The charge for board, lodging and nursing was $10
per month, and for surgical operations and medical attendance "the usual
rates of city practice."]
[Footnote 4: Mary E. Harden to Mrs. Howell Cobb, Athens, Ga., Nov. 13,
1853. MS. in possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, Athens, Ga.]
The town regime was not so conducive to lifelong adjustments of masters
and slaves except as regards domestic service; for whereas a planter could
always expand his operations in response to an increase of his field hands
and could usually provide employment at home for any artizan he might
produce, a lawyer, a banker or a merchant had little choice but to hire
out or sell any slave who proved a superfluity or a misfit in his domestic
establishment. On the other hand a building contractor with an expanding
business could not await the raising of children but must buy or hire
masons and carpenters where he could find them.
Some of the master craftsmen owned their staffs. Thus William Elfe, a
Charleston cabinet maker at the close of the colonial period, had title to
four sawyers, five joiners and a painter, and he managed to keep some of
their wives and children in his possession also by having a farm on the
further side of the harbor for their residence and employment.
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