Column system
In the historiography of the United States, the column system (English gang system ) is a principle according to which American planters organized the work of their slaves in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries . Slaves who worked in the column system were divided into smaller or larger groups ( quarters , squads , gangs ) and had to work a certain number of hours per day, being monitored and driven by overseers or foremen.
Distinguished the column system from will feed system (Engl. Task system ), in which the slaves in one day, a defined amount of work done had.
distribution
The column system was especially introduced by those planters who, in the interests of profit, wanted to maximize the working hours that their slaves spent in the field. The system was most widespread in the cultivation of tobacco and short-staple cotton .
Special features of the column system
Compared to the task system, the column system had a number of serious disadvantages for the slaves. Under the supervision of white overseers or (much less often) driven by black foremen - a position for which mostly young, strong men were selected - weaker slaves, women and children also had to keep up with the given work pace. On some plantations, people worked under the column system from sunrise to sunset. Under such conditions, the slaves hardly had time to cultivate their own gardens and agricultural land.
Since the slaves under the column system were barely able to support themselves, the planters gave them weekly food rations and seasonal amounts of clothing. They only maintained their self-sufficiency to a small extent; they continued to keep poultry and supplemented their diet by hunting or fishing. With the column system, the trade that many slaves had previously carried on with self-produced agricultural or craft products was completely eliminated. For such production on one's own account, there was a lack of both working hours and the market under the column system. As a result, slaves could hardly acquire the resources that were necessary to buy themselves out.
With the column system, a new middle caste of white workers emerged on the plantations, who were either employed as craftsmen or as overseers who drove and monitored the columns. Others were used to recapture runaway slaves. The overseers changed frequently and rarely won the full trust of the planter. As a result, some black foremen gained considerable authority.
The colonnade system in the Deep South took its sharpest form, a plantation economy which only emerged after the establishment of the United States. The planters in this border country were offered enormously high earning opportunities, but at the same time the competition was so overwhelming that only those planters who were able to efficiently exploit the labor of their slaves could assert themselves in the market. The black foremen lost importance here, while those of the white overseers, who gained a reputation for brutality, increased.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ira Berlin: Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves , Cambridge, London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-674-01061-2 , p. 64
- ↑ Berlin, p. 77
- ↑ Berlin, p. 64
- ↑ Berlin, pp. 66, 77
- ↑ Berlin, p. 178
Web links
All the web links listed are in English: