§ 3. Capital and labour among agricultural tribes.

We have seen that among the purely agricultural tribes of the second and third stages there are altogether 76 positive and 44 negative cases, i. e. more than three-fifths of them keep slaves. These numbers make it probable, that the existence of slavery among agricultural tribes has to be accounted for by general causes, that agricultural life as such is favourable to the growth of slavery. We have to inquire now, whether this supposition is justified by an application of the general principle laid down in § 6 of the second chapter, i. e. whether among agricultural tribes subsistence is dependent on capital, and if not, whether it is easy or difficult to procure.

It appears that, where agriculture is carried on without the aid of domestic animals, subsistence does not depend on capital. The savage agriculturist is unacquainted with the more perfect and costly agricultural implements used in Europe, and, where population is scarce (as it is among most savages) cultivates only such grounds as are most fertile and easiest of access. Even the plough is used by very few savages; they most often content themselves with a pointed stick or hoe, wherefore Hahn calls the agriculture carried on by them hoe-culture (Hackbau), as distinguished from agriculture proper (Ackerbau). [Hahn, Die Haustiere, pp. 388 sqq.] And even where agriculture is carried on in a more skilful manner, e. g. by means of irrigation, it is not capital that is wanted, but labour. The construction of the irrigation-works may be a long and laborious task, but the materials cost nothing. There is only one instance in which we have found it stated that agriculture cannot well be carried on without capital. Radloff tells us that the Kazak Kirghiz, besides rearing cattle, are largely agricultural. Some fields want constant irrigation, and the water is very difficult to procure. The rich use a paddle-wheel; the poor bring the water to their fields in buckets and wooden vessels, but this is of little avail. Therefore it is only the rich who are capable of carrying on agriculture to any considerable extent. [Kadloff, Aus Sibirien, I pp. 463-465.] But this state of things probably had not yet existed more than some 30 years; for [298] Levchine (writing about 30 years earlier than Radloff) states that in his time agriculture was of little importance; and he does not make any mention of irrigation.[Levchine, p. 413.] The introduction of the paddlewheel has therefore probably to be ascribed to the Russians; for the Kazak Kirghiz, in Radloff's time, were already strongly influenced by them; so we may not speak here of a fact belonging to savage life. We have not found any other instance of this dependence of agriculture on capital; but even if there be a few instances, we are justified in concluding that, generally speaking, the savage agriculturist can perfectly well do without capital, except, of course, where he depends on cattle.

Moreover, subsistence is fairly easy to procure. Agriculture, where it is carried on in such simple manner as among most savages, does not require much skill or application. As compared with hunting, seafaring and manufactures, it is rather dull work, requiring patience rather than strength or skill. It is one of the occupations about which there is no excitement, and which in many primitive societies are performed by the women. Hunting requires personal qualities, and a good hunter is held in high esteem; but we have not found it stated in a single instance, that a man's influence or power depends on his ability in agriculture.

Subsistence, therefore, is independent of capital and easy to procure. Every one is able to clear apiece of ground and provide for himself; nobody offers his services to another, and so, if a man wants a labourer, he must compel his fellow-man to work for him. "All freemen in new countries" says Bagehot "must be pretty equal; every one has labour, and every one has land; capital, at least in agricultural countries (for pastoral countries are very different), is of little use; it cannot hire labour; the labourers go and work for themselves. There is a story often told of a great English capitalist who went out to Australia with a shipload of labourers and a carriage; his plan was that the labourers should build a house for him, and that he would keep his carriage, just as in England. But (so the story goes) he had to try to live in his carriage, for [299] his labourers left him, and went away to work for themselves".[Bagehot, pp. 72, 73. Hutter (pp. 353, 354), speaking of the Bali tribes of Cameroon, remarks that there is a difference between rich and poor, but the poor are not so badly off as in Europe, for the land is open to every one.] Similarly, Sombart observes: "Colonies, in which there are no labourers to exploit, are like knives without blades". [Sombart, I p. 342.] In such countries, if a man wants others to work in his service and according to his instructions, he must compel them to do so, i. e. he must enslave them. And agriculture, requiring little skill and application, is very fit to be imposed upon slaves: compulsory agricultural labour, though not so productive as voluntary labour, can yet yield some profit. Moreover, the agricultural slave is rather easy to control; his work does not require independent action. It is also easy to prevent him from running away. In all this he differs from a hunting slave. And agriculture is also more favourable to the existence of slavery than cattle-breeding; for among pastoral tribes there is but a fixed and rather small amount of work to be done; but where men subsist by agriculture, any increase in the number of slaves brings about an increase of food.

We cannot, therefore, agree with Adam Smith, who asserts that in those countries where slaves are employed, it would be more profitable to employ free labourers, and that it was, in general, pride and love of power in the master that led to the employment of slaves. [Adam Smith as referred to by Ingram, p. 282. Loria (p. 97) also holds that production was decreased by the introduction of slavery.] A free labourer, it is true, is more interested in the work he has to do, and therefore likely to do it better, than a slave; but in those countries where there is an abundance of fertile soil, and capital is of little use, free labourers cannot be had; every freeman prefers working for himself, or perhaps not working at all.

