Eric V. Snow
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A COMPARISON OF AMERICAN SLAVES AND ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL WORKERS, 1750-1875 BY ERIC V. SNOW TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. WHY COMPARE ENGLISH LABORERS AND AMERICAN SLAVES TO BEGIN WITH? . . 10 The Standard Comparison of Factory Workers with Slaves 10 Why Do Such a Comparison? 10 What Exactly Is Compared Out of Each Diverse Group 12 Five Broad Areas for Comparison Purposes 12 2. A HISTORICAL PERENNIAL: THE STANDARD OF LIVING DEBATE 14
Standard of Living 14 Diet and the Standard of Living for Slaves 17 Fogel and Engerman's Optimistic Reconstructions of the Slave Diet 18 The Slave Diet as Crude, Coarse, and Boring 21 Differing Diets for Slaves with Different Positions 23 The Slaves' Role in Providing Themselves with Food on Their Own 25 Variations in What Food Different Slaveowners Provided Their Own Slaves With 26 The Diet of English Farmworkers: Regional Variations 28 The Southern English Agricultural Workers' Diet Was Poor, Often Meatless 30 Grains, Especially Wheat, Dominate the Agricultural Workers' Diet 32
The Role of Potatoes in the Laborers' Diet, Despite Prejudices Against Them 33 Did Farmworkers Prefer Coarse or Fine Food? 34 The Monotony of the Farmworkers' Diet in the South of England 36 The Superior Conditions of the Northern English Farmworkers 37 Meat as a Near Luxury for Many Farmworkers 39 The Effects of Enclosure and Allotments on Hodge's Diet 40 Comparing Food Received by English Paupers, Slaves, and Their Nation's Army 42 Better Bread Versus Little Meat? The Slave Versus Farmworker Diet 43 Clothing for Slaves 44 Bad Clothing Conditions for Slaves 45 Differences in Clothing Provided for Slaves with Different Position 46 The Factory Versus Homespun: The Master's Decision 48 Slaves and Shoe Shortages 49
Rations 51 Clothing and English Agricultural Workers 51 The Low Standards for Farmworkers, Especially in Southern England 52 Homespun More Common in America than England by C. 1830 53 Special Measures Needed to Buy Their Own Clothes 54 Housing For Slaves: Variations around a Low Average Standard 55 Cases of Good Slave Houses 58 Was Poor White Housing Little Better than the Slaves'? 59 Fogel and Engerman's Optimistic View of Slave Housing 59 Genovese's Overly Optimistic Take on Slave Housing 60 The Moral Hazards of Crowded, One-Room Slave Houses 62 Slave Housing--Sanitation and Cleanliness 63 English Farmworkers' Housing--Quality/Size 64 Poor Housing Leads to Sexual Immorality 66 How the Artist's Eye Can Be Self-Deceiving When Evaluating Cottages' Quality 68 How Rentals and the Poor and Settlement Laws Made for Poor Quality Housing 69 The Problem of Cottages Being Distant from Work 70 The Aristocracy's Paternalism in Providing Housing, and Its Limits 71 Little Difference for Slaves and Farmworkers in the Quality of Their Housing 73 Agricultural Workers--Sanitation/Cleanliness 74 Slaves--Furniture and Personal Effects 76 English Agricultural Workers: Home Furnishings, Utensils, etc. 78 Fuel--Sambo's Supply Versus Hodge's 79 Sambo's Medical Care 82 The General Backwardness of Antebellum Medical Care 83 Masters Sought Ways to Reduce Medical Expenses 84 Masters and Overseers as Amateur Healers for Slaves 84 Black Medical Self-Help: Conjurors and Midwives 86 Medical Care for English Agricultural Workers 87 Whose Medical Care Was Better? Hodge's? Or Sambo's? 91 The Overall Material Standard of Living: Was Hodge or Sambo Better Off? 92 Trickle-Down Economics with a Vengeance: How the Slaves Benefited 93 3. THE QUALITY OF LIFE: SLAVES VERSUS AGRICULTURAL WORKERS 95 The Quality of Life as Opposed to the (Material) Standard of Living 95 Literacy and Education for African-American Slaves 96 Why Slaveholders Sought to Keep Slaves Illiterate 98 English Farmworkers, Literacy and Education 102 A Brief Sketch of the Development of English Public Education 104 What Age Did Child Labor Begin and Schooling End? 105 Ignorance Versus Skewed Knowledge: Different Models for Controlling a Subordinate Class 106 Slaves--The Treatment of Elderly "Aunts" and "Uncles" 109 Altruism and Self-Interest Did Not Necessarily Conveniently Coincide to Protect Elderly Slaves' Lives 110 Did Slavery Provide More Security Against Starvation than Laissez-Faire? 