had been spun and woven, as usual, on the place; but Cain now advised that the cotton warp for the jeans in future be bought.  “The spinning business on this plantation,” said he, “is very ungaining.  In the present arrangement there is eight hands regular imployed in spinning and weaving, four of which spin warpe, and it could be bought at the factory at 120 dollars annually.  Besides, it takes 400 pounds of cotton each year, leaveing 60 dollars only to the four hands who spin warp....  These hands are not old negroes, not all of them.  Two of Nanny’s daughters, or three I may say, are all able hands ... and these make neither corn nor meat.  Take out $20 to pay their borde, and it leaves them in debt.  I give them their task to spin, and they say they cannot do more.  That is, they have what is jenerly given as a task.”

In 1840 Cain raised one of the slaves to the rank of driver, whereupon several of the men ran away in protest, and Cain was impelled to defend his policy in a letter to Mary Telfair, explaining that the new functionary had not been appointed “to lay off tasks and use the whip.”  The increase of the laborers and the spread of the fields, he said, often required the working of three squads, the plowmen, the grown hoe hands, and the younger hoe hands.  “These separate classes are frequently separate a considerable distance from each other, and so soon as I am absent from either they are subject to quarrel and fight, or to idle time, or beat and abuse the mules; and when called to account each negro present when the misconduct took place will deny all about the same.  I therefore thought, and yet believe, that for the good order of the plantation and faithful performance of their duty, it was proper to have some faithful and trusty hand whose duty it should be to report to me those in fault, and that is the only dread they have of John, for they know he is not authorized to beat them.  You mention in your letter that you do not wish your negroes treated with severity.  I have ever thought my fault on the side of lenity; if they were treated severe as many are, I should not be their overseer on any consideration.”  In the same letter Cain mentioned that the pork made on the place the preceding year had yielded eleven monthly allowances to the negroes at the rate of 1050 pounds per month, and that the deficit for the twelfth month had been filled as usual by a shipment from Savannah.

From 407 bales in 1841 the cotton output fell rapidly, perhaps because of restriction prompted by the low prices, to 198 bales in 1844.  Then it rose to the maximum of 438 bales in 1848.  Soon afterwards Cain’s long service ended, and after two years during which I. Livingston was in charge, I.N.  Bethea was engaged and retained for the rest of the ante-bellum period.  The cotton crops in the ’fifties did not commonly exceed three hundred bales of a weight increasing to 450 pounds, but they were supplemented to some extent by the production of wheat and rye