Free workingmen in general, whether farmers, artisans or unskilled wage
earners, merely filled the interstices in and about the slave plantations.
One year in the eighteen-forties a planter near New Orleans, attempting to
dispense with slave labor, assembled a force of about a hundred Irish and
German immigrants for his crop routine. Things went smoothly until the
midst of the grinding season, when with one accord the gang struck for
double pay. Rejecting the demand the planter was unable to proceed with
his harvest and lost some ten thousand dollars worth of his crop.[9] The
generality of the planters realized, without such a demonstration, that
each year must bring its crop crisis during which an overindulgence by the
laborers in the privileges of liberty might bring ruin to the employers.
To secure immunity from this they were the more fully reconciled to the
limitations of their peculiar labor supply. Freemen white or black might
be convenient as auxiliaries, and were indeed employed in many instances
whether on annual contract as blacksmiths and the like or temporarily
as emergency helpers in the fields; but negro slaves were the standard
composition of the gangs.
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