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1 Alvan Stewart, The Cause of the Hard Times 1 (1843)

handle is hein.slavery/cauhrdti0001 and id is 1 raw text is: TRACT N 4. No.10 THE CAUSE OF THE HARD TIMEM BY ALVAN STEWART, ESQ., OF NEW YORK. Why is this Country periodically in such deep Distress, without Famine, Pestilence, or War ? IT is because one third of this nation have lived in idleness, on the labor of the other two thirds, by means of' credit, for the last twenty years. The nation contains 18,000,000 of' people. In thir- teen slave States, we may estimate the population at 8,000,000. There are 2,700,000 slaves. The persons in whom the title to these slaves exists are 250,000, or the seventy-second part of the nation, who own the slaves and govern the republic. The wives, children, and relatives, of slave-holders are 1,250,000, to which add the owners, and it makes 1,500,000, or one twelfth part of the nation, who rule us in Congress, fbr fear of losing the support of that part of the South who are called Vhigs or Democrats. Labor, in slave States, is regarded as disgraceful, when performed by white persons. This is the general rule -there are some exceptions. There are not over one and a half millions of slave laboring men and women in the Southern States, or one in five, who are to be regarded as prime laborers. The other 1,200,000 slaves are infirm, disabled, aged, children, and fugitives in the woods and swamps. Labor is the only source of support for a nation; and that nation which has tl;e greatest amount of available, employed labor, is the richest nation on a long run. Only one person out of' five labors in the Southern States, and that person is a slave, whose every movement is propelled by fear- no compensation - no, it is the lash, not cash. The slave provides in part fbr himself and four other beings, and yet, we are told, he cannot, if free, take care of hinself alone. But it cannot be denied, that the 1,500,000 of slaves cannot furnish much over two thirds of the sustenance of the South, with all the white labor, which only prevails in limited districts. Since 1828, or fifteen years, the South has been trusted with $300,000,000 of Northern labor. or $20,000,000 a year, from the free States, which never has been, and never will be, paid in aught except bankruptcy. There is scarcely a neighborhood in the free States which has not paid its quota towards the twenty millions per annum, during some one of the last fiftem

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