10 | ... 
Printers 5 | ... ... | ... 65 | ... 
Other mechanics [A] 45 | ... 2 | ... 182 | ... 
Apprentices 43 | 8 14 | 7 55 | 5
Unclassified, unskilled
laborers 838 | 378 19 | 2 192 | ... 
Superannuated 38 | 54 1 | 5 ... | ...

[Footnote A:  The slaves and free negroes in this group were designated merely as mechanics.  The whites were classified as follows:  3 joiners, 1 plumber, 8 gas fitters, 7 bell hangers, 1 paper hanger, 6 carvers and gilders, 9 sail makers, 5 riggers, 1 bottler, 8 sugar makers, 43 engineers, 10 machinists, 6 boilermakers, 7 stone cutters, 4 piano and organ builders, 23 silversmiths, 15 watchmakers, 3 hair braiders, 1 engraver, 1 cutler, 3 molders, 3 pump and block makers, 2 turners, 2 wigmakers, 1 basketmaker, 1 bleacher, 4 dyers, and 4 journeymen.

In addition there were enumerated of whites in non-mechanical employments in which the negroes did not participate, 7 omnibus drivers and 16 barkeepers.]

On the other hand, although Charleston excelled every other city in the proportion of slaves in its population, free laborers predominated in all the other industrial groups, though but slightly in the cases of the masons and carpenters.  The whites, furthermore, heavily outnumbered the free negroes in virtually all the trades but that of barbering which they shunned.  Among women workers the free colored ranked first as seamstresses, washerwomen, nurses and cooks, with white women competing strongly in the sewing trades alone.  A census of Savannah in the same year shows a similar predominance of whites in all the male trades but that of the barbers, in which there were counted five free negroes, one slave and no whites.[2] From such statistics two conclusions are clear:  first, that the repulsion of the whites was not against manual work but against menial service; second, that the presence of the slaves in the town trades was mainly due to the presence of their fellows as domestics.

[Footnote 2:  Joseph Bancroft, Census of the City of Savannah (Savannah, 1848).]

Most of the slave mechanics and out-of-door laborers were the husbands and sons of the cooks and chambermaids, dwelling with them on their masters’ premises, where the back yard with its crooning women and romping vari-colored children was as characteristic a feature as on the plantations.  Town slavery, indeed, had a strong tone of domesticity, and the masters were often paternalistically inclined.  It was a townsman, for example, who wrote the following to a neighbor:  “As my boy Reuben has formed an attachment to one of your girls and wants her for a wife, this is to let you know that I am perfectly willing that he should, with your consent, marry her.  His character is good; he is honest, faithful and industrious.”  The patriarchal relations of the country, however, which depended much upon