A Respectable Trade
Many economic systems exist in the movie A Respectable Trade. Capitalism is present, as the Cole’s hire their cook and pay her for her time. Self – Employment also exists as one witnesses through the doctor. The economic system in which the plot revolves around is Slavery. Mr. Cole tries to earn a fortune in the business of slave trade. His wife, Francis, is ordered to teach them to assimilate into European culture by teaching them English, dressing them in new cloths and re-naming them. As the film progresses, so does Mr. Cole’s greed and arrogance increases. He begins to act superior and to dominate the household. Many slave owners including Mr. Cole began to engrain these feelings into their culture, to be carried through generations.
In A Respectable Trade, the owner of the slaves is Josiah Cole. This is a new business investment for Josiah. He is not well known with the aristocrats in Bristol, England and does not have the poise and charm it takes to be accepted in to their circle. As a result, he invests in marrying Francis Scott. She was raised by “old money” and possesses the grace, status and wealth required to begin a successful business in slave trading. She is also a very educated woman and has the ability to teach the slaves English and how to behave as a European servant might have been expected to.
Consequently, Josiah appears to have a prosperous business investment by marring Francis as she can lead him and their business of slave trade into Queen’s Square.
“Generally the owner is responsible for providing minimal food, shelter, and clothing. Members of a family can be separated at the will of the owner…A slave is commonly regarded as an article of property, or chattel, and therefore can be sold or given away.” In A Respectable Trade the viewer sees the slaves eventually living in better conditions, eating healthier and with more comfortable clothing, nevertheless the clothing was very European and may have felt uncomfortable to them. Eventually, Francis feels compassion for the slaves, especially for Mehuru, and this is what drives her to make their lives more comfortable, if lives can be comfortable with out freedom. However, in the beginning of the business, they were treated poorly and often. It is important to remember that these better living conditions were not originally a result of Francis’s moral conscious Her motivations were more for economical reasons.
Through historical documents and transcriptions of personal accounts, he attempts to create a glimpse into the more economically driven side of slavery. Johnson uses excerpts from these documents to paint a picture of what it was like to be involved with the slave trade in New Orleans. Most importantly, he attempts to tell the story from several different perspectives—that of the slave owner, the slave trader, and even the slaves themselves. The picture Johnson paints is not the one we are used to of slaves on plantations and in “big houses,” working in the fields and serving their masters, nor is it the darker idea of the punishments those slaves received for taking even a tiny step out of line. Instead, Johnson shows us an even darker, bleaker side of slavery—the reduction of human beings to the same level as farm animals, to be bought and sold and traded in the brutal economy of the slave trade. In this trade, people were reduced to commodities, their value determined down to the dollar based on physical attributes. Johnson quotes one trader, David Wise, on the value of a human eye: "Being asked if the girl had a filter on her eye if it would impair her value, he says it would impair its value from $25 to
Growing up, Frederick Bailey dealt with a harsh slave life. His grandmother raised him, and he rarely saw his mother. All slaves slept on the ground with no extra comforts, like blankets or pillows. Frederick was only entitled to one t-shirt yearly and he witnessed lashings of other slaves. Most slaves on the plantation pick cotton and worked from dawn to dusk. All slaves were fed small corn oriented meals. At the age of eight, Frederick was sold to a slave-owner by the name of Master Auld. Master Auld owned a house in the city of Balitmore. Although he was still separated from most of his family, he was given a full set of clothes and a bed to sleep on. Slaves in the cities were treated different from slaves of the plantations. While the slaves of the plantations were treated with little respect, city slaves were seen as show dogs. You had to make your slave look the best in your neighbor’s view. Here, Frederick Bailey learned to read from poor white boys whose payment for a lesson was a piece of bread or any other food. At age twenty, Frederick ran away to New York City, New York. Many slaves, at the time, ran away t...
Solomon has the good luck of purchase by William Ford who through these writings portrayed as a good master. Eliza, another slave the Ford purchases, has a daughter named Emily. Ford sees the agony Eliza is in over the separation from her child and is willing to buy her even though he does not need her. Freeman refuses all offers for the child but buys Eliza knowing that she will be separated from the child whether he buys her or not. On their trek to Master Fords home he allows them the opportunity to sit and rest when needed. Ford, who is on horseback, understands and has compassion for his slaves who must make the journey on foot. On the way, they stop at homes where the slaves receive proper amounts of good food and given good opportunities to rest. Master Ford seems to look on his slaves as humans more than animals.
