Free produce movement

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This 1820s sugar bowl describes its contents as "EAST INDIA SUGAR not made by SLAVES" East India Sugar not made by Slaves Glass sugar bowl BM.jpg
This 1820s sugar bowl describes its contents as "EAST INDIA SUGAR not made by SLAVES"

The free produce movement was an international boycott of goods produced by slave labor. It was used by the abolitionist movement as a non-violent way for individuals, including the disenfranchised, to fight slavery. [1]

Boycott act of voluntarily abstaining from using, buying, or dealing with a person, organization, or country

A boycott is an act of voluntary and intentional abstention from using, buying, or dealing with a person, organization, or country as an expression of protest, usually for moral, social, political, or environmental reasons. The purpose of a boycott is to inflict some economic loss on the target, or to indicate a moral outrage, to try to compel the target to alter an objectionable behavior.

Slavery System under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work

Slavery is any system in which principles of property law are applied to people, allowing individuals to own, buy and sell other individuals, as a de jure form of property. A slave is unable to withdraw unilaterally from such an arrangement and works without remuneration. Many scholars now use the term chattel slavery to refer to this specific sense of legalised, de jure slavery. In a broader sense, however, the word slavery may also refer to any situation in which an individual is de facto forced to work against their own will. Scholars also use the more generic terms such as unfree labour or forced labour to refer to such situations. However, and especially under slavery in broader senses of the word, slaves may have some rights and protections according to laws or customs.

Contents

In this context, free signifies "not enslaved" (i.e. "having the legal and political rights of a citizen" [2] ). It does not mean "without cost". Similarly, "produce" is used to mean a wide variety of products made by slaves, including clothing, dry goods, shoes, soaps, ice cream, and candy. [3]

<i>Gratis</i> versus <i>libre</i> distinction between concepts

The English adjective free is commonly used in one of two meanings: "for free" (gratis) and "with little or no restriction" (libre). This ambiguity of free can cause issues where the distinction is important, as it often is in dealing with laws concerning the use of information, such as copyright and patents.

1700s

A 1792 political cartoon on the sugar boycott; the British king and queen urge their daughters to drink their tea without sugar, not for humanitarian reasons, but for the sake of saving money. Anti-Saccharrites colored etching by James Gillray (1757 - 1815).png
A 1792 political cartoon on the sugar boycott; the British king and queen urge their daughters to drink their tea without sugar, not for humanitarian reasons, but for the sake of saving money.

The concept originated among members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), in the late 18th century. Quakers believed in pacifism and in the spiritual equality of all humankind. Quakers opposed slavery, and by about 1790 had eliminated slaveholding from among their membership. Radical Quakers such as Anthony Benezet and John Woolman went further, voicing their opinion that purchasers of slave-derived goods were guilty of keeping the institution of slavery economically feasible. They argued for a moral and economic boycott of slave-derived goods. The concept proved attractive because it offered a non-violent method of combating slavery. [4]

Pacifism opposition to war and violence

Pacifism is opposition to war, militarism, or violence. The word pacifism was coined by the French peace campaigner Émile Arnaud (1864–1921) and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress in Glasgow in 1901. A related term is ahimsa, which is a core philosophy in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. While modern connotations are recent, having been explicated since the 19th century, ancient references abound.

Anthony Benezet American abolitionist

Anthony Benezet, born Antoine Bénézet, was a French-born American abolitionist and educator who was active in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. One of the early American abolitionists, Benezet founded one of the world's first anti-slavery societies, the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage ; the first public school for girls in North America; and the Negro School at Philadelphia, which operated into the nineteenth century.

John Woolman American Quaker preacher

John Woolman was a North American merchant, tailor, journalist, and itinerant Quaker preacher, and an early abolitionist in the colonial era. Based in Mount Holly, New Jersey, near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he traveled through frontier areas of British North America to preach Quaker beliefs, and advocate against slavery and the slave trade, cruelty to animals, economic injustices and oppression, and conscription. Beginning in 1755 with the outbreak of the French and Indian War, he urged tax resistance to deny support to the military. In 1772, Woolman traveled to England, where he urged Quakers to support abolition of slavery.

