Note 9 — Chapter IV · AGRICULTURAL TRIBES.

Subsistence, therefore, is independent of capital and easy to procure. Every one is able to clear a piece of ground and provide for himself; nobody offers his services to another, and so, if a man wants a labourer, he must compel his fellow-man to work for him. “All freemen in new countries” says Bagehot “must be pretty equal; every one has labour, and every one has land; capital, at least in agricultural countries (for pastoral countries are very different), is of little use; it cannot hire labour; the labourers go and work for themselves. There is a story often told of a great English capitalist who went out to Australia with a shipload of labourers and a carriage; his plan was that the labourers should build a house for him, and that he would keep his carriage, just as in England. But (so the story goes) he had to try to live in his carriage, for his labourers left him, and went away to work for themselves”9. Similarly, Sombart observes: “Colonies, in which there are no labourers to exploit, are like knives without blades”10. In such countries, if a man wants others to work in his service and according to his instructions, he must compel them to do so, i.e. he must enslave them. And agriculture, requiring little skill and application, is very fit to be imposed upon slaves: compulsory agricultural labour, though not so productive as voluntary labour, can yet yield some profit. Moreover, the agricultural slave is rather easy to control; his work does not require independent action. It is also easy to prevent him from running away. In all this he differs from a hunting slave. And agriculture is also more favourable to the existence of slavery than cattle-breeding; for among pastoral tribes there is but a fixed and rather small amount of work to be done; but where men subsist by agriculture, any increase in the number of slaves brings about an increase of food.