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or who are so employed as to be wholly unproductive to the State, at one hundred and twenty-five thousand. Any man who is an observer of things could hardly pass through our country, without being struck with the fact that all the capital, enterprise, and intelligence, is employed in directing slave labor; and the consequence is, that a large portion of our poor white people are wholly neglected, and are suffered to while away an existence in a state but one step in advance of the Indian of the forest. It is an evil of vast magnitude, and nothing but a change in public sentiment will effect its cure. These people must be brought into daily contact with the rich and intelligent-they must be stimulated to mental action, and taught to appreciate education and the comforts of civilized life; and this, we believe, may be effected only by the introduction of manufactures. My experience at Graniteville has satisfied me that unless our poor people can be brought together in villages, and some means of employment afforded them, it will be an utterly hopeless effort to undertake to educate them. We have collected at that place about eight hundred people, and as likely looking a set of country girls as may be found-industrious and orderly people, but deplorably ignorant, three-fourths of the adults not being able to read or to write their own names.

"It is only necessary to build a manufacturing village of shanties, in a healthy location, in any part of the State, to have crowds of their people around you, seeking employment at half the compensation given to operatives at the North. It is indeed painful to be brought in contact with such ignorance and degradation."

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"Shall we pass unnoticed the thousands of poor, ignorant, degraded white people among us, who, in this land of plenty, live in comparative nakedness and starvation? Many a one is reared in proud South Carolina, from birth to manhood, who has never passed a month in which he has not, some part of the time, been stinted for meat. Many a mother is there who will tell you that her children are but scantily provided with bread,

and much more scantily with meat; and, if they be clad with comfortable raiment, it is at the expense of these scanty allowances of food. These may be startling statements, but they are nevertheless true; and if not believed in Charleston, the members of car legislature who have traversed the State in electioneering campaigns can attest the truth.”

In an article on "Manufactures in South Carolina," pubIshed some time ago in DeBor's Review, J. H. Taylor, of Charleston (S. C.) says:

- There is in some quarters, a natural jealousy of the slightest iration upon established habits, and because an effort has been made to e-llect the poor and unemployed white population into our new factories, fears have arisen that some evil would grow out of the introduction of such establishments among $ The poor man has a vote as well as the rich man, an incur State the number of the former will largely overbalance the latter. So long as these poor but industrious people can see no mode of Lving except by a degrading operation of work with the Demo upon the plantatra, they will be content to endure life in its most discouraging firms, satisfied that they are above the slave, though faring often worse than he."

Speaking in favor of manufactures, the Hon. J. H. Lumpkin, of Georgia, said in 1852:

-It is objected that these manufacturing establishments will become the bot beds of crime. But I am by no means ready to concode that car poor. degraded, half-fed, half-clothed, and vonat popsatis-without Sabbath Schools, or any other kind of instruction mental or moral or without any just apprecation of character-will be injured by giving them employment, bring them under the oversight of employers, who by me them with respect by taking an interest in their

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379

In a paper on the "Extension of Cotton and Wool Factories at the South," Mr. Steadman, of Tennessee, says :

FACTS AND ARGUMENTS BY THE WAYSIDE.

"In Lowell, labor is paid the fair compensation of 80 cents a day for men, and $2 a week for women, beside board, while in Tennessee the average compensation for labor does not exceed 50 cents per day for men, and $1,25 per week for women."

In the course of a speech which he delivered in Congress several years ago, Mr. T. L. Clingman, of North Carolina, said :

"Our manufacturing establishments can obtain the raw material (cotton) at nearly two cents on the pound cheaper than the New-England establishments. Labor is likewise one hundred per cent. cheaper. In the upper parts of the State, the labor of either a free man or a slave, including board, clothing, &c., can be obtained for from $110 to $120 per annum. It will cost at least twice that sum in New-England. The difference in the cost of female labor, whether free or slave, is even greater."

The Richmond (Va.) Dispatch says:

"We will only suppose that the ready-made shoes imported into this city from the North, and sold here, were manufactured in Richmond. What a great addition it would be to the means of employment! How many boys and females would find the means of earning their bread, who are now suffering for a regular supply of the necessaries of life."

A citizen of New-Orleans, writing in De Bow's Review, says:

"At present the sources of employment open to females (save in menial offices) are very limited; and an inability to procure suitable occupation is an evil much to be deplored, as tending in its consequences to produce demoralization. The superior grades of female labor may be considered such as imply a necessity for

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Back save labor, though far less valuable, is almost variably bester paid than free white labor. The reason is this: The fat of the oligarchy has made it fashionable to "Tave negmes athund and there are, we are grieved to gastles,, who, in

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social standing in Lep desire in a perpetual strait. vipes as boss to ascertain image pad for free and slave, in find slan ergetic white men, my pan fag.. engaged in agriat a salary of $54 per annum-including De slaves, performed little more at to flavor and why were exceedingly ad anise a their movements, asing farms at an average of about atom. inlving board ch thing, and medical The wind set and slaves were in the em

.. Tarina Balrad Company; the former, nario, were at least twice as valservices of the latter, received only $12 per munth each; the masters of the latter received $16 per month for every slave so employed. Industrious, tidy

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381

white girls, from sixteen to twenty years of age, had much difficulty in hiring themselves out as domestics in private families for $40 per annum-board only included; negro wenches, slaves, of corresponding ages, so ungraceful, stupid and filthy that no decent man would ever permit one of them to cross the threshold of his dwelling, were in brisk demand at from $65 to $70 per annum, including victuals, clothes, and medical attendance. These are facts, and in considering them, the students of political and social economy will not fail to arrive at conclusions of their

own.

FACTS AND ARGUMENTS BY THE WAYSIDE.

Notwithstanding the greater density of population in the free States, labor of every kind is, on an average, about one hundred per cent. higher there than it is in the slave States. This is another important fact, and one that every non-slaveholding white should keep registered in his mind.

Poverty, ignorance, and superstition, are the three leading characteristics of the non-slaveholding whites of the South. Many of them grow up to the age of maturity, and pass through life without even owning as much as five dollars at any one time. Thousands of them die at an advanced age, as ignorant of the common alphabet as if it had never been invented. All are more or less impressed with a belief in witches, ghosts, and supernatural signs. Few are exempt from habits of sensuality and intemperance. None have anything like adequate ideas of the duties which they owe either to their God, to themselves, or to their fellow-men. Pitiable, indeed, in the fullest sense of the term, is their condition.

It is the almost utter lack of an education that has re

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