law whose existence is everywhere manifest. Neither is the reduction in the price of cotton a consequence of any excess in the quantity produced, as the reader will be satisfied when he reflects that the total quantity produced in the world is not equal to two pounds per head; whereas, the quantity that should be used cannot be limited to ten, or even twenty, pounds per head. Such being the case, the difficulty, it is clear, does not lie in the excess of production, but in the deficiency of consumption; and if the cause of this deficiency could be discovered, and a remedy therefor applied, the planter might go on increasing his quantity from year to yearthe price of his cotton steadily rising, and that of cloth as steadily falling, precisely as we see to be the case with rags and paper, cocoons and silks, sheep's wool and cloth, flax and linen.

The larger the price of corn, the greater will be the power of the farmer to purchase cloth, and the greater will be the quantity of money obtainable by the planter in return for any given quantity of cotton. The tendency of American policy, however, is towards reducing the price of corn throughout the world, and, as a necessary consequence, towards destroying the power of the people of France and Germany, Russia and Austria, England and Ireland, to purchase cloth. That such is the case will be

silk, for ships built, for woollen and linen cloth, home-made. Two acres of corn-or one of wheat-were to be cultivated for every tithable; and a tanhouse, with curriers and shoemakers attached, was to be established at the public expense in each county, hides being received at a fixed price, to be manufactured into shoes, and sold at rates prescribed in the statute.

In 1666, an arrangement was effected, by which acts were passed by the Assemblies of both Maryland and Virginia, ordering "a cessation," that is, an omission to plant tobacco for one year, so as to raise its price! The proprietary of Maryland vetoed the Maryland act, and the project failing, new legislative efforts were made for the production of manufactures-"every county being required to set up a loom at its own expense, and to provide a weaver." In 1682- the price of tobacco having fallen to a penny - the colonists could scarcely buy the common necessaries of life, and further, but equally unsuccessful, efforts were made to counteract the working of the system that limited the colonists to the rude labors of the field.