rehension of industrial paralysis, however,
appears to have been a smaller factor than the fear of social chaos as a
deterrent in the minds of the Southern whites from thoughts of abolition.

The slaveholding regime kept money scarce, population sparse and land
values accordingly low; it restricted the opportunities of many men of both
races, and it kept many of the natural resources of the Southern country
neglected. But it kept the main body of labor controlled, provisioned and
mobile. Above all it maintained order and a notable degree of harmony in a
community where confusion worse confounded would not have been far to
seek. Plantation slavery had in strictly business aspects at least as many
drawbacks as it had attractions. But in the large it was less a business
than a life; it made fewer fortunes than it made men.

CHAPTER XX

TOWN SLAVES

Southern households in town as well as in country were commonly large, and
the dwellings and grounds of the well-to-do were spacious. The dearth of
gas and plumbing and the lack of electric light and central heating made
for heavy chores in the drawing of water, the replenishment of fuel and the
care of lamps. The gathering of vegetables from the kitchen garden, the
dressing of poultry and the baking of relays' of hot breads at meal times
likewise amplified the culinary routine. Maids of all work were therefore
seldom employed. Comfortable circumstances required at least a cook and
a housemaid, to which might be added as means permitted a laundress, a
children's nurse, a seamstress, a milkmaid, a butler, a gardener and a
coachman. While few but the rich had such ample staffs as this, none but
the poor were devoid of domestics, and the ratio of servitors to the gross
population was large. The repugnance of white laborers toward menial
employment, furthermore, conspired with the traditional predilection of
householders for negroes in a lasting tenure for their intimate services
and gave the slaves a virtual monopoly of this calling. A census of
Charleston in 1848,[94] for example, enumerated 5272 slave domestics as
compared with 113 white and 27 free colored servants. The slaves were more
numerous than the free also in the semi-domestic employments of coachmen
and porters, and among the dray-men and the coopers and the unskilled
laborers in addition.

[Footnote 94: J.L. Dawson and H.W. DeSaussure, _Census of Charleston for
1848_ (Charleston, 1849), pp. 31-36. The city'