THE HISTORICAL ORIGIN OF SLAVERY.'

BENEATH the burden of an exhausting system of cultivation and of a progressive advance to lands of less fertility, the land conditions of all colonies by degrees change. They are soon removed from their primitive productive state. The productivity of the soil, indeed, still continues to be great, but it is soon less than it was during the original period when first cultivated. So, in America, we find an acre under extensive cultivation yields twenty-five to thirty bushels of wheat, thirty-five to forty bushels of oats, and forty to fifty bushels of hay. The seed gives an eight to ten fold increase. The meaning of these figures is plain. They indicate a greater production than is obtainable with the same capital in Europe at the present time. But it is far from being equal to what was common in the first age of the colonies.

Now the economic system formed on the ruins of collective property constantly tends to become incompatible with the diminishing productivity of the soil under cultivation. The stimulus of private property increases production. But the isolation of the producer tends to impede this movement. Soon a time comes at which the system is in contradiction with the demands of social life. Either the cultivator does. not produce enough for his own maintenance or, independently of this fact, there is not enough produced to support the non-agricultural class, without whose existence civil society is hardly possible. Therefore at this point arises the necessity of forming a new type of association, one resting not on the basis of collective property which limits production, but on the basis of private property. But if the diminishing productivity of the land is sufficient to bring about the necessity of a system of collective production, it is yet con

1 A fragment of the "Analysis of the Theory of Capital" by Prof. A. Loria, of the University of Padua, translated, with the author's permission, by W. Lloyd Bevan.

siderable enough to exclude the association of voluntary labor; for the existence of fertile and untilled soil permits the free laborer to occupy it on his own account. Hence it excludes also the forced association of labor based on the wage sys

tem.

Thus arises an increasing contrast between the demand and supply of agricultural products, followed by a series of limitations to social production. These conditions finally become intolerable in the face of an increasing population. The colonists are in a constant state of anxiety over the fate of their new social organization. In Virginia the utterly miserable conditions of production necessitated the importation of an enormous quantity of products. The British government was impelled to intrust the investigation of the cause of the idleness of the people to a commission. The cause was nothing but the absence of the association of labor. So when five hundred workingmen, emigrants from Europe, arrived in the colony, they were greeted with great joy. It was hoped that the era of wages would commence; that industry on a small scale and the isolation of the producer would soon disappear. But these hopes were vain. Nature herself had not conferred on these five hundred men the character of wage-earners. The free land of Virginia changed them instantly into independent tillers of the soil. The decay of the colony increased with their advent. Its future was regarded now as desperate.

But an incident happened, apparently of no importance, which actually exerted a fundamental influence on American economic history. A Dutch negro slave ship, driven by scarcity of provisions, in 1620, put into the James river. The colonists, whose one cry was, "Get hold of laborers," received this gift of fortune as if it had come down from heaven. It meant the acquisition of a band of laborers who would remain in their employ despite every seduction offered by the unoccupied lands. And they purchased the slaves. This is the origin of American slavery.

From this time on begins the second phase of the colonies,

in which slavery is erected on the ruins of the original economic system. It fulfills its historic mission by taking the place of an inadequate and backward system of production. It accelerates the progress of civilization, but it does so at the cost of humanity. With the institution of slavery the causes which hindered the development of the colony came to an immediate end. The isolation ended, and with it ended industry on a small scale. The individual producers were no longer burdened by anxiety. Virginia sprang into new life, and with her America, where slavery was diffused, made marvelously rapid bounds.

As long as the supply of slaves was not yet abundant, an effort was made to reduce the small proprietors themselves into slavery, by means of a system of credit not very unlike the Latin nexum. Accordingly, we read in a report on the State of Virginia, presented to the Board of Trade under Queen Anne: "Along every river are to be found men, who by industry and traffic acquire farms. These individuals take care to furnish the poor with goods and produce, and are sure of making them their debtors, and therefore their dependents." This is a perfect reproduction of the Roman nexi.

