Gain, 5, at $500 2,500
Net cost, 10,200

The usual allowance for field hands is one-third,--allow it to be forty
in a hundred, the cost of each would be $255 per annum, or $21.25 per
month.

Let each one make his own allowance for the disadvantage of having the
larger portion of the capital of a State locked up in a tool which would
do more and better work if recognized as a man and representing no
invested capital. How much productive industry would there be in New
England, if every laborer or mechanic cost his employer $800 to $1500
before he could be set to work, and if each one who undertook to labor
upon his own account, and was not so purchased, were stigmatized and
degraded and termed 'mean white trash?'

It will again be objected that the theory of the cotton planter is to
raise all the food and make all the clothing on the plantation. The
cultivation of cotton in the best manner is described by Southern
writers as a process of _gardening_. Now what would be thought of a
market gardener at the North who should keep a large extra force for the
purpose of spinning yarn on a frame of six to ten spindles, and weaving
it up on a rude hand loom? Would this not be protection to home industry
in its most absurd extreme? But this is the plantation system.

The correctness of the estimate of cost can be tested in some degree by
the rates at which able-bodied slaves are hired out. Many lists can be
found in Southern papers; the latest found by the writer is in De Bow's
_Review_ of 1860.