110 Odd Jobs for Elderly Slaves 112 The Senior Hodge: Cared for, or Fends for Himself? 113 The Effects of the New Poor Law on the Elderly, Non-Working Poor 115 How the Local Authorities Profited from the Workhouse Test 117 Whose Elderly Were Better Off? The Farmworkers' or the Slaves'? 118 The Slave Childhood: Full of Fun or Full of Fear? 119 Pastimes for Slave Children 120 Plantation Day Care: How Slave Childhood Was Different 123 Is All Work Bad for Children? 124 The Slave Childhood: Good, Bad, or Indifferent? 125 Hodge's Childhood: More Work, But More Worthwhile? 126 Just How Common Was Child Labor, Especially in the Countryside 128 The Parental Push for Child Labor 130 Day Care Not a Common Experience 131 Young Hodge at Play 132 The Relative Quality of Life for the Children of Slaves and Laborers 133 Religion--A Site for Enlightenment, Social Unity, and Social Conflict 134 Slave Religion--The Slaveholders' Options on Christianizing the Slaves 135 The Earlier Practice of Not Evangelizing the Slaves 137 The Gospel of Obedience Distorts the Christianity Given to the Slaves 137 The Slaves Add to the Religion Given Them by Their Masters and Mistresses 139 No Surprise: The Slaves' Lack of Religious Freedom 141 The Slaves Unbend a Bent Christianity 142 Slave Preachers: Their Role and Power 144 Did Slaveholders Achieve Religious and Ideological Hegemony Over the Slaves? 145 English Agricultural Workers and Christianity 149 Reasons for the Established Church's Unpopularity with the Laborers 149 How the Local Elite Can Use Charity to Control the Poor 151 The Laborers’ Turn to Nonconformity and Its Mixed Results 153 Christianity: An Instigator of Laborers' Resistance? 154 Similarities in Southern White and English Lower Class Religion 155 Somehow Seeking Participation in and Control of One's Destiny: The Consolations of Faith? 156 The Slave Family: How Well Did It Survive Slavery? 157 The Family Bonds of Slaves Made Conditional Upon the Stability of the Slaveholders 159 The Routine Destruction of Family Relationships under Slavery 161 Fogel and Engerman's Mistakenly Low Figures on Marriage Breakup 164 How the Slaves' Fears about Family Breakup Could Make For Continual Anxiety 165 The Process of Being Bought and Sold as Itself Dehumanizing 166 How Slavery Undermined the Families of Slaves 166 How Slavery Weakened the Father's Role 167 Factors Which Encouraged Slaves to Treat Marriage Bonds Casually 170 How Slavery Encouraged a Casual Approach to Family Relationships 171 The Ways Slavery Destroyed Family Relationships 173 How the Master Could Routinely Interfere in Slave Family Relationships 174 Master-Arranged Marriages 175 Just How Common Was Miscegenation? 176 Despite the Pressures, Slaves Still Maintained Some Form of Family Life 178 The Key Issues Involved in Examining the Quality of Farm- worker Family Life 179 The "Weber/Gillis" Thesis Summarized: Was Brutish Family Life the Norm? 180 The Limits to Snell's Rebuttal Against Seeing Lower Class Family Life as Harsh 182 How Not Being Independent and Self-Sufficient Could Improve Family Life 184 The Limits to Applying the Gillis-Weber Thesis to the English Case 186 Some Evidence Bearing on the Quality of Farmworkers' Family Life 187 Why the Slave Family was Fundamentally Worse Off than the Laborer Family 189 Why the Laborers Had a Higher Overall Quality of Life than the Slaves 190 The Problems of Comparing the Slaves' and Laborers' Quality of Religious Experience 190 How Elderly Slaves Could Have Been Better Off Than the Elderly Farmworkers 192 How the Slaves' More Carefree Childhood Was Not Necessarily
The Hazards of Historical Analysis that Uses the Values of Those in the Past 194 4. THE SEXUAL DIVISION OF LABOR: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS 196 The Sexual Division of Labor: African-American Slaves 196 Kemble on a Stricter Sexual Division of Labor's Advantages 197 Jobs Female Slaves Had 198 Qualifications about the Generally Weak Sexual Division of Labor among Slaves 201 Plantation Day Care Revisited 202 The Sexual Division of Labor: English Agricultural Workers 203 Women's Work in Arable Areas at Harvest Time Increased Later in the Century 204 The Female Dominance of Dairy Work Declines 205 How the Separate Spheres' View on Sex Roles Influenced the 1867-68 Report 206 Why Did Laboring Women Increasingly Fall Out of the Field Labor Force? 