But soon slavery in America took on a more definite and more rigid form. The first statute establishing slavery in the New World was the famous code of Fundamentals or Body of Liberties of Massachusetts Colony. The first time in which the sale of slaves is mentioned in Massachusetts is in 1637. Before 1631 it had been laid down that all those who had committed any offense should be sold as slaves, until their services had paid the fine which had been imposed upon them, and that criminals should be slaves for life. In 1669 the proprietors of Carolina, dissatisfied with their system of production, sanctioned a body of laws compiled by the philosopher, Locke. It established the most degrading slavery, since the ownership of a negro was accorded to every free man.

Animated by an insatiable desire for laborers, the colonies

of America ordained that a free woman, who cohabited with a negro, slave or free, should become a slave for seven years. Who does not see here a recourse to legislation common in Europe in mediæval and in Roman times? In Maryland the free negro who married a white woman became a slave. In South Carolina, if a free negro harbored a fugitive slave, even if his wife or his son, he became a slave. In Georgia a colored man entering the State had either to pay one hundred dollars or become a slave for life. In Virginia all emancipated slaves remaining in the State a year again became slaves. Some vine-growers from Europe, engaged to work in the colony, were forced to work as slaves when they refused to adhere to their contract. Finally, the laws of the colony prescribed that each nonChristian immigrant should become a slave if he were not baptized as soon as he landed there.

Yet it was not legislation which instituted slavery in the colonies; it only sanctioned existing facts. Sometimes it made the process more intolerable. The State, in fact, did not hesitate to face the most terrible consequences of slavery. In Massachusetts the fugitive slave was to be caught and restored to his master. The Fugitive Slave Act (November, 1792) gave slave-owners an unlimited right to pursue fugitive slaves. This act was approved unanimously by the U. S. Senate, and in Congress only seven votes were cast against it. In 1790 every State of the Union, excepting Massachusetts (which was the first to abolish slavery, in 1781), possessed slaves, and in those States where they were to be found in considerable numbers they formed the great majority of the population. Not only were they engaged in agriculture, but also in manufactures and in commerce, and as in the time of Tacitus, they were divided into various familiæ, according to their respective occupations.

In the island of San Domingo the favorites of the government received immense donations of land; but finding them an empty honor, on account of the absence of laborers, they were obliged to request that a certain number of natives

should accompany each donation. This system, called repartimientos, was likewise established by the conquerors of Mexico and Peru, although it was forbidden by the Spanish crown. Even the negroes of Hayti, who took forcible possession of the landed property by killing the white owners, and on that account were at no expense in starting their plantations, perceived that it was impossible to make an adequate profit out of them without slavery.

In Australia recourse was had to a method not less extraordinary although less cruel. This was the convict system. Those condemned to be deported became merchandise. Sometimes gratuitously, more frequently for a money payment, they were handed over to the capitalist who, impelled by the scanty supply of labor which was ruining him, employed the convicts in the work of production. We shall not delay the reader with the curious but far from edifying consequences of the system which turned European crime into a factor of Australian production. We will only say that the least offensive consequence was the unlimited competition which raged among the capitalist class. They fought among themselves for these profitable outcasts of the mother country, and so intense was the competition that those individuals who were less energetic in acquiring convicts were finally excluded from production. We can easily understand the impulse which this system gave to the concentration of wealth. It was accompanied during the fiftytwo years in which it lasted by a mass of abuses and wicked acts of violence. Its abolition, in 1832, was greeted in the colonies by a general feeling of relief, both because it was intolerable to a free people, and because it was rendered unnecessary by the increasing offer of paid labor.

This rapid and general organization of production by slavery proves in an eloquent manner that at a certain stage of development "colonies are impossible without slavery.' Hence wherever a premature abolition of slavery took place the ruin of the colony was inevitable. This was true in Hayti, where, after freedom was given to the slaves, every