Missouri and Texas.  The task system, on the other hand, was almost wholly confined to the rice coast.  The gang method was adaptable to operations on any scale.  If a proprietor were of the great majority who had but one or two families of slaves, he and his sons commonly labored alongside the blacks, giving not less than step for step at the plow and stroke for stroke with the hoe.  If there were a dozen or two working hands, the master, and perhaps the son, instead of laboring manually would superintend the work of the plow and hoe gangs.  If the slaves numbered several score the master and his family might live in leisure comparative or complete, while delegating the field supervision to an overseer, aided perhaps by one or more slave foremen.  When an estate was inherited by minor children or scattered heirs, or where a single proprietor had several plantations, an overseer would be put into full charge of an establishment so far as the routine work was concerned; and when the plantations in one ownership were quite numerous or of a great scale a steward might be employed to supervise the several overseers.  Thus in the latter part of the eighteenth century, Robert Carter of Nomoni Hall on the Potomac had a steward to assist in the administration of his many scattered properties, and Washington after dividing the Mount Vernon lands into several units had an overseer upon each and a steward for the whole during his own absence in the public service.  The neighboring estate of Gunston Hall, belonging to George Mason, was likewise divided into several units for the sake of more detailed supervision.  Even the 103 slaves of James Mercer, another neighbor, were distributed on four plantations under the management in 1771 of Thomas Oliver.  Of these there were 54 slaves on Marlborough, 19 on Acquia, 12 on Belviderra and 9 on Accokeek, besides 9 hired for work elsewhere.  Of the 94 not hired out, 64 were field workers.  Nearly all the rest, comprising the house servants, the young children, the invalids and the superannuated, were lodged on Marlborough, which was of course the owner’s “home place.”  Each of the four units had its implements of husbandry, and three of them had tobacco houses; but the barn and stables were concentrated on Marlborough.  This indicates that the four plantations were parts of a single tract so poor in soil that only pockets here and there would repay cultivation.[1] This presumption is reinforced by an advertisement which Mercer published in 1767:  “Wanted soon, ... a farmer who will undertake the management of about 80 slaves, all settled within six miles of each other, to be employed in making of grain."[2] In such a case the superintendent would combine the functions of a regular overseer on the home place with those of a “riding boss” inspecting the work of the three small outlying squads from time to time.  Grain crops would facilitate this by giving more frequent intermissions than tobacco in the routine.  The Mercer estate might indeed be more correctly described as a plantation and three subsidiary farms than as a group of four plantations.  The occurrence of tobacco houses in the inventory and of grain crops alone in the advertisement shows a recent abandonment of the tobacco staple; and the fact of Mercer’s financial embarrassment[3] suggests, what was common knowledge, that the plantation system was ill suited to grain production as a central industry.