Year: 1867




The negroes upon the plantation where
| am now stopping, are like most ignorant
people, highly conservative. Though freed
men, they still are attached to many OF
the old ways and works of their plantation
life


The work l. principally conducted by
the foreman of the plantation, shrewd,
middle-aged Virginia negro, named Nose
No~e knows the capability of every hand,
and just where to put each. He forms
them into gangs, and sets the leaders over
each gang We should think our New
England mode OF rising early and eating "A
GOOD breakfast before going TO the field,
to be the proper way of managing day :
labor. Not 20 our friends. They have
always been III the way OF getting up in
the dim gray Of dawn and working two
hours, and then coming home and cooking
their breakfast and eating it. and 50 they
insist on doing now. and their employers
wisely let them do their work in their own
way.


Nose, horn awakens us while it is vet
quite dark, and every hand musters at
once. We hear no complaint of skulkers,
and no shamming Of sickness. The sim
pie idea that DAYS work belongs to the
laborcr and that if he loses it he loses the
pay for it. has stopped all trouble of that
kind. The rate OF wages Is about a. good
a> that paid to northern laborers, consider
inr the habits and necessities of life here.
The average rate of good field hand Is
twelve dollars month, a house and ra-
tions, which, in fact, amount to the same
thing ae board, fuel and lights, both being
thrown in by the grant of the ever plenty
light wood. Exceptional hands of more
skin and capacity than the common run of
laborers, command sixteen. eighteen, and
even twenty dollars per month. They are
reckoned by employers who have worked
northern laborers, to be, with good, care
fjI overseeing, Just about as efficient aS
the average run of white laborerS that can
be hired at the North, and they are, prob
ably. for this climate and these surround
ines, far better.


On this plantation every hand has the
right to work an acre OF land for himself
or herself, and many do it to considerable
purpose. and their crops, whatever they
may be. are cared for and accounted III the
sales made by their employers.


Some of the best field laborers are
women. They harness the mules, and
drive plow with quite as much skill and
energy as the men. Many of them have
never done any other than field work all
their lives, and have the bodily look, the
stride, the appearance Of men, so that one
often has to look some time when one sees
dark creature. approaching with heavy



discern that one of the softer sex is con-
cealed under that exterior


The regularly raised field hands are
fond of the fields, and pine if put to
housework. They NOPE. and are clumsy
and seem to feel themselves overworked by
the most moderate share of housework,
when they will deem it no hardship to 90
into the field at five O'Clock in the morning,
and work there till night, with the excep-
ton of their breakfast and noon recess.


The housekeeper's prospects i'll the
southern states appear less brilliant than
those Of the farmer. House hands, Ill
general. are the most clumsy, mskilled,
unframed. delaying deferring, shirking
tribe that can be imagined. The idea of
doing anything at the same hour and time
for two consecutive days, of keeping any
regular lines and departments of labor,
and going on Systematically as IN north
ern household, seems never yet to have
dawned on their minds, any more than the
kindred idea Of washing dishes at regular
seasons when you have done using them,
instead of letting them all stand III jolly
confusion till they are wanted again.
/ There are some old families here who
are excellent housekeepers, and who have
managed TO retain under the new regime
their old house servants, and such proceed
without trouble But the generality ot
professed house servants are fond OF con-
gregating in cities, ask extravagant wages
for coming out on plantations, and would
be considered, as to any of our northern
standards of housekeeping, good for very
little 4 woman with ordinary strength
and a pair of hands would much prefer
cooking her own dinner, sweeping her Owl
parlor, and making her own bed, to allow
ing that jubilee of dirt and confusion