Some might wonder just how profitable cheap labor is...for those relative few who promote it. This was actually calculated at one time (in 1863) and the results published, and it was found to be very profitable indeed.
While visiting the city of London, appropriately enough, the former United States treasurer Robert J. Walker made the calculations utilizing US census data for 1860. He compared numbers for states which used almost entirely chattel slave labor such as South Carolina, with those which had a mix of cheap and slave labor, ie Maryland, and in turn compared those states with those which used mostly cheap labor, such as Massachusetts. One has to bear in mind that for 'cheap labor' the euphamism 'free labor' ('free' as opposed to 'slave') is used as the latter sounded a lot better, and that Massachusetts at that time was the center of US industry, and indeed, where US industry got started. It is the state where very large numbers of people were 'imported' and exploited as cheap labor in the many factories there.
Quote:
|
"By table 35 of the Census, p. 195, the whole value of the property, real and personal, of Massachusetts, in 1860, was $815, 237,433, and that of Maryland, $376,919,944. We have seen that the value of the products that year in Massachusetts was $287,000,000 (exclusive of commerce), and of Maryland, $66,000,000. As a question, then, of profit on capital, that of Massachusetts was 35 per cent, and of Maryland 17 per cent. Such is the progressive advance (more than two to one) of free as compared with slave labor. The same law obtains in comparing all the Free with all the Slave States. But the proof is still more complete. Thus, Deleware and Missouri (alone of all the Slave States) were ahead of Maryland in this rate of profit, because both had comparitively fewer slaves; and all the other Slave States, whose servile population was relatively larger than that of Maryland, were below her in the rate of profit. The law extends to counties, those having comparitively fewest slaves increasing far more rapidly in wealth and population. This, then, is the formula as to the rate of profit on capital. First, the Free States; next, the States and counties of the same State having the fewest relative number of slaves. The Census then is an evangel against slavery, and its tables are revelations proclaiming laws as divine as those written by the finger of God at Mount Sinai on the tables of stone."
|
The state which primarily utilized cheap 'free' labor had a
four times superior rate of profitability over a state using primarily chattel slavery. The variant of slavery called cheap labor was lucrative indeed...for a very small and selfish relative few...just as with slavery. And just as with chattel slavery, cheap labor is very destructive and detrimental to most, with the latter even more so, do to the huge numbers of persons involved.
Quote:
"The educated free labor of Massachusetts, we have seen, doubles the products of toil, per capita, as compared with Maryland, and quadruples them (as the Census shows) compared with South Carolina...."
|
Just as with chattel slavery, a person is not prepared to do the work themselves, nor pay for it, they then take on a 'cheap laborer' . Thus, while differing in form, in its essence and spirit cheap labor remains slavery, whatever they choose to call it.
The actual primary reason for the abolition of slavery. Notice what is listed first.
Quote:
|
"Slavery, then, the Census proves, is hostile to the progress of wealth and population...."
|
Compare the above statement from 1863 with this marked in bold made in 2006...
From Ireland, EU hears hum of cheap labor
By Monday, Western Europe must decide whether to lift restrictions on low-wage Eastern European immigrants.
April 27, 2006
By Peter Ford | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
DUBLIN, IRELAND – A scruffy 22-year-old Pole in an oily blue T-shirt, Rafal Dambiec is an unlikely symbol of the European Union's idealistic vision of its future.
Just getting off his night shift as a gas station attendant, all he wanted to do Tuesday morning was to go to bed.
Wolfing down an Irish breakfast of sausages, buttered bread, and tea, Mr. Dambiec is a pioneer - albeit unlikely - of the cross-border get-up-and-go that EU leaders say will be key to their continent's economic dynamism and political strength....
And as for Robert J. Walker, what exactly had he been doing prior to extolling the immensely superior profitability of cheap labor verses chattel slavery. According to the US government's official biography for him...
Quote:
|
"Moving to Mississippi to join his brother, Duncan, in a lucrative law practice, Walker became an impressive speculator in cotton, plantations, and slaves."
|
Of course!
Cornell University Making of America
From Ireland, EU hears hum of cheap labor | csmonitor.com
U.S. Treasury - Biography of Secretary Robert J. Walker