Knowledge Is Power. Charles Knight

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Knowledge Is Power - Charles Knight


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cases, and unjust as it is in many, is better for the Indians than no exchange; although we fear that ardent spirits take away from the Indians the greater number of the advantages which would otherwise remain with them as exchangers. If the Indians had no skins to give to Europe, Europe would have no blankets and ammunition to give to them. They would obtain their food and clothing by the use of the bow alone. They would live entirely from hand to mouth. They would have no motive for accumulation, because there would be no exchanges; and they would consequently be even poorer and more helpless than they are now as exchangers of skins. They are suffering from the effects of small accumulations and imperfect exchange; but these are far better than no accumulation and no exchange. If the course of their industry were to be changed by perfect appropriation—if they were consequently to become cultivators and manufacturers, instead of wanderers in the woods to hunt for wild and noxious animals—they would, in the course of years, have abundance of profitable labour, because they would have abundance of capital. This is the better lot of the tribes with whom the government of the United States has made a far nobler treaty than Penn made with his Indians. As it is, their accumulations are so small, that they cannot proceed with their own uncertain labour of hunting without an advance of capital on the part of the traders; and thus, even[Pg 33]

       [Pg 34]in the rude tradings of these poor Indians, credit, that complicated instrument of commercial exchange, operates upon the direction of their labour. Of course credit would not exist at all without appropriation. Their rights of property are perfect as far as they go; but they are not carried far enough to direct their labour into channels which would ensure sufficient production for the labourers. Their labour is unproductive because they have small accumulations;—their accumulations are small because they have imperfect exchange;—their exchange is imperfect because they have limited appropriation. We may illustrate this state of imperfect production by another passage from Tanner's story:—

      This incident at once shows us that the great blessing of the civilized state is its increase of the powers of production. Here we see the Indians, surrounded on all sides by wild animals whose skins might be made into garments, reduced to the extremity of distress because the traders refused to advance them blankets and other necessaries, to be used during the months when they were employed in catching the animals from which they might obtain the skins. It is easy to see that the Indians were a long way removed from the power of making blankets themselves. Before they could reach this point, their forests must have been converted into pasture-grounds;—they must have raised flocks of sheep, and learnt all the various complicated arts, and possessed all the ingenious machinery, for converting wool into cloth. By their exchange of furs for blankets, they obtained a share in the productiveness of civilization;—they obtained comfortable clothing with much less labour than they could have made it out of the furs. If Tanner had not considered the capote which he desired to obtain from the traders, better, and less costly, than the garment of moose-skins, he would not have carried on any exchange of the two articles with the traders. The skins of martens and foxes were only valuable to the Indians, without exchange, for the purpose of sewing together to make covering. They had a different value in Europe as articles of luxury; and therefore the Indians by exchange obtained a greater plenty of superior clothing than if they had used the skins themselves. But the very nature of the trade, depending upon chance supplies, rendered it impossible that they should accumulate. They had such pressing need of ammunition, traps, and blankets, that the produce of the labour of one hunting season was not more than sufficient to procure the commodities which they required to consume in the same season. But supposing the Indians could have bred foxes and martens and beavers, as we breed rabbits, for the supply of the European demand for fur, doubtless they would have then advanced many steps in the character of producers. The thing is perhaps impossible; but were it possible, and were the Indians to have practised it, they would immediately have become capitalists, to an extent that would have soon rendered them independent of the credit of the traders. They must, however, have previously established a more perfect appropriation. Each must have enclosed his own hunting-ground; and each must have raised some food for the maintenance of his own stock of beavers, foxes, and martens. It would be easier, doubtless, to raise the food for themselves, and ultimately to exchange corn for clothing, instead of furs for clothing. When this happens—and it will happen sooner or later, unless the remnant of the hunting Indians are extirpated by their poverty, which proceeds from their imperfect production—Europe must go without the brilliant variety of skins which we procure at the cost of so much labour, accompanied with so much wretchedness, because the labour is so unproductive to the labourers. When the ladies of London and Paris are compelled to wear boas of rabbits instead of sables, and when the hair of the beaver ceases to be employed in the manufacture of our hats, the wooded regions of Hudson's Bay will have been cleared—the fur-bearing animals will have perished—corn will be growing in the forest and the marsh—the inhabitants will be building houses instead of trapping foxes;—there will be appropriation and capital, profitable labour and comfort. Three hundred thousand mink and marten-skins will no longer be sent from those shores to London in one year; but Liverpool may send to those shores woven cottons and worsteds, pottery and tools, in exchange for products whose cultivation will have exterminated the minks and martens.

       Pine-Marten.

       Table of Contents

      The Prodigal—Advantages of the poorest man in civilized life over the richest savage—Savings-banks,


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