special rewards for unusually heavy pickings, was the common resort.  Thus the lowland cotton regime alternated the task and gang systems according to the work at hand; and even the rice planters of course abandoned all thoughts of stinted performance when emergency pressed, as in the mending of breaks in the dikes, or when joint exertion was required, as in log rolling, or when threshing and pounding with machinery to set the pace.

That the task system was extended sporadically into the South Carolina Piedmont, is indicated by a letter of a certain Thomas Parker of the Abbeville district, in 1831,[39] which not only described his methods but embodied an essential plantation precept.  He customarily tasked his hoe hands, he said, at rates determined by careful observation as just both to himself and the workers.  These varied according to conditions, but ranged usually about three quarters of an acre.  He continued:  “I plant six acres of cotton to the hand, which is about the usual quantity planted in my neighborhood.  I do not make as large crops as some of my neighbors.  I am content with three to three and a half bales of cotton to the hand, with my provisions and pork; but some few make four bales, and last year two of my neighbors made five bales to the hand.  In such cases I have vanity enough, however, to attribute this to better lands.  I have no overseer, nor indeed is there one in the neighborhood.  We personally attend to our planting, believing that as good a manure as any, if not the best we can apply to our fields, is the print of the master’s footstep.”

[Footnote 39:  Southern Agriculturist, March. 1831, reprinted in the American Farmer, XIII, 105, 106.]

CHAPTER XIV

PLANTATION MANAGEMENT

Typical planters though facile in conversation seldom resorted to their pens.  Few of them put their standards into writing except in the form of instructions to their stewards and overseers.  These counsels of perfection, drafted in widely separated periods and localities, and varying much in detail, concurred strikingly in their main provisions.  Their initial topic was usually the care of the slaves.  Richard Corbin of Virginia wrote in 1759 for the guidance of his steward:  “The care of negroes is the first thing to be recommended, that you give me timely notice of their wants that they may be provided with all necessarys.  The breeding wenches more particularly you must instruct the overseers to be kind and indulgent to, and not force them when with child upon any service or hardship that will be injurious to them, ... and the children to be well looked after, ... and that none of them suffer in time of sickness for want of proper care.”  P.C.  Weston of South Carolina wrote in 1856:  “The proprietor, in the first place, wishes the overseer most distinctly to understand that his first object is to be, under all circumstances, the care and well being of the