"[7]
[Footnote 7: D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_, pp. 133, 192.]
The published advice of planters to their fellows was quite in keeping with
these instructions to overseers. About 1809, for example, John Taylor, of
Caroline, the leading Virginian advocate of soil improvement in his day,
wrote of the care and control of slaves as follows: "The addition of
comfort to mere necessaries is a price paid by the master for the
advantages he will derive from binding his slave to his service by a
ligament stronger than chains, far beneath their value in a pecuniary
point of view; and he will moreover gain a stream of agreeable reflections
throughout life, which will cost him nothing." He recommended fireproof
brick houses, warm clothing, and abundant, varied food. Customary plenty
in meat and vegetables, he said, would not only remove occasions for
pilfering, but would give the master effective power to discourage it; for
upon discovering the loss of any goods by theft he might put his whole
force of slaves upon a limited diet for a time and thus suggest to the
thief that on any future occasion his fellows would be under pressure
to inform on him as a means of relieving their own privations.
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