In mid-July, the final flooding would commence. And the slaves would enjoy a time of relatively light work until September, when the slaves would harvest the rice. Next would come the process of threshing, winnowing, fanning and pounding. All of which had to be done by hand and was terribly tedious. Pounding actually required considerable skill from the slave in order to not break the rice grain but still to remove the outer husks and inner cuticle. Sugar production was a form of slavery that demanded an enormous amount of toil from slaves. The densely planted acres and severely labor-intensive cultivation ensured that slaves were left with little free time, if any at all. Gang systems were almost exclusively used on these plantations because …show more content…
Which encompassed everything from lumber operations to urban factories. Slaves were such an integral part of the Southern economy that nearly every industry relied on them. As the economy grew, so too did the complexity of the slaves’ tasks. Slaves were soon operating major equipment and were becoming quite skilled. Such as a slave named Tooler, who operated a chafer and refining forges in the Buffalo Forge. Slaves were granted an amount of freedom within their jobs which usually corresponded to the amount of skill that they possessed. Tooler, for example, could exceed his quota and receive between $3 and $5 for every extra ton of coal he processed. This kind of money was unheard of for a field hand and to be able to make it as a slave must have seemed unreal. Mines in the 19th century were an extremely dangerous place to work. A mine owner could take our insurance policies on his slaves or bondsmen from which he would turn an excellent profit. This allowed the mine owner to protect himself from a slave’s death. Consequently the insurance would go on to make safety an even lower priority than it most likely had already been. Mine owners typically had little incentive to keep their workers