[Footnote 86:  Ibid., pp. 26, 190, 260.]

A far sounder basic doctrine is that of the accountant Gibson, recited at the beginning of this chapter, that the valuation of a slave is theoretically determined by the reckoning of his prospective earnings above the cost of his maintenance.  In the actual Southern regime, however, this was interfered with by several influences.  For one thing, the successful proprietors of small plantations could afford to buy additional slaves at somewhat more than the price reckoned on per capita earnings, because the advance of their establishments towards the scale of maximum efficiency would reduce the proportionate cost of administration.  Again, the scale of slaveholdings was in some degree a measure of social rank, and men were accordingly tempted by uneconomic motives to increase their trains of retainers.  Both of these considerations stimulated the bidding.  On the other hand conventional morality deterred many proprietors from selling slaves except under special stress, and thereby diminished the offers in the market.  If the combination of these factors is not adequate as an explanation, there remain the spirit of inflation characteristic of a new country and the common desire for tangible investments of a popularly sanctioned sort.  All staple producers were engaged in a venturesome business.  Crops were highly uncertain, and staple prices even more so.  The variability of earnings inured men to the taking of risks and spurred them to borrow money and buy more of both lands and slaves even at inflated prices in the hope of striking it rich with a few years’ crops.  On the other hand when profits actually accrued, there was nothing available as a rule more tempting than slaves as investments.  Corporation securities were few and unseasoned; lands were liable to wear out and were painfully slow in liquidation; but slaves were a self-perpetuating stock whose ownership was a badge of dignity, whose management was generally esteemed a pleasurable responsibility, whose labor would yield an income, and whose value could be realized in cash with fair promptitude in time of need.  No calculated overvaluation by proprietors for the sake of keeping the slaves enslaved need be invented.  Loria’s thesis is a work of supererogation.

But whatever may be the true explanation it is clear that slave prices did rise to immoderate heights, that speculation was kept rife, and that in virtually every phase, after the industrial occupation of each area had been accomplished, the maintenance of the institution was a clog upon material progress.  The economic virtues of slavery lay wholly in its making labor mobile, regular and secure.  These qualities accorded remarkably, so far as they went, with the requirements of the plantation system on the one hand and the needs of the generality of the negroes on the other.  Its vices were more numerous, and in part more subtle.