the truth of this statement it was asserted that newspapers of the country
were filled with disastrous accounts of the falling off of crops and the
scarcity of labor but had little to say about those forces instrumental in
the uplift of the people.[16]

An effort was made also to show that there would be no economic advantage
in going to the British dominions. It was thought that as soon as the
first demand for labor was supplied wages would be reduced, for no new
plantations could be opened there as in a growing country like Liberia. It
would be impossible, therefore, for the Negroes immigrating there to take
up land and develop a class of small farmers as they were doing in Africa.
Under such circumstances, they contended, the Negroes in the West Indies
could not feel any of the "elevating influences of nationality of
character," as the white men would limit the influence of the Negroes by
retaining practically all of the wealth of the islands. The inducements,
therefore, offered the free Negroes in the United States were merely
intended to use them in supplying in the British dominions the need of men
to do drudgery scarcely more elevating than the toil of slaves.[l7]

Determined to interest a larger number of persons in diverting the
attention of the free Negroes from the West Indies, the colonizationists
took higher ground. They asserted that the interests of the millions of
white men in this country were then at stake, and even if it would be
better for the three million Negroes of the country gradually to emigrate
to the British dominions, it would eventually prove prejudicial to the
interests of the United States. They showed how the Negroes immigrating
into the West Indies would be made to believe that the refusal to extend
to them here social and political equality was cruel oppression and the
immigrants, therefore, would carry with them no good will to this country.
When they arrived in the West Indies their circumstances would increase