THE MARKET PRICE OF SLAVES. ♦ .

Evening Post, Volume LXIII, Issue 153, 28 June 1902, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE MARKET PRICE OF SLAVES. ♦ .

'3 lave auctions in Morocco correspond to vtue cattle and horse market sales hel<fl hi civilised communities. Mr. Budgetfe A'i'aakin, in The Moors, writes:—"Girto t>i any promise of beauty are carefulty j a ttened, and others are instructed iv; 1 Household duties ; one who has been train* "Jil under a first-rate cook commanding «• considerable price. I once saw a giri just purchased for about £13, for whom 'the dealer hoped to receive £25 when shvj I had been trained by a cook for whom hr* was asking £33 10s. The prices obtainable vary too much from season io season, fluctuating with supply and demand, for any set ot prices to serve for more than an indication of the relative values of dif< ferent classes. I once saw a batch di»> posed of by auotion when business wap dull in Marrakesh, in which two small boys fetched £5 and £b 10s; a fullgrown white girl, £24; black girl of I'd to 15X£9 to £10; a stalwart negro, £14 jj and so on. A beauty, the dealer told men might just then fetch £130 to £160, bufl such prices would be altogether exceptional. In a slack season I have known a man with his wife and child sold foD £6 10s j a girl of tt for £3 10s, an ablebodied woman for £10, and a mothen with two boya of a few months and si^ years old respectively for £3 15s; whilu about the same time £30 was all that! could bo obtained for a father and mother with three children, and £28 10s for & woman with three children; so these lots were withdrawn." The slave owner may kill or maltreat his slaves with im-. punity, as, say, the London coster maj: his donkey, but it pays to be kind, so, aa a rule, slaves get the fair treatment*, which is elsewhere accorded by prudent dealers to prize stock.