H. J. Nieboer

“ We think slavery and serfdom can only be accounted for by a general scarcity of labour. When labour is everywhere scarce a labourer who leaves his employer can everywhere find employment, whereas an employer cannot easily procure labourers; it is then the interest of the employer to prevent his labourers from leaving him. But the mere lack of intercourse limits the labourer in his choice of employment even more than it limits the employer in his choice of labourers. ”

“ But then there must be other slaves who, by performing productive labour, provide for their master, their fellow-slaves, and themselves. There cannot be a class of unproductive labourers, without there being a class of productive labourers too. We can only imagine one case, in which all slaves might be kept as a mere luxury. It might be, that there were a class of productive labourers consisting of freemen, who provided for the slave-owners and their unproductive slaves. There might, for instance, be an aristocracy, levying taxes on the common people and keeping slaves as a luxury. ”

“ The rich have no interest to keep the labourers in a slave-like state. It may even be their interest to set them free, either in order to deprive them of such rights over the land as they may have acquired in the course of time, or to bring about a determination of the wages of labour by the law of supply and demand, instead of by custom. They will thus, without any compulsion except that exercized by the automatic working of the social system, secure a larger share in the produce of labour than they got before by compulsion. ”

“ There was a time, the time of the good old patriarchal theory, when the condition of children in the early stages of social life was thought to be one of complete subjection to the head of the family, the pater familias, who had over them an unlimited power, extending to the power of life and death. Carey, among others, holds this view, and very plainly expresses it. “By nothing is the progress of mankind in population and wealth made more manifest than by the change in the relation of parent and child. In the infancy of cultivation the one is a tyrant and the other a slave”31. ”

“ 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 slaves11. 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. ”

“ When we see that among a savage tribe slavery is an institution playing a great part in native life and slave labour is of much use, we must come to the conclusion that slavery is perfectly consistent with the economic and social state in which this tribe lives, whether intercourse with superior races gave rise to it or it already existed before any such intercourse had taken place. ”

“ The slave lives in a society that regards him as a slave; slavery cannot exist where there is not a society of freemen. Therefore the despot, however great his power, is not as such a master of slaves. The slave-owner has the community on his side; the chief has subjects who themselves compose the community. Looked at from the practical side, the chief’s power contains much more of voluntary submission than the slave-owner’s. A chief never has the whole person of the citizens subjected in his own behalf ”

“ Sometimes it is stated, that the chief, or the public power, has slaves, whereas no mention is made of any other slaves. In such cases the slaves generally become such as a punishment for some offence. Where such a state of things exists, we may not speak of a slave-keeping people. For here the power of the government is so great, that it can avail itself of the labour of the citizens ”

“ Returning to our chief subject, we may remark, that our survey of slave labour leads to the same conclusion we arrived at before, viz. that the preserving of food, a settled life, and the high development of trade, industry and wealth, are the main causes which have made slavery so largely prevalent here. As additional causes we may now name the high position of women, which induces the men to relieve them of a part of their work by giving them the help of slaves; and, in a few cases, the want of fighting men, who are to strengthen their masters’ force in warfare. ”

“ It is very often stated that slaves are employed for domestic labour. And as, in countries where slavery does not exist, domestic labour is nearly always incumbent on the women, slaves who perform such work alleviate the women’s task. Where slavery prevails to a great extent it even occurs that slave-owners, female as well as male, have scarcely anything to do, all work falling to the share of the slaves. The slave-owners, in such case, form the aristocracy; the slaves, and the poor freemen unable to purchase slaves, are the labouring classes. ”

“ The principal internal cause which prevents the rise of slavery, or where slavery exists, tends to make it disappear, is the dependence of subsistence upon closed resources. The most important result of our investigation seems to us the division, not only of all savage tribes, but of all peoples of the earth, into peoples with open, and with closed resources. Among the former labour is the principal factor of production, and a man who does not possess anything but his own strength and skill, is able to provide for himself independently of any capitalist or landlord. ”

“ Now the keeping of extratribal slaves must be very difficult to hunters. Hunting supposes a nomadic life; and the hunter, who roams over vast tracts of land in pursuit of his game has not much opportunity to watch the movements of his slave, who may be apt to run away at any moment. And if the slave himself is set to hunt, the difficulty amounts nearly to impossibility. Moreover, the hunting slave will be much more inclined to run away than a soil-tilling slave; for the latter, during his flight, has to live in a make-shift way on the spontaneous products of nature ”

“ The ruling classes are the great slave-owners, and these men are naturally inclined to leave all the common work to their slaves, reserving for themselves only the noble pursuits of warfare and government. The difference between the slaves and their owners becomes thus greater than it was before. The common people come to distrust and hate the slaves, whom they regard as the tools of the aristocracy. And the differentiating process we have described here is always going on: the more slaves a man owns, the greater his wealth ”

“ The labourers are not held as property, because they are not valued. If a labourer leaves his service, the employer knows that there are many others ready to take his place. Here it is not the employer who prevents his labourers from escaping, but the employed who try to prevent the employer from dismissing his workmen. We are, of course, aware that labour is always an indispensable factor of production; yet in many countries, e.g. in modern Western Europe, an employer does not care to keep a particular labourer in his service5. ”

