No. 30
What the planter wants before he embarks his capital and time in the attempt to cultivate another crop.—Suggestions submitted by a committee at a meeting of planters, November 24, 1864.
First.—Above all, he wants an undoubted guarantee that the labor and teams, corn and hay, with which he begins the cultivation of another crop shall be secured to him for at least twelve months. From past experience, we know that, to be reliable, this guarantee must come from the government at Washington.
Second.—Some mode of compelling laborers to perform ten (10) hours of faithful labor in each twenty-four hours, (Sundays excepted,) and strict obedience of all orders. This may be partially attained by a graduated system of fines, deduction of time or wages, deduction of rations of all kinds in proportion to time lost, rigidly enforced. But in obstinate cases it can only be done by corporal punishments, such as are inflicted in the army and navy of the United States. In light cases of disobedience of orders and non-performance of duty the employer should impose fines, &c. The corporal punishment should be inflicted by officers appointed by the superintendent of “colored labor,” who might, from time to time, visit each plantation in a parish, and ascertain whether the laborer was satisfied with his treatment, and whether he performed his part of the contract, and thus the officer would qualify himself by his own information to correct any abuse that might exist, and award equal justice to each party. The plan of sending off refractory laborers to work on government plantations is worse than useless. A planter always plants as much land as he believes he has labor to cultivate efficiently, neither more nor less. If less, a portion of his laborers are idle a part of their time; if more, his crops must suffer from the want of proper cultivation. If the laborers do not work faithfully, and their work is not judiciously directed, either from want of skill on the part of him who directs the labor, or from the refusal or failure of the laborers from any cause to do the work as it ought to be done, the crops must suffer. If, then, a portion of labor necessary to cultivate a certain amount of land is abstracted by sending it to work anywhere else, the crop must fail in proportion to the amount of labor abstracted. It must therefore be apparent to all that the amount of prompt, faithful, and well-directed labor, necessary to cultivate a given quantity of land efficiently, must be available at all times, when the cultivator deems it necessary, or the crops must necessarily, to a greater or less extent, prove a failure.
Third.—The rate of wages should be fixed—above which no one should be allowed to go. There should be at least four classes of hands, both male and female. If the laborer should be furnished, as this year, 1864, with clothing, shoes, rations, houses, wood, medicine, &c., the planter cannot afford to pay any more wages than this year, and to some hands not so much. Wages should not be paid oftener than once a quarter. As long as a negro has a dime in his pocket he will go every Saturday to some store or town. Besides, if the men have money once a month they are constantly corrupting the women, who will not work because they expect to get money of the men. If the laborers are to pay for all their supplies, some think higher wages could be paid; but it would be necessary to require the negro to supply himself with at least two suits of clothes, one pair of shoes, a hat, and four pounds of pork or bacon, one peck of corn meal a week, vegetables at least twice a week, for a first-class hand. The laborer should pay for his medicine, medical attendance, nursing, &c.; also, house rent, $5 a month, water included; wood at $2 a cord in the tree, or $4 a cord cut and delivered. Instead of money, each employer should be required to pay once a week in tickets issued and signed by himself or agent, not transferable to any one off the premises of him who issues them, redeemable by the issuer quarterly in current funds, and to be received by him in the purchase of goods, provisions, &c., which he sold at current prices.
Fourth.—A law to punish most severely any one who endeavors, by offering higher wages, gifts, perquisites, &c., &c., to induce a negro to leave his employer before the expiration of the term for which he has engaged to labor without the consent of said employer.
Fifth.—Wages to be quarterly. One-half to be retained to the end of the year, unless it is found that more than half is required to maintain a man and his family.
Sixth.—Lost time to be deducted from wages daily; fines to be charged daily; rations, of all kinds, to be docked in proportion to the time lost during the week, if rations are to be supplied.
Seventh.—Fines to be imposed for disobedience of any orders.
Eighth.—During sugar-making the laborer should be required to work at night as well as during the day. For night-work he might be allowed double wages for the time he works.
Ninth.—The negroes should not be allowed to go from one plantation to another without the written permit of their employer, nor should they be allowed to go to any town or store without written permission.
Tenth.—That the laborers should be required to have their meals cooked in a common kitchen by the plantation cooks, as heretofore. At present each family cook for themselves. If there be twenty-five houses on a plantation worked by one hundred hands, there are lighted, three times every day, winter and summer, for the purpose of cooking, twenty-five (25) fires, instead of one or two, which are quite as many as are necessary. To attend these twenty-five fires there must be twenty-five cooks. The extravagance in wood and the loss of time by this mode must be apparent to all. Making the negroes pay for the wood they burn, and for fencing lumber of any kind, would have a tendency to stop this extravagant mode of doing business. They should also be fined heavily or suffer some kind of corporal punishment for burning staves, hoop-poles, shingles, plank, spokes, &c., which they now constantly do.
Eleventh.—None but regularly ordained ministers should be allowed to preach. At present on every plantation there are a number of preachers. Frequent meetings are held at night, continuing from 7 or 8 p.m. until 1 or 2 o’clock a.m. The day after one of these long meetings many of the laborers are unfit to labor; neither are the morals of the negroes improved by these late meetings, nor the health. The night meetings should break up at 10 p.m., and there should be but one a week on a plantation. Some of the preachers privately promulgate the most immoral doctrines.
Twelfth.—A police guard or patrol should be established under the control of the superintendent of free labor, whose duty it shall be, under their officers, to enforce the rules and regulations that the superintendent of free labor may think best to adopt for the government of the laborers and their families on plantations and in private families.
Thirteenth.—The laborers are at present extremely careless of the teams, carts, wagons, gear, tools, and material of all kinds put in their possession, and should therefore be held accountable for the same. Parents should be held liable for things stolen or destroyed by their children not over twelve years of age.
Fourteenth.—Foremen should be fined whenever they fail to report any of the laborers under them who disobey orders of any kind. The foreman at the stable should be required especially to report neglect or ill treatment of teams by their drivers, and he should be held liable for all tools and halters, &c., put in the stable.
Fifteenth.—The unauthorized purchase of clothing or other property by laborers, or others domesticated on plantations, should be severely punished, and so should the sale by laborers or others domesticated on plantations of plantation products without a written permission be punished by fine, imprisonment, and obstinate cases by corporal punishment. The sale or furnishing of intoxicating liquor of any kind to laborers or others domesticated on plantations should be severely punished.
Sixteenth.—The possession of arms or other dangerous weapons without authority should be punished by fine or imprisonment and the arms forfeited.
Seventeenth.—No one, white or colored, with or without passes, should have authority to go into a quarter without permission of the proprietor of said quarter. Should any insist upon going in, or be found in a quarter without permission of the proprietor, he should be arrested at once by the proprietor.
Eighteenth.—Fighting and quarrelling should be prohibited under severe penalties, especially husbands whipping their wives.
Nineteenth.—Laborers and all other persons domesticated on plantations or elsewhere should be required to be respectful in tone, manner, and language to their employers, and proprietors of the plantations or places on which they reside, or be fined and imprisoned.
Twentieth.—The whole study, aim, and object of the negro laborer now is how to avoid work and yet have a claim for wages, rations, clothes, &c.