Note 4 — Chapter V · CONCLUSION.

In the first Part we have said that a slave is a man who is the property of another. We can now see the practical meaning of this definition. In slave countries labourers are held as property, and valued as such. If an employer loses a labourer, his income is lessened by it; if his labourer runs away, he eagerly tries to recover him. In countries with closed resources it is quite the reverse4. The labourers are not held as property, because they are not valued. If a labourer leaves his service, the employer knows that there are many others ready to take his place. Here it is not the employer who prevents his labourers from escaping, but the employed who try to prevent the employer from dismissing his workmen. We are, of course, aware that labour is always an indispensable factor of production; yet in many countries, e.g. in modern Western Europe, an employer does not care to keep a particular labourer in his service5. We must, however, bear in mind that this rule, in its strictest sense, applies only to unskilled labour. Qualified labourers are often highly valued and able to secure great advantage, because their number is limited. It is therefore that the helpless state of people destitute of material resources appears more clearly in agricultural than in manufacturing countries.