In the 1780s, the movement spread beyond Quaker circles. [5] British abolitionists, most of them also Quakers and some of them former slaves, formed the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1787.[ citation needed ] In 1789, the Abolition Bill was introduced in parliament (by William Wilberforce; Quakers were not allowed to stand for parliament). [6] Plantocratic interests slowed its adoption. By 1791, it had still not been passed, and frustration at parliamentary delaying tactics lead to boycott actions. [7] William Fox published a pamphlet [8] urging a boycott of slave sugar; [9] this became the most popular pamphlet of the century, with over a quarter million copies printed (on both sides of the Atlantic). [10] The pamphlet solidified and concentrated abolitionist efforts. [10]

Abolitionism in the United Kingdom Movement to end slavery in the United Kingdom

Abolitionism in the United Kingdom was the movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to end the practice of slavery, whether formal or informal, in the United Kingdom, the British Empire and the world, including ending the Atlantic slave trade. It was part of a wider abolitionism movement in Western Europe and the Americas.

The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade was a British abolitionist group, formed on 22 May 1787, by twelve men who gathered together at a printing shop in London. The Society worked to educate the public about the abuses of the slave trade; it achieved abolition of the international slave trade in 1807, enforced by the Royal Navy. The United States also prohibited the African slave trade that year, to take effect in 1808.

He made a case for consumer complicity in slavery: "If we purchase the commodity we participate in the crime. The slave dealer, the slave holder, and the slave driver, are virtually agents of the consumer, and may be considered as employed and hired by him to procure the commodity ... In every pound of sugar used we may be considered as consuming two ounces of human flesh". [7] Rhetoric describing slave produce as figuratively contaminated by the blood, tears, and sweat, of slaves, and as morally polluting, was widely used. Further pamphlets on the same theme followed. [10]

Boycotts were waged by both individual consumers and by shopkeepers and merchants. Also in 1791, an English merchant named James Wright published a newspaper ad to explain why he would no longer sell sugar until he could procure it through channels "more unconnected with Slavery, and less polluted with Human Blood". [11] Women, who could not vote, could promote and participate in a slave sugar boycott. [7] The British boycott, at its height, has more than 400 000 participants. However, as the French Revolution turned violent in mid-1792, bottom-up movements lost support, [5] which they did not regain until it became known that Napoleon Bonaparte opposed emancipation. [7]

French Revolution social and political revolution in France and its colonies occurring from 1789 to 1798

The French Revolution was a period of far-reaching social and political upheaval in France and its colonies beginning in 1789. The Revolution overthrew the monarchy, established a republic, catalyzed violent periods of political turmoil, and finally culminated in a dictatorship under Napoleon who brought many of its principles to areas he conquered in Western Europe and beyond. Inspired by liberal and radical ideas, the Revolution profoundly altered the course of modern history, triggering the global decline of absolute monarchies while replacing them with republics and liberal democracies. Through the Revolutionary Wars, it unleashed a wave of global conflicts that extended from the Caribbean to the Middle East. Historians widely regard the Revolution as one of the most important events in human history.

1800s

Elias Hicks's Observations on the Slavery of Africans and Their Descendents published in 1811 advocated a consumer boycott of slave-produced goods to remove the economic support for slavery:

Q. 11. What effect would it have on the slave holders and their slaves, should the people of the United States of America and the inhabitants of Great Britain, refuse to purchase or make use of any goods that are the produce of Slavery? A. It would doubtless have a particular effect on the slave holders, by circumscribing their avarice, and preventing their heaping up riches, and living in a state of luxury and excess on the gain of oppression ... [12]

Observations on the Slavery of Africans and Their Descendents gave the free produce movement its central argument for an embargo of all goods produced by slave labor including cotton cloth and cane sugar, in favor of produce from the paid labor of free people. Though the free produce movement was not intended to be a religious response to slavery, most of the free produce stores were Quaker in origin, as with the first such store, that of Benjamin Lundy in Baltimore in 1826. [13]

Spread

In 1826, the American abolitionist boycott began in earnest when abolitionist Quakers in Wilmington, Delaware drew up a charter for a formal free produce organization; the same year in Baltimore, Maryland, Lundy opened his store selling only goods obtained by labor from free people. [4]

In 1827, the movement grew broader with the formation in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania of the "Free Produce Society" founded by Thomas M'Clintock and other radical Quakers. [4] With the Society, they added a new tactic, one that sought to determine the unseen costs of goods such as cotton, tobacco and sugar which came from the toil of slaves. [14] Quaker women joined the Society, including Lucretia Coffin Mott who spoke out at Society meetings, giving some of her male associates their first experience of hearing a woman lecture. [15]

