and muscles; slavery provided a
police; and the plantation system contributed the machinery of direction.
The assignment of special functions to slaves of special aptitudes would
enhance the general efficiency; the cooerdination of tasks would prevent
waste of effort; and the conduct of a steady routine would lessen the
mischiefs of irresponsibility. But in the work of a plantation squad no
delicate implements could be employed, for they would be broken; and no
discriminating care in the handling of crops could be had except at a cost
of supervision which was generally prohibitive. The whole establishment
would work with success only when the management fully recognized and
allowed for the crudity of the labor.

The planters faced this fact with mingled resolution and resignation. The
sluggishness of the bulk of their slaves they took as a racial trait to
be conquered by discipline, even though their ineptitude was not to
be eradicated; the talents and vigor of their exceptional negroes and
mulattoes, on the other hand, they sought to foster by special training and
rewards. But the prevalence of slavery which aided them in the one policy
hampered them in the other, for it made the rewards arbitrary instead of
automatic and it restricted the scope of the laborers' employments and of
their ambitions as well. The device of hiring slaves to themselves, which
had an invigorating effect here and there in the towns, could find little
application in the country; and the paternalism of the planters could
provide no fully effective substitute. Hence the achievements of the
exceptional workmen were limited by the status of slavery as surely as
the progress of the generality was restricted by the fact of their being
negroes.

A further influence of the plantation system was to hamper the growth of
towns. This worked in several ways. As for manufactures, the chronic demand
of the planters for means with which to enlarge their scales of operations
absorbed most of the capital which might otherwise have been available for
factory promotion. A few cotton mills were built in the Piedmont where
water power was abundant, and a few small ironworks and other industries;
but the supremacy of agriculture was nowhere challenged. As for commerce,
the planters plied the bulk of their trade with distant wholesale dealers,
patronizing the local shopkeepers only for petty articles or in emergencies
when transport could not be awaited; and the slav