Note 14 — Chapter IV · AGRICULTURAL TRIBES.

This reasoning is quite correct so far as Negro slavery in the United States is concerned; but it does not hold with regard to primitive slavery or “retail slavery” as Bagehot calls it. The few slaves kept in primitive agricultural societies work together with their masters, who can therefore continually supervise their work and do not want overseers. Moreover, the slave in primitive and simple societies is not looked upon as a piece of machinery; he is, so to speak, an inferior member of the family, sharing in its pleasures, sorrows, and occupations; therefore it is not only the fear of punishment that induces him to work; he is interested in the welfare of the family, and knows that the better he works, the more he will be valued, and the more food there will be of which he will get his due share14. This retail slavery, as Bagehot remarks, “the slavery in which a master owns a few slaves, whom he well knows and daily sees—is not at all an intolerable state; the slaves of Abraham had no doubt a fair life, as things went in that day. But wholesale slavery, where men are but one of the investments of large capital, and where a great owner, so far from knowing each slave, can hardly tell how many gangs of them he works, is an abominable state”15. Retail slavery, therefore, can very well exist where cereal crops are raised; it is even the most convenient system of labour in primitive agricultural societies.