African Americans

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper supported the free produce movement, regularly saying she would pay more for a "Free Labor" dress Mrs. F. E. W. Harper, Author and Lecturer, Philadelphia, Pa.jpg
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper supported the free produce movement, regularly saying she would pay more for a "Free Labor" dress

In 1830, African-American men formed the "Colored Free Produce Society of Pennsylvania", subsequently, African-American women formed the "Colored Female Free Produce Society of Pennsylvania" in 1831. [16] Some black businesses began to feature free produce; William Whipper opened a free grocery next to Bethel Church in Philadelphia, and in the same city, a Negro confectioner used nothing but sugar from free will labor sources, and received the order for Angelina Grimké's wedding cake. [16] In New York, a supportive article in Freedom's Journal calculated for its readers that, given typical free Negro consumption of sugar, if 25 black people purchased sugar from slaveholders, then one slave was required to sustain the flow. New York City's small population of African Americans was said to require for their sugar the labor of 50 slaves. [16]

In 1850, Henry Highland Garnet toured Great Britain to urge Britons to support free produce. Motto henry highland garnet original.jpg
In 1850, Henry Highland Garnet toured Great Britain to urge Britons to support free produce.

Resolutions in favor of free produce were passed at each of the first five conventions held by African Americans in the 1830s. [16] Henry Highland Garnet preached in New York about the possibility that free produce could strike a blow against slavery. [4] Black abolitionist Frances Ellen Watkins always mentioned the free produce movement in her speeches, saying she would pay a little more for a "Free Labor" dress, even if it were coarser. [16] Watkins called the movement "the harbinger of hope, the ensign of progress, and a means for proving the consistency of our principles and the earnestness of our zeal." [16]

American Free Produce Society

In 1838, supporters from a number of states came together in the "American Free Produce Association", which promoted their cause by seeking non-slave alternates to products from slaveholders, and by forming non-slave distribution channels. The Association produced a number of pamphlets and tracts, and published a journal entitled Non-Slaveholder from 1846 to 1854. [4]

British societies

The British India Society, founded in 1839, supported free produce. [5] UK counterparts to the American Free Produce Society formed in the 1840s-1850s, under the leadership of Anna Richardson, a Quaker slavery abolitionist and peace campaigner based on Newcastle. The Newcastle Ladies' Free Produce Association was established in 1846, and by 1850 there were at least 26 regional associations. [17]

Non-slave enterprise

Quaker George W. Taylor established a textile mill which used only non-slave cotton. He worked to increase the quality and availability of free produce cotton goods. [4] Abolitionist Henry Browne Blackwell invested his and his wife Lucy Stone's money in several ventures seeking to make cheaper sugar by using mechanical means and non-slave labor, but the product was never viable, even when he switched his focus from sugar cane to sugar beets. [18]

21st century

In 2001, due to pressure applied by the US Congress and potential US and UK boycotts, [19] chocolate manufacturers promised to start eliminating forced child labor in cocoa production. [20] In December 2014, the U.S. Department of Labor's List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor report mentioned 6 countries where the cocoa industry employed underage children and indentured laborers. Child labor was reported in 4 of the listed countries, namely Cameroon, Ghana, Guniea and Sierra Leone. The others (Côte d'Ivoire and Nigeria) resorted to both child labor and forced labor. [21]

Disadvantages and criticism

Most abolitionists did not see the free produce movement as being vital to the cause. A few dedicated proponents were able to stay completely away from slave goods but a number of other abolitionists endorsed the concept only when convenient. Many more ignored the issue altogether. [16] The movement never grew large enough to gain the benefit of the economies of scale, and the cost of "free produce" was always higher than competing goods. Though William Lloyd Garrison in Boston, founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society, initially proclaimed at a convention in 1840 that his wool suit was made without slave labor, [22] he later examined the results of the movement and criticized it as an ineffective method to fight slavery, and as a distraction from more important work. [4] The national association disbanded in 1847, but Quakers in Philadelphia continued until 1856. [4]