207 Allotments Partially Restore the Family Economy 209 Quality of Life Issues and the Sexual Division of Labor 209 The Division of Labor: Blessing or Curse? 211 Who Was Better Off Depends on the Values One Has 213 5. CONTROLLING SUBORDINATE CLASSES--HOW IT WAS DONE 213 The Central Reality of Work and the Elite's Needs for Controlling Its Workers 213 Dawn to Dusk--Work Hours for Slaves 215 Using Force to Get Slaves into the Fields in the Morning 215 Finishing Work for the Day--Some Variations 217 Hours of Work--Agricultural Workers 218 Were Workdays Shorter for the Farmworkers than the Slaves? 219 The Length of the Workweek and Days off--Slaves 221 Slaves Normally Did Not Work on Sundays 221 Holidays the Slaves Did Not Work On 223 Unplanned Days Off Due to Weather or the State of Crops 224 The Days of Work for Agricultural Workers 225 Those Laborers Who Had to Work Sundays, and Those Who Did Not 226 Seasonal and Other Changes in the Workweek, and Their Effects on Unemployment 228 How "Voluntarily" Did Slaves Work? The Necessity of Coercion and Supervision 230 Why the Whip Had to Be Used to Impose Work Discipline on the Slaves 231 How Commonly Were the Slaves Whipped? The Time on the Cross Controversy 233 The Deterrence Value of Occasional Killings 235 The Danger of Corporal Punishment Backfiring, Requiring "Massive Retaliation" 236 How Even Good Masters Could Suddenly Kill a Slave in the Heat of Passion 237 Miscellaneous Punishments that Masters Inflicted on Slaves 238 Examples of Corporal Punishment Backfiring 239 Did Slaveowners Successfully Implant a Protestant Work Ethic in the Slaves? 240 The Slaves' Sense of Work Discipline Like that of Other Pre-Industrial People 242 Genovese's Paternalism: How Successful Were Planters in Imposing Hegemony? 244 Scott Versus Hegemony 244 Were the Slaveholders Really Believers in Paternalism?: The Implications of Jacksonian Democracy and Commercial Capitalism in the American South 247 Counter-Attacks Against Portraying Slaveholders as Bourgeois Individualists 249 Ignorance as a Control Device Revisited 252 How Masters Would Manipulate the Slaves' Family Ties in Order to Control Them 253 Positive Incentives Only a Supplementary Method for Controlling the Bondsmen 255 The Brutal Overseer as a Historical Reality 258 The Task Versus Gang Systems: Different Approaches to Work Discipline 260 The Infrapolitics of Task (Quota) Setting 261 The Gang System's Advantages 262 The Patrol/Pass System 264 The Slaveowners Who Liberally Granted Passes or Dispensed with Them Altogether 266 How the Divisions Among White Slaveholders Benefited the Enslaved 267 How Mistresses and other Family Members Often Restrained Ill- Treatment 268 The Central Reality of Violence as the Main Tool to Control the Slaves 269 The High Levels of Violence Between the Slaves and Masters Compared to England 271 Both Sides committed Far Less Violence During the Swing Riots in England 272
the English Case 273 The Routine Police State Measures in the South 275 Coercion, Not Incentives or Ideology, as the Basic Means of Enforcing Slavery 276 Basic Differences Between the American and English Elites' Methods of Control 276 The Freedom of Action Local Government Officials Had in England 277 The Basic Strategy to Better Control the Farmworkers 278 Enclosure as a Method of Social Control and "Class Robbery" 279 Enclosure: Direct Access to the Means of Production and Some Food Both Lost 280 Open and Close Parishes: One Dumps Laborers onto the Other 282 The Decline of Service 284 Why Service Declined 285 How Poor Relief Itself Promoted Population Growth 287 Assorted Methods that Deterred Applicants for Relief 288 Why "Make-Work" Jobs Failed to Deter Applicants and Undermined Work Discipline 289 The New Poor Law: Deterring Applicants for Relief by Using the Workhouse Test 290 Falling Productivity: One More Consequence of the Old Poor Law 292
