“Slaves died in stunning numbers in the colony; each year, between 5 and 10 percent of the slave population succumbed to overwork and disease. Death outpaced births, and only a constant stream of imports sustained the laboring population. Some contemporaries were dismayed by the brutality and inefficiency of the system. They proposed reforms they hoped would increase the locally born slave population: a few weeks of rest from field labor for pregnant women, and rewards for those who had several children. But it was cheaper to let slaves die and buy more from Africa, so that is what the planters did.”
-Laurent Dubois, Haiti: The Aftershocks of History