The hirer has, in addition to paying wages for the slave, to feed and to clothe him; the free labourer requires also to be boarded, but not to be clothed by his employer. The opinion is universal in Virginia, that the slaves are better fed than the Northern labourers. This is, however, a mistake, and we must consider that the board of the Northern labourer would cost at least as much more as the additional cost of clothing to the slave. Comparing man with man, with reference simply to equality of muscular power and endurance, my final judgment is, that the wages for common labourers are twenty-five per cent. higher in Virginia than in New York.
Loss from disability of the labourer.—This to the employer of free labourers need be nothing. To the slave-master it is of varying consequence: sometimes small, often excessively embarrassing, and always a subject of anxiety and suspicion. I have not yet made the inquiry on any plantation where as many as twenty negroes are employed together, that I have not found one or more of the field-hands not at work, on account of some illness, strain, bruise, or wound, of which he or she was complaining; and in such cases the proprietor or overseer has, I think, never failed to express his suspicion that the invalid was really as well able to work as anyone else on the plantation. It is said to be nearly as difficult to form a satisfactory diagnosis of negroes’ disorders as it is of infants’, because their imagination of symptoms is so vivid, and because not the smallest reliance is to be placed on their accounts of what they have felt or done. If a man is really ill, he fears lest he should be thought to be simulating, and therefore exaggerates all his pains, and locates them in whatever he supposes to be the most vital parts of his system.
Frequently the invalid slaves neglect or refuse to use the remedies prescribed for their recovery. They conceal pills, for instance, under their tongue, and declare that they have swallowed them, when, from their producing no effect, it will be afterwards evident that they have not. This general custom I heard ascribed to habit, acquired when they were not very ill, and were loth to be made quite well enough to have to go to work again.
Amusing incidents, illustrating this difficulty, I have heard narrated, showing that the slave rather enjoys getting a severe wound that lays him up:—he has his hand crushed by the fall of a piece of timber, and after the pain is alleviated, is heard to exclaim, “Bress der Lord—der haan b’long to masser—don’t reckon dis chile got no more corn to hoe dis yaar, no how.”
Mr. H., of North Carolina, observed to me, in relation to this difficulty, that a man who had had much experience with negroes could generally tell, with a good deal of certainty, by their tongue, and their pulse, and their general aspect, whether they were really ill or not.
“Last year,” said he, “I hired out one of my negroes to a railroad contractor. I suppose that he found he had to work harder than he would on the plantation, and became discontented, and one night he left the camp without asking leave. The next day he stopped at a public-house, and told the people he had fallen sick working on the railroad, and was going home to his master. They suspected he had run away, and, as he had no pass, they arrested him and sent him to the jail. In the night the sheriff sent me word that there was a boy, who said he belonged to me, in the jail, and he was very sick indeed, and I had better come and take care of him. I suspected how it was, and, as I was particularly engaged, I did not go near him till towards night, the next day. When I came to look at him, and heard his story, I felt quite sure that he was not sick; but, as he pretended to be suffering very much, I told the sheriff to give him plenty of salts and senna, and to be careful that he did not get much of anything to eat. The next day I got a letter from the contractor, telling me that my nigger had run away, without any cause. So I rode over to the jail again, and told them to continue the same treatment until the boy got a good deal worse or a good deal better. Well, the rascal kept it up for a week, all the time groaning so, you’d think he couldn’t live many hours longer; but, after he had been in seven days, he all of a sudden said he’d got well, and wanted something to eat. As soon as I heard of it, I sent them word to give him a good paddling,[19] and handcuff him, and send him back to the railroad. I had to pay them for taking up a runaway, besides the sheriff’s fees, and a week’s board of the boy to the county.”
But the same gentleman admitted that he had sometimes been mistaken, and had made men go to work when they afterwards proved to be really ill; therefore, when one of his people told him he was not able to work, he usually thought, “Very likely he’ll be all the better for a day’s rest, whether he’s really ill or not,” and would let him off without being particular in his examination. Lately he had been getting a new overseer, and when he was engaging him, he told him that this was his way. The overseer replied, “It’s my way, too, now; it didn’t use to be, but I had a lesson. There was a nigger one day at Mr. ——’s who was sulky and complaining; he said he couldn’t work. I looked at his tongue, and it was right clean, and I thought it was nothing but damned sulkiness, so I paddled him, and made him go to work; but, two days after, he was under ground. He was a good eight hundred dollar nigger, and it was a lesson to me about taming possums, that I ain’t agoing to forget in a hurry.”
The liability of women, especially, to disorders and irregularities which cannot be detected by exterior symptoms, but which may be easily aggravated into serious complaints, renders many of them nearly valueless for work, because of the ease with which they can impose upon their owners. “The women on a plantation,” said one extensive Virginian slaveowner to me, “will hardly earn their salt, after they come to the breeding age: they don’t come to the field, and you go to the quarters, and ask the old nurse what’s the matter, and she says, ‘Oh, she’s not well, master; she not fit to work, sir;’ and what can you do? You have to take her word for it that something or other is the matter with her, and you dare not set her to work; and so she lay up till she feels like taking the air again, and plays the lady at your expense.”
I was on a plantation where a woman had been excused from any sort of labour for more than two years, on the supposition that she was dying of phthisis. At last the overseer discovered that she was employed as a milliner and dressmaker by all the other coloured ladies of the vicinity; and upon taking her to the house, it was found that she had acquired a remarkable skill in these vocations. She was hired out the next year to a fashionable dress-maker in town, at handsome wages; and as, after that, she did not again “raise blood,” it was supposed that when she had done so before, it had been by artificial means. Such tricks every army and navy surgeon is familiar with.
The interruption and disarrangement of operations of labour, occasioned by slaves “running away,” frequently causes great inconvenience and loss to those who employ them. It is said to often occur when no immediate motive can be guessed at for it—when the slave has been well treated, well fed, and not over-worked; and when he will be sure to suffer hardship from it, and be subject to severe punishment on his return, or if he is caught.