On the record
It were hard to find, in old king-ridden, priest-ridden, overtaxed Europe, so large a country, where, within twenty years past, such a growing poverty and desolation have appeared.
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gutenberg.orgEditor's note · Context
Mann contrasts the poverty and desolation in parts of Europe with the conditions in the United States, attributing it to slavery.
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More from Horace Mann
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.
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.
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.
Of all the states in this Union, not one has on the whole such various and abundant resources for manufacturing as our own Virginia, both East and West.
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