otnote 29: Norfolk _Argus_, quoted in _Southern Banner_ (Athens, Ga.),
Jan. 12, 1854.]

[Footnote 30: Richmond _Dispatch_, Jan., 1856, quoted in G.M. Weston, _Who
are and who may be Slaves in the U.S._ (caption).]

[Footnote 31: _Hunt's Merchants' Magazine_, XL, 522.]

[Footnote 32: Petersburg _Democrat_, quoted by the Atlanta _Intelligencer_,
Jan., 1860.]

[Footnote 33: _DeBow's Review_, XXIX, 374.]

The proprietors of slaves for hire appear to have been generally as much
concerned with questions of their moral and physical welfare as with the
wages to be received, for no wage would compensate for the debilitation of
the slave or his conversion into an inveterate runaway. The hirers in their
turn had the problem, growing more intense with the advance of costs, of
procuring full work without resorting to such rigor of discipline as
would disquiet the owners of their employees. The tobacco factories found
solution in piece work with bonus for excess over the required stint. At
Richmond in the middle 'fifties this was commonly yielding the slaves from
two to five dollars a month for their own uses; and these establishments,
along with all other slave employers, suspended work for more than a week
at the Christmas season.[34]

[Footnote 34: Robert Russell, _North America_, p. 152.]

The hiring of slaves from one citizen to another did not meet all the needs
of the town industry, for there were many occupations in which the regular
supervision of labor was impracticable. Hucksters must trudge the streets
alone; and market women sit solitary in their stalls. If slaves were to
follow such callings at all, and if other slaves were to utilize their
talents in keeping cobbler and blacksmith shops and the like for public
patronage,[35] they must be vested with fairly full control of their own
activities. To enable them to compete with whites and free negroes in the
trades requiring isolated and occasional work their masters early and
increasingly fell into the habit of hiring many slaves to the slaves
themselves, granting to each a large degree of industrial freedom in return
for a stipulated weekly wage. The rates of hire varied, of course, with the
slave's capabilities and the conditions of business in their trades. The
practice brought friction sometimes between slaves and owners when wages
were in default. An instance of this was published in a Charleston
advertisement of 1800 announcing the auction of a young carpenter