Cairnes, speaking of Negro slavery as it was carried on in the United States, admits that slave labour has sometimes an advantage over free labour, but only where tobacco, cotton and similar crops are raised for industrial purposes, not where cereals are grown. "The economic advantages of slavery" he remarks "are easily stated: they are all comprised in the fact that the employer of slaves has absolute power over his workmen, [300] and enjoys the disposal of the whole fruit of their labours. Slave labour, therefore, admits of the most complete organization; that is to say, it may be combined on an extensive scale, and directed by a controlling mind to a single end, and its cost can never rise above that which is necessary to maintain the slave in health and strength. On the other hand, the economical defects of slave labour are very serious. They may be summed up under the three following heads: -- it is given reluctantly; it is unskilful; it is wanting in versatility . . . . The line dividing the Slave from the Free States marks also an important division in the agricultural capabilities of North America. North of this line, the products for which the soil and climate are best adapted are cereal crops, while south of it the prevailing crops are tobacco, rice, cotton, and sugar; and these two classes of crops are broadly distinguished in the methods of culture suitable to each. The cultivation of the one class, of which cotton may be taken as the type, requires for its efficient conduct that labour should be combined and organized on an extensive scale. On the other hand, for the raising of cereal crops this condition is not so essential. Even where labour is abundant and that labour free, the large capitalist does not in this mode of farming appear on the whole to have any preponderating advantage over the small proprietor, who, with his family, cultivates his own farm, as the example of the best cultivated states in Europe proves. Whatever superiority he may have in the power of combining and directing labour seems to be compensated by the greater energy and spirit which the sense of property gives to the exertions of the small proprietor. But there is another essential circumstance in which these two classes of crops differ. A single labourer, Mr. Russell tells us, can cultivate twenty acres of wheat or Indian corn, while he cannot manage more than two of tobacco, or three of cotton. It appears from this that tobacco and cotton fulfil that condition which we saw was essential to the economical employment of slaves -- the possibility of working large numbers within a limited space; while wheat and Indian corn, in the cultivation of which the labourers are dispersed over a wide surface, fail in this respect. We thus find that cotton, and the class of crops of which [301] cotton may be taken as the type, favour the employment of slaves in competition with peasant proprietors in two leading ways: first, they need extensive combination and organization of labour-- requirements which slavery is eminently calculated to supply, but in respect to which the labour of peasant proprietors is defective; and secondly, they allow of labour being concentrated, and thus minimize the cardinal evil of slave labour -- the reluctance with which it is yielded. On the other hand, the cultivation of cereal crops, in which extensive combination of labour is not important, and in which the operations of industry are widely diffused, offers none of these advantages for the employment of slaves, while it is remarkably fitted to bring out in the highest degree the especial excellencies of the industry of free proprietors. Owing to these causes it has happened that slavery has been maintained in the Southern States [Cairnes wrote in 1862.], which favour the growth of tobacco, cotton, and analogous products, while, in the Northern States, of which cereal crops are the great staple, it from an early period declined and has ultimately died out. And, in confirmation of this view, it may be added that wherever in the Southern States the external conditions are especially favourable to cereal crops, as in parts of Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri, and along the slopes of the Alleghanies, there slavery has always failed to maintain itself. It is owing to this cause that there now exists in some parts of the South a considerable element of free labouring population". [Cairnes, pp. 43, 44, 49-52.]

This reasoning is quite correct so far as Negro slavery in the United States is concerned: but it does not hold with regard to primitive slavery or "retail slavery" as Bagehot calls it. The few slaves kept in primitive agricultural societies work together with their masters, who can therefore continually supervise their work and do not want overseers. Moreover, the slave in primitive and simple societies is not looked upon as a piece of machinery; he is, so to speak, an inferior member of the family, sharing in its pleasures, sorrows, and occupations; therefore it is not only the fear of punishment that induces him to work; he is interested in the welfare of the family, and knows that the better he works, the more he will be valued, and the more food there will be of which he will get his due share. [Such was the slave system of the ancient Germans described by Tactitus: "You cannot tell master from slave by any distinction in education: they spend their time among the same flocks, upon the same land, until age separates the nobles and their valour causes them to be acknowledged." Tacitus, Germania, 20. On the character of primitive slavery, see also Schmoller, Grundriss, I p. 339.] This retail slavery, as Bagehot remarks, "the slavery in which a master owns a few slaves, whom he well knows and daily sees -- is not at all an intolerable state; the slaves of Abraham had no doubt a fair life, as things went in that day. But wholesale slavery, where men are but one of the investments of large capital, and where a great owner, so far from knowing each slave, can hardly tell how many gangs of them he works, is an abominable state".[Bagehot, pp. 73, 74; see also Flügel, p. 96, and Jhering's excellent description of the character of slavery in early Rome (Jhering, II Part I pp. 172 sqq.] Retail slavery, therefore, can very well exist where cereal crops are raised; it is even the most convenient system of labour in primitive agricultural societies.

We see that the general economic state of truly agricultural tribes may account for the existence of slavery among so many of these tribes. We shall now inquire what secondary causes there are at work among agricultural tribes, and what effect they have. But we shall have to speak first of a great factor in economic life, which we have not met with before.

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