The White Slave Trade [pp. 269-274]

DE BOW'S REVIEW.
APRIL, 1858.
THIE WHIT'E SLAVE TRADE.
-ION. CHARLES SUMNER. ELI THAYER, AND HORACE GREELY, ON "OR GANIZED EMIGRATION, OR THE WHITE SLAVE TRADE.
ALWAYS a national union mIan ourselves, we are pleased to see
any procedure proposed or enacted which is calculated to strengthen
-and perpetuate the Union. Of this character we are sure is the "Organized Emigration," spoken of in his late speech, by lion. Eli
Thayer, and (as originally intended) such we are willing to believe,
was the Emigration Aid Company of Massachusetts. Its stock.holders and officers, Mr. Sumner inriforms us in his celebrated speech
made in the Senate in May, 1846, (no doubt correctly.) were business
men and not Abolitionists, whose object was, to make money by
'"plantirng capital in advance of pop ltlation." Again, he says: ".For
its whole action, and all its anticipations of pecuniary profit, are
founded on the hope to stock the country with permanent settlers, BY
WHOSE LABOR THE CAPITAL OF THE COUNTRY SHALL BE MADE TO YIELD
ITS INCREASE."7 It would have been well for Mr. Sumner had the
sentence ended here-for then he would have enunciated a distinct,
truthful and practical theory, which all could comprehend and none
would dispute. But the concluding clause of the sentence flatly contradicts all that precedes it, and makes the shrewd speculators of B]3oston the silliest of mankind. It concludes thus: "And by whose fixed
intterest in the soil the welfare of all shall be promoted."
Now, if the emigrants to Kansas all acquire a "fixed interest in
the soil," the lands of the company will be as worthless as if situated
in the midst of the desert of Zahara, or on the top of the Andes.
The company induce emigration, because they know that far the
larger portion of emigrants never acquire any "fixed interest in the
soil," or any capital of any kind; and, hence, inevitably become the
suibjects, or to speak more accurately, the slaves of capital. Yet, there
are degrees in slavery; and it is far better to be a slave to capital in
the far West, where labor is scarce and employment easily obtained,
on terms which leave the laborer a good support out of his own earn