The Workhouse Test as a Tool for Increasing Labor Productivity 293 The Workhouse Test Was a Tool for Lowering Wages Also 294 Allotments Help Reduce Increases in Rates Caused by Enclosure 296 Why the Rural Elite Still Sometimes Opposed Allotments 297 Miscellaneous Ways Allotments Were Used to Benefit the Rural Elite 298 Another Positive Mode of Creating Work Discipline: Piecework 300 The Legal System and Its Influence on the Laborers 303 The Justice of the Peace/County Court System Necessarily Expressed Class Bias 303 The Biases of the Courts Against the Laborers Should Not Be Exaggerated 304 Ignorance of the Law as a Control Device 305 Examples of How the Contents of the Law Could be Against the Laborers 306 The Important Differences Between Controlling the Laborers and Slaves at Work 307 Ideological Hegemony, Paternalism, Class Consciousness, and Farmworkers 309 Did Some in the Elite Begin to Repudiate Paternalistic, Communal Values? 309 How the Rural Elite Tried to Have Paternalism and Capitalism Simultaneously 310 Paternalism Vs. Capitalism: The Trade-Offs between Freedom and Security 311 How the Waning of Paternalism Made the Laborers' Class Consciousness Possible 313 The Power of Gifts to Control, and When They Do Not 313 The Failure of Paternalism as an Ideological Control Device from C. 1795 314 The Laborers' Growing Class Consciousness, C. 1834 to 1850 315 When the Laborers as a Class in Itself Began to Act for Itself 317 A Comparison of Respective Elite Control Strategies: Slave- owners and Squires 318 How Much Success Did These Two Elites Have at Hegemony? 322 6. ON RESISTANCE BY A SUBORDINATE CLASS 325 The Infrapolitics of Daily Life 325 Analytical Problems with "Day-to-Day Resistance" (Infrapolitics) 325 The Continuum of Resistance from Infrapolitics to Organized Insurrection 326 The Need for a Subordinate Class to Wear a Mask to Conceal Their Knowledge 328 Early Training in Mask Wearing 329 The Costs of Being Open and the Mask Falling Off 330 The Subordinate Class's Compulsions to Lie 330 Why the Rituals of Deference Still Had Meaning 332 Elkins's "Sambo" Hypothesis and Its Problems 333 An Act of Routine Resistance: Stealing 338 Various Motives for Theft 338 The Intrinsic Costs of Double-Standards in Morality 339 Evading Work by Claiming Sickness 341 Work: Slowdowns and Carelessness 342 The Strategy of Playing the White Folks Off Against Each Other 343 Manipulating White Authority for the Slaves' Own Purposes 343 How Pleadings and Petitions Could Restrain Masters and Mistresses 343 The General Problem of Slaves Running Away 344 Temporary and Local Flight 346 "Negotiating" a Return 347 How Runaways Could Resist Capture 348 Maroons: Settlements of Escaped Slaves 349 The Most Successful Runaways 350 "Strikes" Conducted by Groups of Slaves Running Away 352 Small Scale Open Confrontations and Violence 353 "Nats" or "Sambos"?--Selective Perception by the Master Class 355 The Rarity of Slave Revolts in the United States Compared to Elsewhere 356 The Factors Militating Against Slave Revolts in the United States 357 Many Slaves Knew How Much the Deck Was Stacked Against Successful Revolt 359 Why then, If Revolts Were So Rare, Were the Whites So Paranoid? 360 Resistance to Slavery in the United States Is Dominated by Infrapolitics 362 Resident Slaveholders Supervising Small Units of Production Smother Resistance 363 Resisting Enslavement Is Not the Same as Resisting Slavery as a Social System 364 Hodge: The Predominance of Daily Infrapolitics Over Outright Riots 366 Social Crime--The Infrapolitics of Poaching 367 The Laborers' Counter-Ideology Against the Elite's Game Laws 368 The Role of Theft, More Generally Defined, in English Rural Infrapolitics 369 The Correlation between Poverty and Theft 370 Hodge's Thinner Mask 370 How Farmworkers Could "Run Away"--Resistance Through Migra- tion 372 The Reluctance of Laborers to Move and Other Obstacles to Migration 373 The Tamer Confrontations between Hodge and His Masters 375 Food Riots as a Method of Resistance 376 The Swing Riots Generally Considered 378 How the Laborers Did Benefit Some from the Swing Riots 379 The Relative Weakness of the Farmworkers' Unions Compared to Others in England 380 The Organization of the Agricultural Labours' Union in 1872 381 Comparing Two Subordinate Classes' Methods of Resistance 383
