On the record
Nature works by fixed laws; but we can bring this or that combination of circumstances under the operation of her laws, and thus determine results.
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gutenberg.orgEditor's note · Context
Mann discusses the role of human agency in influencing natural laws and outcomes.
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He that chooses to employ a sort of labor that yields only half as much to the hand as another sort would yield, makes a choice that is not only unprofitable, but deeply injurious to his interest.
So far from facilitating the increase of individual or national wealth, slavery retards both.
They cannot do otherwise with laborers who work by compulsion, for the benefit only of their masters, and whose sole interest in the matter is to do as little and to consume as much as possible.
No man of common sense, who has observed this result, can doubt for a moment that the system of free labor promotes the growth and prosperity of states in a much higher degree than the system of slave labor.
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