Besides, it takes 400 pounds of cotton
each year, leaveing 60 dollars only to the four hands who spin warp....
These hands are not old negroes, not all of them. Two of Nanny's daughters,
or three I may say, are all able hands ... and these make neither corn nor
meat. Take out $20 to pay their borde, and it leaves them in debt. I give
them their task to spin, and they say they cannot do more. That is, they
have what is jenerly given as a task."
In 1840 Cain raised one of the slaves to the rank of driver, whereupon
several of the men ran away in protest, and Cain was impelled to defend his
policy in a letter to Mary Telfair, explaining that the new functionary had
not been appointed "to lay off tasks and use the whip." The increase of the
laborers and the spread of the fields, he said, often required the working
of three squads, the plowmen, the grown hoe hands, and the younger hoe
hands. "These separate classes are frequently separate a considerable
distance from each other, and so soon as I am absent from either they are
subject to quarrel and fight, or to idle time, or beat and abuse the mules;
and when called to account each negro present when the misconduct took
place will deny all about the same.
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