Resistance and the Subordinate Class's Quality of Life 386 Slavery Is on a Continuum of Social Systems of Subordination 388 Selected Bibliography 390 1. WHY COMPARE ENGLISH LABORERS AND AMERICAN SLAVES TO BEGIN WITH? The Standard Yet Problematic Comparison of Factory Workers with Slaves Mississippi slaveowner and politician John A. Quitman "professed little respect for the northern free-labor system, where 'factory wretches' worked eleven-hour days in 'fetid' conditions while their intellects were destroyed 'watching the interminable whirling of the spinning-jenny.' . . . The Quitman plantations functioned satisfactorily, and his bondsmen were appreciative of their condition. He described his slaves as 'faithful, obedient, and affectionate.'" Quitman's comparison is still made today when debates break out over the standard of living about who was better off: slaves versus [Northern] factory workers, not farm servants. Similarly, while examining general European conditions for workers, Jurgen Kuczynski states: "It is precisely these bad conditions which justify the arguments of the slaveowners of the South, that the slaves are materially better off than the workers in the north. This would in many cases have been true." Despite its frequency, this comparison is actually problematic: It discounts the additional effects of urbanization, crowding, and doing industrial/shop work inside. In the countryside, with its low population density and work in the fields outside, people experience a different way and quality of life. The conditions of urban factory life simply are not tied to the legal status of being free or slave. This common comparison actually contrasts two very different ways of life, urban versus rural, factory versus farm, to which widely varying value judgments can be attached. As E. P. Thompson observes: "In comparing a Suffolk [farm] labourer with his grand-daughter in a cotton-mill we are comparing--not two standards [of living]--but two ways of life."1 By likening some other agricultural labor force to the slaves of the American South before the Civil War, many of the apples/oranges comparison problems are eliminated. This work shows the largely landless English agricultural workers during the general period of the industrial revolution (c. 1750-1875) had a superior quality of life of compared to the black slaves in the American South (c. 1750-1865), but that the latter at times had a material standard of living equal to or greater than the former's, at least in southern England. Why Do Such a Comparison? A historical comparison brings into focus features of both subjects under study that might otherwise go unnoticed. New insights may be gained, which might be missed when highly specialized historians devoted to a particular field analyze historical phenomena stay strictly within their area of expertise. Suddenly, through historical comparison and contrast, the pedestrian can become exceptional, and what was deemed unusual becomes part of a pattern. For example, both the agricultural workers and the slaves found ways to resist the powerful in their respective societies, but their forms of resistance differed since their legal statuses differed. In the preface of his study of American slavery and Russian serfdom, Kolchin observes some of the advantages of doing such a comparison. It reduces parochialism in given fields, allows features to be seen as significant that otherwise might be overlooked, makes for the formulation and testing of hypotheses, and helps to distinguish which variables and causal factors had more weight.2 A comparative topic is justified, even when it deals with phenomena long since analyzed by historians, if it wrings new insights out of the same old sources. It may expose assumptions about events or processes experts take for granted or overlook in the fields being compared. One suspects sometimes labor historians and African-American slavery historians may be letting their respective historiographical work pass each other like ships in the night, not knowing the valuable insights one group may have for the study of the other's field.3 Directory: Historydocwp Historydocwp -> Links to elsewhere on this Web site: /apologetics html Historydocwp -> Links to elsewhere on this Web site: /apologetics html Historydocwp -> Eric V. Snow east lansing, michigan Historydocwp -> Links to elsewhere on this Web site: /apologetics html Historydocwp -> The roman republic and empire roman vs. Greek values, beliefs Download 2.26 Mb. Share with your friends:
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