heir trains of
retainers. Both of these considerations stimulated the bidding. On the
other hand conventional morality deterred many proprietors from selling
slaves except under special stress, and thereby diminished the offers in
the market. If the combination of these factors is not adequate as an
explanation, there remain the spirit of inflation characteristic of a new
country and the common desire for tangible investments of a popularly
sanctioned sort. All staple producers were engaged in a venturesome
business. Crops were highly uncertain, and staple prices even more so. The
variability of earnings inured men to the taking of risks and spurred them
to borrow money and buy more of both lands and slaves even at inflated
prices in the hope of striking it rich with a few years' crops. On the
other hand when profits actually accrued, there was nothing available as a
rule more tempting than slaves as investments. Corporation securities were
few and unseasoned; lands were liable to wear out and were painfully slow
in liquidation; but slaves were a self-perpetuating stock whose ownership
was a badge of dignity, whose management was generally esteemed a
pleasurable responsibility, whose labor would yield an income, and whose
value could be realized in cash with fair promptitude in time of need. No
calculated overvaluation by proprietors for the sake of keeping the slaves
enslaved need be invented. Loria's thesis is a work of supererogation.

But whatever may be the true explanation it is clear that slave prices did
rise to immoderate heights, that speculation was kept rife, and that in
virtually every phase, after the industrial occupation of each area had
been accomplished, the maintenance of the institution was a clog upon
material progress. The economic virtues of slavery lay wholly in its making
labor mobile, regular and secure. These qualities accorded remarkably, so
far as they went, with the requirements of the plantation system on the one
hand and the needs of the generality of the negroes on the other. Its vices
were more numerous, and in part more subtle.

The North was annually acquiring thousands of immigrants who came at their
own expense, who worked zealously for wages payable from current earnings,
and who possessed all the inventive and progressive potentialities of
European peoples. But aspiring captains of industry at the South could as
a rule procure labor only by remitting round sums in money or credit w