"
As to schedules of work, the Carolina and Georgia lowlanders dealt in
tasks; all the rest in hours. Telfair wrote briefly: "The negroes to be
tasked when the work allows it. I require a reasonable day's work, well
done--the task to be regulated by the state of the ground and the strength
of the negro." Weston wrote with more elaboration: "A task is as much work
as the meanest full hand can do in nine hours, working industriously....
This task is never to be increased, and no work is to be done over task
except under the most urgent necessity; which over-work is to be reported
to the proprietor, who will pay for it. No negro is to be put into a task
which [he] cannot finish with tolerable ease. It is a bad plan to punish
for not finishing tasks; it is subversive of discipline to leave tasks
unfinished, and contrary to justice to punish for what cannot be done. In
nothing does a good manager so much excel a bad as in being able to discern
what a hand is capable of doing, and in never attempting to make him do
more." In Hammond's schedule the first horn was blown an hour before
daylight as a summons for work-hands to rise and do their cooking and other
preparations for the day.
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