[Footnote 21: MSS. in private possession, data from which were made
available through the kindness of Mr. V.A. Moody.]
[Footnote 22: The yearly product of each sugar plantation in Louisiana
between 1849 and 1858 is reported in P.A. Champonier's _Annual Statement_
of the crop. (New Orleans, 1850-1859).]
[Footnote 23: William H. Russell, _My Diary North and South_ (Boston,
1863), pp. 268-279]
Virtually all of the tobacco, short staple cotton and sugar plantations
were conducted on the gang system. The task system, on the other hand, was
instituted on the rice coast, where the drainage ditches checkering
the fields into half or quarter acre plots offered convenient units of
performance in the successive processes. The chief advantage of the task
system lay in the ease with which it permitted a planter or an overseer
to delegate much of his routine function to a driver. This official each
morning would assign to each field hand his or her individual plot, and
spend the rest of the day in seeing to the performance of the work. At
evening or next day the master could inspect the results and thereby keep
a check upon both the driver and the squad. Each slave when his day's task
was completed had at his own disposal such time as might remain.
Pages:
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444