“ If we had an ascending series of stages of culture, we might inquire whether, within the limits of savagery (for the civilized and semi-civilized peoples fall beyond the scope of the present volume) there is a stage at which slavery is universal. ”

“ Not only is an institution which would further the public welfare often wanting, because the immediate interests of individuals are not concerned, but the individuals are not always aware even of their own immediate interests. Such may also be the case with slavery. It may be that, if slavery were introduced into some savage tribe, the tribe, or at least some members of the tribe, would profit by it, and that yet no slaves are made because there are not sufficiently strong motives for doing so, or because there are stronger motives working in the opposite direction. ”

“ As has been already remarked, the difficulty of teaching the slave anything is so great—the result of the compulsory ignorance in which he is kept, combined with want of intelligent interest in his work—that the only chance of rendering his labour profitable is, when he has once learned a lesson, to keep him to that lesson for life. Accordingly where agricultural operations are carried on by slaves, the business of each gang is always restricted to the raising of a single product.... ”

“ Among peoples with open resources everybody is able to provide for himself; therefore free labourers do not offer themselves, at least not for employment in the common drudgery, the rudest and most despised work. There may be, and indeed there often are, skilled labourers whose work is highly valued and well paid; such people think it more profitable to earn their livelihood by means of their peculiar talents, than in the common way. A striking instance of this is the priest, whom we may call a skilled labourer performing non-economic labour ”

“ The slave does not count among the full-grown men of the tribe; he is not allowed to bear arms, he has no voice in government matters; though a member, he is an inferior member of the household in which he lives.
This is the first stage of differentiation between freemen and slaves. ”

“ First, every slave has his master to whom he is subjected. And this subjection is of a peculiar kind. Unlike the authority one freeman sometimes has over another, the master’s power over his slave is unlimited, at least in principle; any restriction put upon the master’s free exercise of his power is a mitigation of slavery, not belonging to its nature, just as in Roman law the proprietor may do with his property whatever he is not by special laws forbidden to do. ”

“ Where nearly all work is left to subjected tribes or castes, and the nobles do nothing but fight, there is not much use for slave labour. The nobles do not want slaves, because all work required by them is performed by their subjects. ”

“ This being the case, it is obvious that the limit of the profitable duration of slavery is attained whenever the population has become so dense that it is cheaper to employ the free labourer for hire. Towards this limit every community is approximating, however slowly.” That the relation between land and population is indeed the determining factor as regards the system of labour most suitable to a country, is clearly shown by the effect which the emancipation of the slaves had upon the economic development of the different colonies. ”

“ We have seen that for slavery to exist it is not sufficient that there should be some use for slave labour; it must also be possible to keep slaves; the freemen of the tribe must have a coercive power strong enough to keep the slaves subjected and prevent them from escaping. It has been shown that this coercive power is most strongly developed, where men have fixed habitations, live in large groups, and preserve food; and further, that the slave-trade greatly facilitates the keeping of slaves. ”

“ The development of trade and industry, of property and wealth, is undoubtedly much furthered by slavery. By imposing the ruder work upon slaves, the slave-owner can give more of his time and mind to trade and industry. “Leisure” as Bagehot remarks “is the great need of early societies, and slaves only can give men leisure”112. And that the keeping of slaves furthers the accumulation of wealth need hardly be said. The slave-trade, which enriches the traders, is even quite impossible where slavery does not exist. ”

“ Besides, slavery here cannot have the same influence on social life it generally has; for every freeman has to work for himself. This kind of slavery may be compared with the tread-mill and other kinds of penal servitude existing in more civilized societies. And we may not speak of a slave-keeping people, where the only slaves are criminals, who become the slaves of him who represents the public power, any more than we can say that slavery exists in those civilized countries, where penal servitude is still practised. ”

“ They are the circumstances, in which one man finds it difficult or impossible [307] to get other men to work under his direction for wages. They are the circumstances ... which stand in the way of combination and constancy of labour, and which all civilized nations, in a certain stage of their advance from barbarism, have endeavoured to counteract, and have in some measure counteracted, by means of some kind of slavery. Hitherto in this world, labour has never been employed on any considerable scale, with constancy and in combination, except by one or other of two means ”

“ It is true, where food is more plentiful than it is among most hunters, slaves can be of more use; but we cannot think that the only cause why slavery does not exist, is that the slave is “not worth his food”, i.e. that the produce of a man’s labour cannot much exceed his own primary wants. For we meet with several instances, among these tribes, of people whose wants are provided for by the labour of others. In our first Part we saw, that the Australian men depend largely for their subsistence on the work of their wives. ”

“ In countries however, where nobody need apply to another for employment, there is little chance of people voluntarily submitting to the orders of employers. In such countries, if there is to be an organization of labour with subordination under the master of the work, some men must be compelled to work for others, and we know that one form of compulsory labour is slavery. Therefore, when subsistence is easy to procure, and not dependent on capital, slave labour can be of much use. ”