240 / PARADOICES OF FORCED LABOR

were indispensable to the existence of the plantation system.
The absence of either could have made the cost of produo
tion under the plantation system greater than the gains
from large—scale production.

Planters recognized that both forms of economic induce-
ment were essential, and they expected their managers to
be adept at employing both. “Nothing,” said the Instructions
to Managers in a widely used plantation account book,

is more important in the right government of negroes, than the
feeling and department of the manager towards them. And
whilst he must be strict and impartial in carrying out his rules
amongst them, and in requiring the performance of their labor,
’Iis but just and humane, when they have done their duty, to
treat them with kindness, and even sometimes with indulgence.
In all government rewards and encouragements are as necessary
as punishment, and are often more effective. Notice, then:
encourage and reward such as best perform their duties. Even a
word of kindness, if judiciously used, will cflect much. At other
times respite from labor for a few hours of any day, or at the end
of the week, may be granted, and when such loss of time will
not materially afiect the plantation operations; and at others,
some additional allowances of provisions and indulgencies at the
holydays, etc.

The good opinion of a good master is always desired by his
negroes, and the manager should, therefore, make it a point to
report to the proprietor the names and characters of all those
who are deserving on account of faithful attention to duty, that
they may be further rewarded. . . .

The object of all punishment should be, 1st, for correction to
deter the offender from a repetition of an offence, from the fear
of the like certain punishment; and, 2nd, for example to all
others, shewing them that if they offend, they will likewise
receive certain punishment. And these objects and ends of all
just punishments can be better attained by the certainty than by
the severity of punishment.

Never fail, therefore, to notice the breach of an established
rule, and be equally unfailing in punishing the offender justly,
according to the nature and circumstance of the offence. Never
inflict punishment when in a passion, nor threaten it; but wait

 

— 

PROPERTY RIGHTS IN MAN / 241

until perfectly cool, and until it can be done rather with sorrow
than in anger.

Olmsted repeatedly ran into examples of the heavy use
made of pecuniary incentives, by slaveholders and of the
effectiveness of such incentives. On a sugar plantation in
Louisiana he was surprised to find that slaves worked “with
greater cheerfulness" during the grinding season than any
other, although during this season they averaged eighteen
hours of work per day. The reason, he discovered, was that
at grinding time the hands were “better paid.” In the Car-
olinas he reported that slaves on hire to fisheries as divers
also revealed a surprising Protestant ethic. “Whatl slaves
eager to work, and working cheerfully, earnestly, and skil-
fully?” The reason Olmsted, again reported, was that they
were receiving extra pay for “skill” and “perseverance.”

Olmsted was also aware of how high such extra pay could
go.‘ “One of the largest manufacturers [of tobacco in Vir-
giniaj,” he said, in the course of trying to demonstrate how
much dearer slave labor was than free labor, “informed me
that he paid seldom less than $60 a year, and sometimes
over $300, to each slave he used, in addition to the rent
paid to their masters, which was from $100 to $150 a year.”
On a rice plantation in Georgia, Olmsted encountered a slave
engineer who received “considerably higher wages, in fact
[in the form of presents], than the white overseer.”

On the issue of pecuniary incentives, however, as on so
many others, Olmsted badly misinterpreted the evidence. In
each of the foregoing instances, except the case in which
he was arguing for the high real cost of slave labor, Olmsted
treated the use of pecuniary incentives as an exception, em-
ployed only by “[m]en of sense” who. had “discovered that
when they desire to get extraordinary exertions from their
slaves, it is better to offer them rewards than to whip them;
to encourage them, rather than to drive them.” Olmsted’s
preconceptions prevented him from realizing that pecuniary