From Douglass’s narrative, we can conclude that slavery brings out the worst in slave owners. Although one human should not treat another in such tortuous ways, slave owners’ actions towards their slaves deemed socially acceptable among their community. Keeping other human beings as property presumed natural. Slave owners retained wealth from this economic opportunity, resulting in the most valuable possession of all—power. Eventually, the authority they possessed over other human beings led to their abuse of power. Their addiction to dominate diminished all traces of their morality, and unfortunately, transformed them into tyrants. Moreover, the curse of slavery created immoral beings out of even the most virtuous men and women.
Douglass begins his social critique by discussing “the Great House Farm,” a plantation known for its “business-like aspect very unlike the neighboring farms” and its “number of houses,” all of which give it prestige that slaves recognize as being synonymous with privilege (1187). Douglass notes that the Great Farm House is, for slaves, “associated in their minds with greatness,” and that “[f]ew privileges were esteemed higher, by the slaves of the o...
...d labor, had made herself a comfortable home, was obliged to sacrifice her furniture, bid a hurried farewell to friends, and seek her fortune among strangers in Canada. Many a wife discovered a secret she never known before-that her husband was a fugitive, and must leave her to insure his own safety. Worse still, many a husband discovered that his wife had fled from slavery years ago, and as “the child follows the condition of its mother,” the children of his love were liable to be seized and carried into slavery” (155) Extremely pity, sorrow, and shame is projected throughout Jacob’s book which covers not only her life, but also the common misfortune of many victims of slavery. Undoubtedly the women slaves were repeatedly abused, discriminated, and harassed not only by the society but also by the sadistic masters becoming the most mistreated of a slavery society.
The slaves were not afforded the luxury the white people enjoyed that was the universal belief that one’s life has value simply because they are human; the white oppressors did not see the enslaved Africans as humans, therefore they did not afford them the inherent value bestowed upon human life. The practices conducted aboard the slave ships coincided with the believe that the Africans were nothing but cargo or livestock. Hine describes the practice of “tight packing” writing, “most captains were “tight packers,” who would squeeze human beings together in hope that large numbers would offset increased deaths.” She continues in a subsequent passage claiming, “one third of the Africans subjected to the trade perished between their capture and their embarkation on a slave ship” (Hine, 2012). There is no clearer indication that the white slavers felt the lives of the enslaved Africans were worthless than the blatant disregard for slave mortality aboard the ships. The captors attempted to keep the enslaved alive simply in order to receive monetary recompense, however, Hine’s describes slavers as being exceptionally cruel to enslaved Africans aboard ships despite the possible monetary consequences. Finally, Hine describes how the amount of value placed on an enslaved African’s life and health was directly proportional to the amount of money that slave was worth, when describing the experience of women aboard slave ships. Hine writes, “because the women were less valuable commodities, crew members felt they had license to abuse them sexually” (Hine, 2012). This passage describes how different enslaved Africans faced different amounts of cruelty and abuse based on the assumed price this person was worth. Not only were all the enslaved black people seen as less than human, some people were
My new mistress proved to be all she appeared when I first met her at the door, —a woman of the kindest heart and finest feelings. She had never had a slave under her control previously to myself, and prior to her marriage she had been dependent upon her own industry for a living. She was by trade a weaver; and by constant application to her business, she had been in a good degree preserved from the blighting and dehumanizing effects of slavery. I was utterly astonished at her goodness. I scarcely knew how to behave towards her. She was entirely unlike
Pennington explained how it angered him when people used the excuse of “kind masters” or “well fed and well-clothed slaves” as a form of justification for slavery. This relates to paternalism, the notion that masters took responsibility for their “dependents” (women, children, and, slaves). Owners claimed that they considered slaves “part of the family” and provided them with religious instruction, food, housing, medical care, care in old age, etc.. However, this notion of “paternalism” can be misleading, as even the “mildest form of slavery” still included separation of families, starvation, physical punishment or whipping if their slaves defied them, nakedness, etc. According to Pennington, even “good” owners were not masters of the slave system; the slave system was a master of them (p.374). They claimed to “love” their slaves, yet they were always willing to sell them for a certain price. Most importantly, due to the chattel principle, even if one had a “good” owner, he could easily be moved and sold to a bad owner. The chattel principle became one of the main critiques of slavery by northern abolitionists and motivated them to decimate the pro-slavery
The life of a slave was subservient to the master. They had to obey without question or face punishment. Even if the master was less abusive and demanding, the slave still held resentment, for his life was not his own. For slave owners, the main object was to keep financially valuable slaves alive and working. That was all that mattered. They were items, property and a commodity to be owned or sold for profit. Slave owner’s supplied only the minimum needs for survival, little food was given and often that was not fit to eat. Living conditions were poor such as no beds or bedding. The work was grueling and the hours were long for the slave. They often got very little sleep and they were watched during the day to make sure they were not idle and at night to be sure they didn’t escape. They were dominated by the people that owned them.
