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Show 122 DESPOTISI\1 long as the number of slaves whic~l a person P?Sscsscs, is small the investment is excccdmgly prccanous. The ~ecessity of a great capital, and the wastefulness with which that capital is employed, suillcicntly explain the fact, why in all those occupations in which the industry of the free states has come into competition with the labor of slaves, the free states have been able to undersell their rivals. Slave labor is only profitably employed in those kinds of business, snch as the cultivation of cotton, rice, and sugar, in which the climate and soil of the northern states prevent the people of those states from engaging. In the cultivation of grain, the raising of stock, and all the operations of farming agriculture, the profits of the slave-holding cultivators are notoriously small, and many a large slave-holder grows poor in that same pursuit, which enriches the farmer of Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York, who begins life with no other resource than his own capacity to labor. Hence that heavy draitl of emigration, hence that fatal domestic slave trade, which aggravates the poverty of the older of the slave states, by carrying off that labor, which constitutes the principal means of economical prosperity. This same necessity for a great capital, in order to undertake any industrious enterprise, and the same necessary wastefulness in the employment of that capital, afford also one reason among many others, why it has been found unprofitable to set up manufacturing establishmevts at the south. It is not only necessary to build your factory, and to buy yonr machinery and stock, but before you can commence operations, you must expend a still larger sum in the purchase of laborers. Apart from everything else, a suillcient reason for the non-establishment of manufactures at the South, is to be found in the fact, that at the North, the same annual quantity of manufactured products can be turned out, with the employment of much less than half the amount of capital, which would be necessary for the same purpose at the South. IN Al\lEitiCA. 123 SECTION Ill. Agriculture in the Slave-holding States. lf we may believe John Taylor of Caroline, the !luther o~ A_ra_tor,,or J\1r.,Rnil11_1, the ingenious ed itor of the Vt_rg~nta 1· armers I~egt.slcr, the best agricultural penodtcal ever published in the United l>tates agriculture at the South docS not consist so much it~ cultivating land, as in killing it. 'rhe process is as follows. A qnantity of virgin soil , in those of the slave states in which a~y such soil is yet to be found, is cleared up every wmter. The trees arc cut down and burnt or merely gird led, and left to decay and fall with th~ lapse of time. When tobacco is the crop, this fresh !and 1 ~ pla~ted with tobacco each successive year till · tls fertthty JS exhausted. When it will no longer prodt~ ce tobacc~o, 1t IS planted with corn or wheat, till it w11l not atlord a crop worth gathering. It is then turned out, that 1s, lett unfenced and uncultivated to grow up wit.h thickets of sassafras or pcrsim t~on bns.hes., or w1.th forests of the .short·lcaved pine,-a !'l"mJest.JC tree m appearance, but the timber of which JS subJeCt to so rapid a decay, as to be of little or no value. In the cotton-growing states, corn and cotton are planted alternately, till the land is completely worn out. 'Vhen 1.ts original fertility is exhausted, no further attempt 1s made at its cultivation. lt is turned ant, and t.hc labor of the plantation is applied to new fields, 'vhtch presently undergo a similar fate. Thus, every year, a certain quantity of land is aivcn over as. 'yorthless, and new inroads arc made t~upon the ongmal fore~t. Agriculture becomes a contiuual proce~ s, o_f op?n1ng new fields, and abandoning tile old. I h1s ~r1ef account of soutl1ern agriculture, will serve to explam the remarkable fact that what we shou ld call improved lands, that is, Jands which have been |