202 / PARADOX]-ES OF FORCED LABOR

bandry, agronomy, horticulture, and related matters; and
they established journals in which they could report their
findings as well as debate the full range of problems that
they encountered in plantation management.
No question was treated with more gravity than that of
labor management. Planters recognized that this was the
critical issue. Economic suc(:ess rode or fell with it. No
aspect of slave management was considered too trivial to be
omitted from consideration or debate. Details of housing,
diet, medical care, marriage, child rearing, holidays, i_n-
centives and punishments, alternative methods of organiz-
ing field labor, the duties of managerial personnel, and even
the manner or air to be assumed by a planter in his rela-
tionship with his slaves were all deemed worthy of debate.
Discussions of diet included such matters as the balance
between meat, vegetables, grains, and dairy products, the
virtues of fat versus lean meats, and the optimum method
of food distribution and preparation. With respect to hous-
i.ng, planters debated the respective merits of single- and
multi—family dwellings, the benefits and costs of various
types of building materials, the design of chimneys, and
the optimum spatial distribution of slave houses and other
buildings. On marriage and the family, the debate included
such issues as whether or not slaves should be permitted to
marry across plantations, and the latitude to be allowed to
drivers and overseers in the mediation of int_ra- as well as
interfamily disputes. Debates around the incentive structure
turned on such matters as the relative advantages of gifts
or cash bonuses versus allotments of plots of land, the
types of crops that slaves could grow on their individual
plots, whether or not slaves should be permitted to have
quasi-property rights in the small livestock, and whether
slaves should be permitted to market their own crops and
livestock or should be required to sell them to the planter
at prevailing market prices.
Whatever the differences among planters in the resolution

 

 

RELATIVE EFFICIENCY OF SLAVE AGRICULTURE / 203

of these particular issues, there was widespread agreement
that the ultimate objective of slave management was the
creation of ahi hl disci lined hi ' ‘ e11-
 m. Specialization and interdependence
were the hallmarks of the medium- and large—sized planta-
tions. On family-sized farms, each worker had to fulfill a
multiplicity of duties according to a pace and pattern which
were quite flexible and largely independent of the activities
of others. lantations the han were as ri 'd 
 Ea& hand was assigned to a set 0
tasks which occupie ini throughout the year, or at least
through particular seasons of the year. There were drivers,
plowmen, hoe hands, harrowers, seed sewers, coverers,
sorters, ginners, packers, milkmaids, stock minders, car-
penters, blacksmiths, nurses, and cooks — to give only a
partial listing.

With respect to field labor, the various hands were formed
into gangs or teams in which the interdependence of labor
was a crucial element. During the planting period the inter-
dependence arose largely from within each gang. A plant-
ing gang consisted of five types of hands whofollowe one
another in a fixed procession. Leading off the procession
were pin who ridged up the unbroken earth; then
came hagrowers who broke up the clods; then dglgrs who
created the holes to receive the seeds, each hole a prescribed
distance apart from the next one; then drgppirs who
planted the seeds in the holes; and finally rakers who
covered up the holes. The intensity of the p:iE“6f these
gangs was maintained in three ways:

 
 

 

“i

First, by choosing as the plowmen and harrowers who led off
the planting operation the strongest and ablest hands.

Second, by the interdependence of each type of hand on the
other. (For as on an assembly line, this interdependence gen-
erated a pressure on all those who worked iii the gang to keep
up with the pace of the leaders.)

Third, by assigning d_r_i;§rs or foremen who exhorted the A