Work accomplished in a given time.—Mr. T. R. Griscom, of Petersburg, Virginia, stated to me, that he once took accurate account of the labour expended in harvesting a large field of wheat; and the result was that one quarter of an acre a day was secured for each able hand engaged in cradling, raking, and binding. The crop was light, yielding not over six bushels to the acre. In New York a gang of fair cradlers and binders would be expected, under ordinary circumstances, to secure a crop of wheat, yielding from twenty to thirty bushels to the acre, at the rate of about two acres a day for each man.
Mr. Griscom formerly resided in New Jersey; and since living in Virginia has had the superintendence of very large agricultural operations, conducted with slave-labour. After I had, in a letter, intended for publication, made use of this testimony, I called upon him to ask if he would object to my giving his name with it. He was so good as to permit me to do so, and said that I might add that the ordinary waste in harvesting wheat in Virginia, through the carelessness of the negroes, beyond that which occurs in the hands of ordinary Northern labourers, is equal in value to what a Northern farmer would often consider a satisfactory profit on his crop. He also wished me to say that it was his deliberate opinion, formed not without much and accurate observation, that four Virginia slaves do not, when engaged in ordinary agricultural operations, accomplish as much, on an average, as one ordinary free farm labourer in New Jersey.
Mr. Griscom is well known at Petersburg as a man remarkable for accuracy and preciseness; and no man’s judgment on this subject could be entitled to more respect.
Another man, who had superintended labour of the same character at the North and in Virginia, whom I questioned closely, agreed entirely with Mr. Griscom, believing that four negroes had to be supported on every farm in the State to accomplish the same work which was ordinarily done by one free labourer in New York.
A clergyman from Connecticut, who had resided for many years in Virginia, told me that what a slave expected to spend a day upon, a Northern labourer would, he was confident, usually accomplish by eleven o’clock in the morning.
In a letter on this subject, most of the facts given in which have been already narrated in this volume, written from Virginia to the New York Times, I expressed the conviction that, at the most, not more than one-half as much labour was ordinarily accomplished in Virginia by a certain number of slaves, in a given time, as by an equal number of free labourers in New York. The publication of this letter induced a number of persons to make public the conclusions of their own experience or observations on this subject. So far as I know, these, in every case, sustained my conclusions, or, if any doubt was expressed, it was that I had under-estimated the superior economy of free-labour. As affording evidence more valuable than my own on this important point, from the better opportunities of forming sound judgment, which a residence at different times, in both Virginia and a Free State had given the writers, I have reprinted, in an [Appendix], two of these letters, together with a quantity of other testimony from Southern witnesses on this subject, which I beg the reader, who has any doubt of the correctness of my information, not to neglect.
“Driving.”—On mentioning to a gentleman in Virginia (who believed that slave-labour was better and cheaper than free-labour), Mr. Griscom’s observation, he replied: that without doubting the correctness of the statement of that particular instance, he was sure that if four men did not harvest more than an acre of wheat a day, they could not have been well “driven.” He knew that, if properly driven, threatened with punishment, and punished if necessary, negroes would do as much work as it was possible for any white man to do. The same gentleman, however, at another time, told me that negroes were seldom punished; not oftener, he presumed, than apprentices were, at the North; that the driving of them was generally left to overseers, who were the laziest and most worthless dogs in the world, frequently not demanding higher wages for their services than one of the negroes whom they were given to manage might be hired for. Another gentleman told me that he would rather, if the law would permit it, have some of his negroes for overseers, than any white man he had ever been able to obtain in that capacity.
Another planter, whom I requested to examine a letter on the subject, that I had prepared for the Times, that he might, if he could, refute my calculations, or give me any facts of an opposite character, after reading it said: “The truth is, that, in general, a slave does not do half the work he easily might; and which, by being harsh enough with him, he can be made to do. When I came into possession of my plantation, I soon found the overseer then upon it was good for nothing, and told him I had no further occasion for his services: I then went to driving the negroes myself. In the morning, when I went out, one of them came up to me and asked what work he should go about. I told him to go into the swamp and cut some wood. ‘Well, massa,’ said he, ‘s’pose you wants me to do kordins we’s been use to doin’; ebery nigger cut a cord a day.’ ‘A cord! that’s what you have been used to doing, is it?’ said I. ‘Yes, massa, dat’s wot dey always makes a nigger do roun’ heah—a cord a day, dat’s allers de task.’ ‘Well, now, old man,’[23] said I, ‘you go and cut me two cords to-day.’ ‘Oh, massa! two cords! Nobody couldn’ do dat. Oh! massa, dat’s too hard! Nebber heard o’ nobody’s cuttin’ more’n a cord o’ wood in a day, roun’ heah. No nigger couldn’ do it.’ ‘Well, old man, you have two cords of wood cut to-night, or to-morrow morning you will have two hundred lashes—that’s all there is about it. So, look sharp!’ Of course, he did it, and no negro has ever cut less than two cords a day for me since, though my neighbours still get but one cord. It was just so with a great many other things—mauling rails: I always have two hundred rails mauled in a day; just twice what it is the custom, in our country, to expect of a negro, and just twice as many as my negroes had been made to do before I managed them myself.”
This only makes it more probable that the amount of labour ordinarily and generally performed by slaves in Virginia is very small, compared with that done by the labourers of the Free States.
Of course, it does not follow that all articles produced by such labour cost four times as much as in New York. There are other elements of cost besides labour, as land and fuel. I could not have a bushel of lime or salt or coal dug for me on my farm at Staten Island at any price. There are farms in Virginia where either could be obtained by an hour’s labour.