The price of $40,000 was analyzed by Manigault as
comprising $7500 for the mill, $70 per acre for the cleared, and $37 for
the uncleared, and an average of $300 for the slaves. His maintenance
expense per hand he itemized at a weekly peck of corn, $13 a year; summer
and winter clothes, $7; shoes, $1; meat at times, salt, molasses and
medical attention, not estimated. In reward for good service, however,
Manigault usually issued broken rice worth $2.50 per bushel, instead of
corn worth $1. Including the overseer's wages the current expense for the
plantation for the first six years averaged about $2000 annually. Meanwhile
the output increased from 200 barrels of rice in 1833 to 578 in 1838. The
crop in the latter year was particularly notable, both in its yield of
three barrels per acre, or 161-1/2 barrels per working hand, and its price
of four cents per pound or $24 per barrel. The net proceeds of the one crop
covered the purchase in 1839 of two families of slaves, comprising sixteen
persons, mostly in or approaching their prime, at a price of $640 each.
[Footnote 32: The Manigault MSS. are in the possession of Mrs. H.K.
Jenkins, Pinopolis, S.C. Selections from them are printed in _Plantation
and Frontier_, I, 134-139 _et passim_.
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