and replied: 'Look here, master, you'se a first-rate
lawyer, no doubt, but you don't know nothin' 'tall 'bout
carpentering. You better go back to your law books.'"

The training received by these artisans stood them in good stead after
the war, when, left to themselves, they were able to hold their ground
by virtue of their ability to work alone.

The third class was made up of all that were left, and their work was in
the fields. The dullest, as well as those not needed elsewhere, were
included. Some few became overseers, but the majority worked on the
farms. As a rule little work was required of children under 12, and when
they began their tasks were about of the adult's. Thence they passed to
"half," "three-quarter" and "full" hands. Olmsted said:[7]

"Until the Negro is big enough for his labor to be plainly
profitable to his master he has no training to application or
method, but only to idleness and carelessness. Before children
arrive at a working age they hardly come under the notice of their
owner.... The only whipping of slaves I have seen in Virginia has
been of these wild, lazy children, as they are being broke in to
work. They cannot be depended upon a minute out of sight. You will
see how difficult it would be if it were attempted to eradicate the
indolent, careless, incogitant habits so formed in youth. But it is
not systematically attempted, and the influences that continue to
act upon a slave in the same direction, cultivating every quality
at variance with industry, precision, forethought and providence,
are innumerable."

In many places the field hands were given set tasks to do each day, and
they were then allowed to take their own time and stop when the task was
completed. In Georgia and South Carolina the following is cited by
Olmsted as tasks for a day:[7]

"In making drains in light clean meadow land each man or woman of
the full hands is required to dig one thousand cubic feet; in swamp
land that is being prepared for rice culture, where there are not
many stumps, the task for a ditcher is five hundred feet; while in
a very strong cypress swamp, only two hundred feet is required; in
hoeing rice, a certain number of rows equal to one-half or
two-thirds of an acre, according to the condition of the land; in
sowing rice (strewing in drills), two acres; in reaping rice (if it