See also

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William Fox was a radical abolitionist pamphleteer in late 18th-century Britain. Between 1773 and 1794 he ran a bookshop at 128 Holborn Hill in London; from 1782 he was in a business arrangement with the Particular Baptist Martha Gurney, who printed and sold his and others' pamphlets. His most famous work, published in 1791, was An Address to the People of Great Britain, on the Propriety of Refraining from the Use of West India Sugar and Rum. In emotive and graphic language, it urged Britons to boycott the produce of enslaved Africans in the British West Indies, claiming, "[a] family that uses only 5lb. of sugar per week, with the proportion of rum, will, by abstaining from the consumption 21 months, prevent the slavery or murder of one fellow creature; eight such families in 19 1/2 years, prevent the slavery or murder of 100, and 38,000 would totally prevent the Slave-Trade to supply our islands ... in every pound of sugar used, the produce of slaves imported from Africa, we may be considered as consuming two ounces of human flesh." The Address became the most widely circulated 18th-century pamphlet, going through 26 editions in less than a year, with over 200,000 copies distributed in Great Britain and the United States.

References

  1. ↑ Holcomb, Julie L.; Holcomb, Julie (2016-08-23). Moral Commerce: Quakers and the Transatlantic Boycott of the Slave Labor Economy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. doi:10.7591/j.ctt1d2dmqk (inactive 2019-02-22). ISBN   978-0-8014-5208-6. JSTOR   10.7591/j.ctt1d2dmqk.
  2. ↑ Merriam Webster Online. Free. Retrieved on April 24, 2009.
  3. ↑ Glickman, Lawrence B. (December 2004). "'Buy for the Sake of the Slave': Abolitionism and the Origins of American Consumer Activism". American Quarterly. 56 (4): 889–912. doi:10.1353/aq.2004.0056. ISSN   1080-6490.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Hinks, Peter and McKivigan, John, editors. Williams, R. Owen, assistant editor. Encyclopedia of antislavery and abolition, Greenwood Press, 2007, pp. 266–268. ISBN   0-313-33142-1
  5. 1 2 3 4 "Blood-Stained Goods". The Ultimate History Project. Retrieved 2018-09-08.
  6. ↑ William Wilberforce (1759–1833)
  7. 1 2 3 4 "'Slave sugar' and the boycott of 1791 – Georgian Gentleman" . Retrieved 2018-09-08.
  8. ↑ Fulltext of two of the >26 edition ,
  9. ↑ Whelan, Timothy (2008). "William Fox (fl. 1791-1794)". brycchancarey.com. Retrieved September 24, 2018.
  10. 1 2 3 "Sugar in the Atlantic World | Case 6 Sugar and Slavery" . Retrieved 2018-09-08.
  11. ↑ "One 18th-Century Merchant Takes a Stand Against Slavery". Slate. 2013-01-28. ISSN   1091-2339.
  12. ↑ Elias Hicks (1834). Letters of Elias Hicks, Observations on the Slavery of Africans and Their Descendents, (1811). Isaac T. Hopper. pp. 11, 12. Retrieved 2013-02-18.
  13. ↑ Louis L. D'Antuono (1971). The Role of Elias Hicks in the Free-produce Movement Among the Society of Friends in the United States. Hunter College, Department of History. Retrieved 2013-02-18.
  14. ↑ Newman, Richard S. Freedom's Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers, NYU Press, 2008, p. 266. ISBN   0-8147-5826-6
  15. ↑ Yellin, Jean Fagan; Van Horne, John C. The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women's Political Culture in Antebellum America, Cornell University Press, 1994, p. 161. ISBN   0-8014-2728-2
  16. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Quarles, Benjamin. Black Abolitionists, Oxford University Press, 1969, pp. 74–76. ISBN   0-306-80425-5
  17. ↑ Midgley, Clare. "Richardson [née Atkins], Anna (1806–1892), slavery abolitionist and peace campaigner". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/50724.(Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  18. ↑ Kerr, Andrea Moore. Lucy Stone: Speaking Out for Equality. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1992, p. 114. ISBN   0-8135-1860-1
  19. ↑ "Combating Child Labour in Cocoa Growing" (PDF). International Labour Organization. 2005.
  20. ↑ Hawksley, Humphrey (2 April 2007). "Child cocoa workers still 'exploited'". BBC News. Retrieved 4 August 2010.
  21. ↑ List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor
  22. ↑ National Park Service. Women's Rights. Quaker Influence. Retrieved on April 24, 2009.

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