The driver
commonly gave every full hand an equal area to be worked in the same way,
and discriminated among them only in so far as varying conditions from plot
to plot would permit the assignment of the stronger and swifter workmen to
tracts where the work required was greater, and the others to plots where
the labor was less. Fractional hands were given fractional tasks, or were
combined into full hands for full tasks. Thus a woman rated at three
quarters might be helped by her own one quarter child, or two half-hand
youths might work a full plot jointly. The system gave some stimulus to
speed of work, at least from time to time, by its promise of afternoon
leisure in reward. But for this prospect to be effective the tasks had to
be so limited that every laborer might have the hope of an hour or two's
release as the fruit of diligence. The performance of every hand tended
accordingly to be standardized at the customary accomplishment of the
weakest and slowest members of the group. This tendency, however, was
almost equally strong in the gang system also.
The task acre was commonly not a square of 210 feet, but a rectangle 300
feet long and 150 feet broad, divided into square halves and rectangular
quarters, and further divisible into "compasses" five feet wide and 150
feet long, making one sixtieth of an acre.
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