Chapter I. Of Value.

In spite of the inferior efficiency of slave-labor, there can be no reasonable doubt that, in a country where the wages of free labor are so high, the work executed by slaves is a better bargain to the capitalist. To whatever extent it is so, this smaller cost of labor, being not general, but limited to those employments, is just as much a cause of cheapness in the products, both in the home and in the foreign market, as if they had been made by a less quantity of labor. If the slaves in the Southern States were emancipated, and their wages rose to the general level of the earnings of free labor in America, that country might be obliged to erase some of the slave-grown articles from the catalogue of its exports, and would certainly be unable to sell any of them in the foreign market at the present price. Their cheapness is partly an artificial cheapness, which may be compared to that produced by a