ootnote 33: _Ibid_., XVIII, 404-406.]

[Footnote 34: U.B. Phillips, _Transportation in the Eastern Cotton Belt_
(New York, 1908), p. 205.]

[Footnote 35: South Carolina Railroad Company _Reports_ for 1860 and 1865.]

The Brandon Bank, at Brandon, Mississippi, which was virtually identical
with the Mississippi and Alabama Railroad Company, bought prior to 1839,
$159,000 worth of slaves for railroad employment, but it presumably lost
them shortly after that year when the bank and the railroad together went
bankrupt.[36] The state of Georgia had bought about 190 slaves in and
before 1830 for employment in river and road improvements, but it sold them
in 1834,[37] and when in the late 'forties and the 'fifties it built and
operated the Western and Atlantic Railroad it made no repetition of the
earlier experiment. In the 'fifties, indeed, the South Carolina Railroad
Company was almost unique in its policy of buying slaves for railroad
purposes.

[Footnote 36: _Niles' Register_, LVI, 130 (April 27, 1839).]

[Footnote 37: U.B. Phillips, _Transportation in the Eastern Cotton Belt_,
pp. 114, 115; W.C. Dawson, _Compilation of Georgia Laws_, p. 399; O.H.
Prince, _Digest of the Laws of Georgia_, p. 742.]

The most cogent reason against such a policy was not that the owned slaves
increased the current charges, but that their purchase involved the
diversion of capital in a way which none but abnormal circumstances could
justify. In the year 1846 when the superintendent of the South Carolina
company made his recommendation, slave prices were abnormally low and
cotton prices were leaping in such wise as to make probable a strong
advance in the labor market. By 1855, however, the price of slaves had
nearly doubled, and by 1860 it was clearly inordinate. The special occasion
for a company to divert its funds or increase its capital obligations had
accordingly vanished, and sound policy would have suggested the sale of
slaves on hand rather than the purchase of more. The state of Louisiana,
indeed, sold in 1860[38] the force of nearly a hundred slave men which it
had used on river improvements long enough for many of its members to have
grown old in the service.[39]

[Footnote 38: Board of Public Works _Report_ for 1860 (Baton Rouge, 1861),
p. 7.]

[Footnote 39: State Engineer's _Report_ for 1856 (New Orleans, 1857), p.
7.]

Manufacturing companies here and there bought slaves to man their works,
but in so doing added seriously