lishment of the
weakest and slowest members of the group. This tendency, however, was
almost equally strong in the gang system also.

The task acre was commonly not a square of 210 feet, but a rectangle 300
feet long and 150 feet broad, divided into square halves and rectangular
quarters, and further divisible into "compasses" five feet wide and 150
feet long, making one sixtieth of an acre. The standard tasks for full
hands in rice culture were scheduled in 1843 as follows: plowing with two
oxen, with the animals changed at noon, one acre; breaking stiff land with
the hoe and turning the stubble under, ten compasses; breaking such land
with the stubble burnt off, or breaking lighter land, a quarter acre or
slightly more; mashing the clods to level the field, from a quarter to half
an acre; trenching the drills, if on well prepared land, three quarters of
an acre; sowing rice, from three to four half-acres; covering the drills,
three quarters; the first hoeing, half an acre, or slightly less if the
ground were lumpy and the drills hard to clear; second hoeing, half an
acre, or slightly less or more according to the density of the grass; third
hoeing with hand picking of the grass from the drills, twenty compasses;
fourth hoeing, half an acre; reaping with the sickle, three quarters,
or much less if the ground were new and cumbered or if the stalks were
tangled; and threshing with the flail, six hundred sheaves for the men,
five hundred for the women.[24] Much of the incidental work was also done
by tasks, such as ditching, cutting cordwood, squaring timber, splitting
rails, drawing staves and hoop poles, and making barrels. The scale of the
crop was commonly five acres of rice to each full hand, together with about
half as much in provision crops for home consumption.

[Footnote 24: Edmund Ruffin, _Agricultural Survey of South Carolina_
(Columbia, 1843), p. 118.]

Under the task system, Olmsted wrote: "most of the slaves work rapidly and
well...Custom has settled the extent of the task, and it is difficult to
increase it. The driver who marks it out has to remain on the ground until
it is finished, and has no interest in over-measuring it; and if it should
be systematically increased very much there is the danger of a general
stampede to the 'swamp'--a danger a slave can always hold before his
master's cupidity...It is the driver's duty to make the tasked hands do
their work well.[25] If in their haste to finish it the