Most slaves in the country, as people well know, worked as field hands and jobs involving the crops and livestock, with the exception of the house slaves. In the city however, slaves worked different types of jobs. “City slaves were typically artisans and craftsmen, stevedors and draymen, barbers and common laborers, and house and hotel servants.” (Starobin 9). Frederick Douglass worked as a house servant and as ...
In Douglass’ book, he narrates his earliest accounts of being a slave. At a young age, he acknowledges that it was a masters’ prerequisite to “keep their slaves thus ignorant”, reporting he had no true account of his age, and was groomed to believe, “a want of information concerning my own was a source of unhappiness to me even during childhood” (25). This mindset was inbreeded in slaves to use ignorance as control and power. As a child, Douglass is separated from his mother. Thus, he comprehends this is implemented in slavery to disengage any mental, physical, and emotional bond within families and to benefit slave owners concern of uprooting slaves for trade. He illustrates the “norm” action and response of a slave to the master. To describe the typical dialogue, he states, “To all these complaints, no matter how unjust, the slave must answer never a word”, and in response “a slave must stand, listen, and tremble” (38). In the course of his narrative, he describes several excruciating acts of abuse on slaves. His first memory of this exploitation, the lashing of his Aunt Hester, he depicts as, “the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery” (29). Also, he gives accounts of owners’ self-deception tactics, injustices, and in effect, shaping characteristics of prejudice, jealousy, and dishonesty of slaves towards slaves. Likewise, connecting to the reader, slave...
When Douglass moves to Baltimore, he becomes the property of Hugh Auld. There he is cared for by Hugh’s wife, Sophia. The reader’s first impressions of Sophia are favorable; she is a warm, gentle woman who wishes to teach Douglass to read and write. Douglass himself is surprised at how kind she is at first, and he mentions that Sophia Auld has never owned slaves before, and therefore has not been affected by the evils of slavery. Douglass notes that she does not wish to punish him just to keep him subservient like his former masters did, and she does not beat him or even mind at all when Douglass looks her in the eyes. Sophia also teaches Douglass the alphabet and several words. However, her husband Hugh, who has already undergone the transformation that slavery causes, immediately orders her to stop when he hears of this. Here, we see the contrast of two distinctly different people with regards to the institution of slavery. Sophia Auld is pure, innocent, untouched by the evils of slavery. Hugh Auld, on the other hand, has experience with the system of slavery and knows that in order to keep slaves obedient, they must also be kept ignorant and fearful.
Within the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave” Douglass discusses the deplorable conditions in which he and his fellow slaves suffered from. While on Colonel Lloyd’s plantation, slaves were given a “monthly allowance of eight pounds of pork and one bushel of corn” (Douglass 224). Their annual clothing rations weren’t any better; considering the type of field work they did, what little clothing they were given quickly deteriorated. The lack of food and clothing matched the terrible living conditions. After working on the field all day, with very little rest the night before, they must sleep on the hard uncomfortably cramped floor with only a single blanket as protection from the cold. Coupled with the overseer’s irresponsible and abusive use of power, it is astonishing how three to four hundred slaves did not rebel. Slave-owners recognized that in able to restrict and control slaves more than physical violence was needed. Therefore in able to mold slaves into the submissive and subservient property they desired, slave-owners manipulated them by twisting religion, instilling fear, breaking familial ties, making them dependent, providing them with an incorrect view of freedom, as well as refusing them education.
Samuel Sewall’s writing was of a traditional Puritan style. His work often concentrated on religion, politics, business life, and good living. But unlike Puritans of his time Sewall’s many writings addressed specific concerns about the rights of Native Americans and of African-Americans brought as slaves to the colonies. Sewall wrote the first Puritan anti-slaveholding tract The Selling of Joseph. The literary work that Sewall is most famous for is his Diary; it consists of a minute record of his daily life, reflecting his interest in living piously and well. He notes little purchases of sweets for a woman he was courting, and their disagreements over whether he should affect upper class and expensive ways such as wearing a wig and using a coach.