The Kanzas news., 1857-08-08
From the n. Y. Evening Post.

The Free Laborers Great Argument
At last the people of the Southern States
are seriously looking the question of e1Han-
cipation in the face. The movements in
Missouri and Virginia are not the only evil
denees of ii; almost every day new indica-
lions reach us of decaying confidence in
bond labor, and corresponding inquiry
into the economy OF the free. One of the
most encouraging symptoms OF this kind
has lust come under our notice. 1t Is the
publication of a book, written by III. X.
Helper, of North Carolina, who has collect
ed in a volume of some four hundred pages
the most compact and irresistible array of
facts an i arguments to prove the imPolicy
of slavery, that we remember to have en-
countered. The book IS entitled, ''The Inn
pending Crisis of the South-How to Meet
It." and is published by Burdick Brothers,
of this city. Mr.. Helper is resident of
Salisbury, Rowland County, North Caro-
lima, where his family has resided for sew
eral generations. He became dissatisfied
with the way things were going with him
and his neighbors, and naturally concluded
that there must be some reason for the
greater prosperity of the Northern States.
He was not long in finding what that rea-
son was, and he had the courage to pro-
claim it. He says that slavery is sucking
the hfe-'Ilood of the South, and that she
can prosper in nothing until she gets rid of
it. To prove this and to convince his
neighbors of their folly in persisting in it,
he wrote the book to which we have alluded.
He has here collected body of facts and
statistics against the economy, which seem
to US quite as irresistible as Newton's ar
gument to prove the universally and terms
of the law of gravitation. We have never
seen the facts arrayed with SO much pow
of his elaborate, and, we believe, conscien-
tious calculations, under the impression
that they will reveal many new and surpris-
ing aspects of this much vexed subject.
If slavery has an advantage over free
labor in anything, it must be in the cultiva-
ton of the soil; in agriculture. Here are
some of the comparative results of free and
slave labor agriculture /:
The crop of bushel-measure products,
such as wheat, oats, Indian corn, potatoes,
rye, barley, buckwheat, beans and peas,
clover and grass-seeds, fax-seed, garden
products and orchard products, in the Free
States, amounted in 1850 to 499, ,190,0 ,041
bushels, and was valued at 1851, ,7O9, 7O3.
The same crop in the Slave States, with
238,91l square miles larger area* of terri
tory, amounted to only 48, 766, ,889 bushels,
valued at $500, ,927, ,e67, or less than the
Free States some seventeen millions of bush
els-nearly forty-four millions of dollars.
Much as the South boasts of its enor-
nous cotton crop, Mr. Helper shows that
the hay crop alone of the Northern States
is worth considerably more than all the cot
ton, rice, hay and hemp produced in the
fifteen Slave States, more than four times
the value of all the cotton produced in the
country; also, that the single State of New
York produces more than three times the
quantity of hay that is produced in all the
Slave States together. Here is his table:
HAY CROP OF THE FREE STATES IN 1856
12,69O;9s2 tons at S11-2O (average) Sl42, 1889
suNDRY PRODUCTS OF TILE SLAVE STATES.
Cotton-2. .445, ,779 bales,
at s32 7s,26O,92S
Tobaeco-1s5, OPS 9O6
bales at $40 1882, $3.50
Rice. (rough) )-215 ,313,-
497 bags at s4 e,6I2,539
Hay-1 1877 ,7S4 bales at