ndividual
sale yield much less than a statistician could wish. The sex is always
presumable from the slave's name, the color is usually stated or implied,
and occasionally deleterious proclivities are specified, as of a confirmed
drunkard or a persistent runaway; but specifications of age, strength and
talents are very often, one and all, omitted. The problem is how may these
bare quotations of price be utilized. To strike an average of all prices
in any year at any place would be fruitless, since an even distribution of
slave grades cannot be assumed when quotations are not in great volume: the
prices of young children are rarely ascertainable from the bills, since
they were hardly ever sold separately; the prices of women likewise are too
seldom segregated from those of their children to permit anything to be
established beyond a ratio to some ascertained standard; and the prices of
artizans varied too greatly with their skill to permit definite schedules
of them. The only market grade, in fact, for which basic price tabulations
can be made with any confidence is that of young male prime field hands,
for these alone may usually be discriminated even when ages and qualities
are not specified. The method here is to select in the group of bills for
any time and place such maximum quotations for males as occur with any
notable degree of frequency. Artizans, foremen and the like are thereby
generally excluded by the infrequency of their sales, while the
middle-aged, the old and the defective are eliminated by leaving aside the
quotations of lower range. The more scattering bills in which ages
and crafts are given will then serve, when supplemented from probate
appraisals, to establish valuation ratios between these able-bodied
unskilled young men and the several other classes of slaves. Thus, artizans
often brought twice as much as field hands of similar ages, prime women
generally brought three-fourths or four-fifths as much as prime men; boys
and girls entering their teens, and men and women entering their fifties,
brought about half of prime prices for their sexes; and infants were
generally appraised at about a tenth or an eighth of prime. The average
price for slaves of all ages and both sexes, furthermore, was generally
about one-half of the price for male prime field hands. The fluctuation
of prime prices, therefore, measures the rise and fall of slave values in
general.

The accompanying chart will show the fluctuat