You ask... what are the advantages or disadvantages attending slave labor compared with white labor employed in manufacturing?
In answering this the most important of your questions, I am aware of having to encounter the old and deep rooted prejudices of most persons who have not investigated the subject for themselves, butwho have rather adopted opinions expressed (perhaps interestedly) by others. To such an extent has this opinion that slave labor cannot successfully compete with free labor in manufacturing operations, taken possession of the public mind, that it has become in a manner a proverb, and like all other old maxims is most difficult to eradicate.
In some of the more delicate and intricate operations, where there is much exercise of the mind requisite, I admit that it may be true— but to an extent beyond this I deny its truth; and I appeal to all whose experience qualify them as judges to bear, me out in the assertion--that in all operations, where patience, care, application and strength are the chief requisites, that the slave is found in all respects Competent. He is patient of toil, submits readily to discipline, and unencumbered with cares of the mind; hence it is more entirely brought to bear on the operation he may be performing. To this may be added his physical ability of enduring the heat of the iron-furnace or of the spinning room decidedly better than the white man.
Again: The employer of the slave operative is not deprived of his services from having him, called off to sit on juries; to attend musters and elections, and many other such drawbacks on labor.
Nor is he found uniting in combinations “to strike for higher wages” or for “shorter hours of work” at that particular juncture of time, too, when his services are most needed.
And yet another reason still more cogent is at hand, to prove that to the manufacturer, who is the owner of the slave, his services are doubly valuable. It is this; when the owner has taught him the art of manufacturing he is not called on from time to time, as improvement in skill take place, to increase his wages, as is always the case with the white laborer, who becoming more and more expert, demand and is certainly entitled to higher pay, because the instruction he has acquired, enables him to make for his employer more money.
Note also, that the committee insisted that Tennessee iron was the best the world over:
"English imported iron is not to be compared with our Tennessee iron, to the honor of which I beg leave here to mention that none of the steam boilers made of Tennessee iron, out of which I am informed several have been constructed in Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, have burst, of course therefore our iron masters are free from any blame of having contributed to the sacrifice of the hundreds of lives that have been lost by those accidents."p.594-97, Journal of the Assembly--Tennessee, 1845-46.
