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in Savannah at $33 per ton; in Mobile and New Orleans at $26; in Charleston at $25; in Louisville at $24; and in Cincinnati at $23. The average of these prices is twenty-six dollars sixteen and two-third cents; and we suppose it would be fair to employ the figures which would indicate this amount, the net value of a single ton, in calculating the total market value of the entire crop. Were we to do this-and, with the foregoing facts in view, we submit to intelligent men whether we would not be justifiable in doing it, the hay crop of the free states, 12,690,982 tons, in 1850, would amount in valuation to the enormous sum of $331,081,695-more than four times the value of all the cotton produced in the United States during the same period!

But we shall not make the calculation at what we have found to be the average value per ton throughout the country. What rate, then, shall be agreed upon as a basis of comparison between the value of the hay crop of the North and that of the South, and as a means of testing the truth of our declaration-that the former exceeds the aggregate values of all the cotton, tobacco, rice, hay and hemp produced in the fifteen slave States? Suppose we take $13,083-just half the average value-as the multiplier in this arithmetical exercise. This we can well afford to do; indeed, we might reduce the amount per ton to much less than half the average value, and still have a large margin left for triumphant demonstration. It is not our purpose, however, to make an overwhelming display of the incomparable greatness of the free States.

In estimating the value of the various agricultural pro

ducts of the two great sections of the country, we have been guided by prices emanating from the Bureau of Agriculture in Washington; and in a catalogue of those prices. now before us, we perceive that the average value of hay throughout the nation is supposed to be not more than half a cent per pound-$11.20 per ton-which, as we have seen above, is considerably less than half the present market value;-and this, too, in the face of the fact that prices generally rule higher than they do just now. It will be admitted on all sides, however, that the prices fixed upon by the Bureau of Agriculture, taken as a whole, are as fair for one section of the country as for the other, and that we cannot blamelessly deviate from them in one par ticular without deviating from them in another. Eleven dollars and twenty cents ($11.20) per ton shall therefore be the price; and, notwithstanding these greatly reduced. figures, we now renew, with an addendum, our declaration and promise, that-We can prove, and we shall now proceed to prove, that the annual hay crop of the free States is worth consid erably more in dollars and cents than all the cotton, tobacco, rice, hay, hemp and cane sugar annually produced in the fifteen slave States.

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Balance in favor of the free States....$3,533,275

There is the account; look at it, and let it stand in attestation of the exalted virtues and surpassing powers of freedom. Scan it well, Messieuns lords of the lash, and learn from it new lessons of the utter inefficiency, and despicable imbecility of slavery. Examine it minutely, libertyloving patriots of the North, and behold in it additional evidences of the beauty, grandeur, and super-excellence of free institutions. Treasure it up in your minds, outraged friends and non-slaveholders of the South, and let the recollection of it arouse you to an inflexible determination to extirpate the monstrous enemy that stalks abroad in your land, and to recover the inalienable rights and liberties, which have been filched from you by an unprincipled oligarchy.

In deference to truth, decency and good sense, it is to

be hoped that negro-driving politicians will never more have the effrontery to open their mouths in extolling the agricultural achievements of slave labor. Especially is it desirable, that, as a simple act of justice to a basely deceived populace, they may cease their stale and senseless harangues on the importance of cotton. The value of cot ton to the South, to the North, to the nation, and to the world, has been so grossly exaggerated, and so extensive have been the evils which have resulted in consequence of the extraordinary misrepresentations concerning it, that we should feel constrained to reproach ourself for remissness of duty, if we failed to make an attempt to explode the popular error. The figures above show what it is, and what it is not. Recur to them, and learn the facts.

So hyperbolically has the importance of cotton been magnified by certain pro-slavery politicians of the South, that the person who would give credence to all their fustian and bombast, would be under the necessity of believ ing that the very existence of almost everything, in the heaven above, in the earth beneath, and in the water under the earth, depended on it. The truth is, however, that the cotton crop is of but little value to the South. New England and Old England, by their superior enterprise and sagacity, turn it chiefly to their own advantage. It is carried in their ships, spun in their factories, woven in their looms, insured in their offices, returned again in their own vessels, and, with double freight and cost of manufacturing added, purchased by the South at a high premiOf all the parties engaged or interested in its transportation and manufacture, the South is the only

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FREE AND THE SLAVE STATES.

55

does not make a profit.) Nor does she, as a general thing,
make a profit by producing it.

We are credibly informed that many of the farmers in
the immediate vicinity of Baltimore, where we now write,
have turned their attention exclusively to hay, and that
from one acre they frequently gather two tons, for which
they receive fifty dollars. Let us now inquire how many
dollars may be expected from an acre planted in cotton.
Mr. Cameron, from whose able address before the Agricul-
tural Society of Orange County, North Carolina, we have
already gleaned some interesting particulars, informs us,
that the cotton planters in his part of the country, "have
contented themselves with a crop yielding only ten or
twelve dollars per acre," and that "the summing up of a large
surface gives but a living result." An intelligent resident
of the Palmetto State, writing in De Bows Review,
not long since, advances the opinion that the cotton
planters of South Carolina are not realizing more than one
per cent. on the amount of capital they have invested.
While in Virginia, very recently, an elderly slaveholder,
whose religious walk and conversation had recommended
and promoted him to an eldership in the Presbyterian
church, and who supports himself and family by raising
niggers and tobacco, told us that, for the last eight or ten
years, aside from the increase of his human chattels, he
felt quite confident he had not cleared as much even as
one per cent. per annum on the amount of his investment.
The real and personal property of this aged Christian con-
sists chiefly in a large tract of land and about thirty ne-
groes, most of whom, according to his own confession, are

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