THERE IS DEATH IN THE POT - The University of Texas at Arlington

measures were simply more of the “slow and solemn process of Parliamentary
discussion.” 67 The Ladies’ Association for Liverpool and Its Neighborhoods in Aid of
the Cause of Negro Emancipation estimated Liverpool residents paid £5,000 annually in
duties and bounties to support West Indian slavery. 68 Despite such statements, however,
women’s associations emphasized the moral imperative of withdrawing economic
support for slavery trusting in consumer demand to provide resolution. Cropper admired
the moral scruples of those who avoided slave produce; yet, he was a businessman and
understood how dependent British commerce was on the products of slavery. 69 Instead,
he called for the opportunity for the products of free labor to compete equally with the
products of slavery. Convinced of the superiority of free labor, Cropper believed free
labor would prevail in the long-term and West Indian planters would be forced to
emancipate their slaves. 70 Cropper and Heyrick reflect two competing strains of
consumer activism. 71 Emphasizing an ascetic approach to the market, Heyrick
possible that Cropper and other abolitionist leaders recognized that radicals like Heyrick had helped them
appear more moderate,” Davis argues. See David Brion Davis, Slavery and Human Progress (New York
and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 183-184.
67 Heyrick, Immediate Not Gradual Abolition, 24.
68 The First Report of the Ladies’ Association of Liverpool, 7-8. Noting that Liverpool residents
gave only £200 to the anti-slavery cause in the previous year, the women asked, “Can we then any longer
wonder that so little good is effected?”
69 Davis, Slavery and Human Progress, 183.
70 Fladeland, Men and Brothers, 162-164; Davis, Slavery and Human Progress, 181.
71 See Glickman, Buying Power, 9. Glickman discusses both strains of consumer activism. “Even
as they have vested extraordinary power in individual consumers a majority of consumer activists have at
the same denigrated the self and its desires, along with the practices of consumption that mediate that
relationship. This strand of thinking holds to the original meaning of consumption as destruction, and
emphasizes the dangers of consumption, usually in both personal and social terms.” While asceticism
remains the dominant tradition, Glickman argues, “A steady stream of consumer activists has argued that
posture of asceticism undervalues the potentially positive social impact of consumption . . . If individuals
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