The general system of slaveholding farmers and planters, in all times and places, has been, and now is, and ever will be, to cultivate much land, badly, for present gain,--in short, to kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
Mann critiques the short-sighted practices of slaveholding farmers that harm long-term prosperity.
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Can any man give a reason why Norfolk should not have grown like New York, other than the difference in the institutions of the people?
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.
Old Virginia was the first to sow this land of ours with slavery; she is also the first to reap the full harvest of destruction.
So far from facilitating the increase of individual or national wealth, slavery retards both.
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