stands well), three-quarters of an acre, or, sometimes a gang will
be required to reap, tie in sheaves, and carry to the stack yard
the produce of a certain area commonly equal to one-fourth the
number of acres that there are hands working together; hoeing
cotton, corn or potatoes, one-half to one acre; threshing, five to
six hundred sheaves. In plowing rice land (light, clean, mellow
soil), with a yoke of oxen, one acre a day, including the ground
lost in and near the drains, the oxen being changed at noon. A
cooper also, for instance, is required to make barrels at the rate
of eighteen a week; drawing staves, 500 a day; hoop-poles, 120;
squaring timber, 100 feet; laying worm fence, 50 panels per day;
post and rail fence, posts set two and a half to three feet deep,
nine feet apart, nine or ten panels per hand. In getting fuel from
the woods (pine to be cut and split), one cord is the task for a
day. In 'mauling rails,' the taskman selecting the trees (pine)
that he judges will split easiest, 100 a day, ends not sharpened.

"In allotting the tasks the drivers are expected to put the weaker
hands where, if there is any choice in the appearance of the
ground, as where certain rows in hoeing corn would be less weedy
than others, they will be favored.

"These tasks would certainly not be considered excessively hard by
a northern laborer, and, in point of fact, the more industrious and
active hands finish them often by two o'clock. I saw one or two
leaving the field soon after one o'clock, several about two, and
between three and four I met a dozen women and several men coming
to their cabins, having finished their day's work.... If, after a
hard day's labor he (the driver) sees that the gang has been
overtasked, owing to a miscalculation of the difficulty of the
work, he may excuse the completion of the tasks, but he is not
allowed to extend them."

In other places the work was not laid out in tasks, but it is safe to
say that, judging from all reports and all probabilities, the amount of
work done did not equal that of the free labor of the North, then or
now. If it had the commercial supremacy of the South would have been
longer maintained.

Some things regarding the agricultural work at once become prominent.
All work was done under the immediate eye of the task maste