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Life of Albert Parsons

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p15

That invitation was eagerly heard and quickly accepted, and to this fact alone is due the rapid development and growth of the Republic. For years after the adoption of the Constitution the slave trade flourished and thousands upon thousands of ignorant helpless Africans were kidnapped and brought in chains to the United States. The treatment of the great populous tribes of Indians was a similar character. Those who could not be subdues and enslaved were killed, and as America was the native health of the Indian they chose death rather than slavery, until there remains scarcely a remnant of this once powerful race upon the continent. About 1830, when population had greatly increased, in common with the land values and other property, the special advantages of the chattel-slave labor which was so apparent in a new, unsettled country began to diminish. With a growth of population came an augmentation of wage- laborers, and the modes of industry, such as manufacture, etc., where not very well adapted to chattel labor. It began to appear that wage labor was cheaper and therefore more remunerative to capital than was chattel slave labor. There arose in consequence conflicting interests upon this subject which by degrees –as population increased- developed into sectional conflicts, which were geographically designated "north" and "south."

For certain forms of labor –agricultural for instance- chattel slave labor was considered to be more profitable than wage labor. But in manufacture and all departments of skilled industry the labor of wage-workers was preferred because more remunerative. The supply of chattel-slaves was cut off by a law that enacted prohibiting the slave trade, and this fact was alone sufficient to cause the death-blow to that form of capital to invest it where it would bring the greatest returns.  Therefore the slave-holding interests gravitated to the southern portion of the United States, where a mild climate, lengthened seasons and consequently cheaper clothes, fuel and shelter was to be obtained. The propertied class –capitalists- was intent only on profits and losses. Out of these two forms of labor –chattel and wage- arose the "irrepressible conflict" and the political shibboleth, "America must be all slave or free." The slave-holding

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