master for attendance upon his slave without his knowledge, unless it be a case of extreme necessity." (Wheeler, p. 225.)

Wells vs. Kennerly, 4 McCord's S. C. Rep. 123: "The owner is not liable for medical attendance upon a hired slave, given at the request of the hirer." (Ib., p. 226.)

It is hardly to be expected that the temporary hirer of a slave would be forward to incur the expense of much medical attendance.

In the case of Johnson et al. vs. Barrett, Judge Johnson, South Carolina, said: "If a slave be in peril in the absence of his master, the interest of the owner is most effectually subserved by rendering assistance to the slave, and in good conscience the owner is bound to make satisfaction." (Ib.)

The legal rule then is, to give medical aid when the interest of the owner demands it!

CHAPTER XII.

COERCED LABOR, WITHOUT WAGES.

The "legal relation of Master and Slave"-being the relation of an Owner to a Chattel, is a relation incompatible with the natural and heaven-sanctioned "relation" of Labor and Wages.

CHRISTIANITY is "a swift witness against those that oppress" even "the hireling IN his wages." It also proclaims: "Woe unto him that useth his neighbor's service WITHOUT wages, and giveth him not for his work."

To "oppress the hireling IN his wages," is to pay him inadequate wages, or to withhold a part of his earnings. To use a neighbor's service WITHOUT wages, is to pay him no wages at all. This latter is the definition of slave labor, and that labor is extorted by brute force. The slave is not a "hireling." He is not hired at all, any more than a working horse or ox is hired. In saying this, we only state the legal and the inevitable fact of the case. More particularly:

1. Wages is "that which is stipulated to be paid for services." There is, in this, of necessity, the concurrent action of two parties who stipulate, namely: the employer and the employed; the payer and him

that receives pay. The wages are determined by a mutual stipulation, agreement, or contract between the parties.

2. Wages, to be legitimate, must be equitable, or equal. There must be, by both the parties, an equivalent given and received. The labor must be equal in value to the wages, and the wages must be equal in value to the labor.

3. Wages is that which, when received by the laborer, becomes his own, his property. The very ideas of property and of the rights of property have their origin here. He who receives wages, possesses, appropriates, and disposes of his wages; and no one, without an equivalent, or without his leave, can take them from him.

4. Wages for the faithful services of an able-bodied man, during the proper working hours of the day, in order to be adequate and equitable wages, must more than suffice for his comfortable sustenance as a mere animal. They must enable him to support a family, to supply his own and their social wants as intellectual and moral beings, to discharge his responsibilities as a member of society, and lay up a surplus for the ordinary exigences of the future.

5. The wages of the successful producer of the fruits of the earth, to be equitable, must secure to him, as his possession, a large proportion of those fruits. On a plantation, or in a parish, township, or province, in which the men whose labor has built comfortable houses may not live in comfortable houses; whose labor has procured ample supplies of

food, clothing, and family comforts, but may not share in and enjoy those supplies and comforts, (unless squandered by improvidence,) there could not have been an equitable receipt of wages, by the

laborer.

By each and all of these definitions and tests of wages, the slave system, the slaveholding "relation,' both in theory and practice, stand condemned. They do not and they cannot accord WAGES to the

LABORER.

For, in the first place, "the slave can make no contract," and hence he cannot stipulate for wages.

2. "The slave can possess nothing," and hence he cannot receive (because he cannot possess, appropriate, or use) wages.

3. The slave is "goods and chattels," and these cannot earn wages. The sustenance of the horse and ox are not wages. The needful repairs of a machine are not wages. Were all the slaves as "fat and sleek" as Henry Clay's, their comfortable fare would not be wages. Besides:

4. The cost of sustenance for the slave (were it matter of mutual stipulation) is too trivial to be dignified with the name of wages! Look over the preceding chapters. Estimate the labor. Look at its products-houses, equipages, wardrobes, wines, feasts, exports, returns, revenues, banks, cities, navies! Imagine an exodus of the slaves, like that of the Hebrews out of Egypt, and let the wand of their Moses sweep along with them all the products of their labor! What would be left after them? Then

inquire after the compensation that has been paid for this labor. "A peck of corn a week, with a modicum of salt." Say 12 bushels of corn a year, at 50 cents, is $6.25—the salt, 25 cents, makes $6.50 for a year's board. Then add the wardrobe of John Randolph's "faithful servant Essex "-possibly $10 more. The house-rent, at what the "owner" thinks it worth! Then foot up the sum total-or, take the estimate of slaveholders themselves, in Reports of Committees of Agricultural Societies, published to the world, viz., $15 to $20 per annum, along with the confession of Thomas Clay, Esq., of Georgia: "The present economy of the slave system is, to get ALL YOU CAN from the slave, and give him AS LITTLE as will support him in a working condition." It is no counterproof or palliation, that the system is unprofitable. To "use a neighbor's service without wages" has always been profitless, because always wrong, and heaven-abhorred.

The balance between the slave's earnings (possessed or squandered by his "owner,") and the cost of the slave's support, may tell us whether the slave could "take care of himself” if suffered to receive honest wages.

Again, we say, look at the wealth earned by the slave; then look at the slave, half famished, half naked, without a bed, shivering, sleeping on the bare ground with an old blanket around him, or turned off, perhaps, in decrepid old age, by his "owner," a gentleman [reputedly] of great benevolence and generosity of character," to beg in the streets of

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