iday, for which amount of extra labor they
received two shillings and one penny or 50 cents a week. On one estate
the wages paid for extra labor during crop was two pence or 4 cents an
hour. The working hours were generally from four to eleven and from
one to five, and it is interesting to note that while it was expected
that on each half Friday given to the apprentices, sufficient food
should be provided by them to last for the succeeding week, yet when
that half day was taken from them five or six herrings were the only
compensation.

The following case is taken from an agreement made in 1836 by certain
cane hole diggers. Every laborer agreed to dig 405 cane holes in four
and one half days due his master, and to receive ten pounds of salt
fish and a daily allowance of sugar and rum, the salt fish to be
diminished in the ratio of one pound for every forty holes short of
405. In the one day and a half of his own time he was paid three
shillings and four pence or 80 cents for every ninety cane holes.
Under this agreement the maximum work performed was that of an
apprentice who in three weeks of thirteen and one half days dug in his
own time 1,017 holes, for which he received 28 pounds of fish, and in
cash one pound and fifteen shillings or $8.40. By this means it was
possible for the master to have 58 acres of land worked at a total
cost of L147 10s 0d or $708. The cost to him, if the work had been
given out to jobbers, would have been L8 an acre or L464, $2,227.20.
His apprentices were therefore the means of saving for him the sum of
L316 l0d or $1,519.20.

The following was the scale of wages for transient labor:

Prime headman 3 pence or 6 cents.
Inferior headman 2 pence or 4 cents.
First gang--able-bodied 1-1/2 pence or 3 cents.
First gang--weakly 1-1/4 pence or 2-1/2 cents.
Second gang--able-bodied 1-1/4 pence or 2-1/2 cents.
Second gang--weakly 1 penny or 2 cents.
Third gang--active 3/4 penny or 1-1/2 cents.
Third gang--lazy 1/2 penny or 1 cent.

The apprentices were permitted under the law to make application to be
valued, and on the basis of the valuation were entitled to purchase
their freedom. Here again was the system grossly abused. The slaves or
apprentices, as they were at that time called, became at the hour of
valuation very desirable assets; and, in many instances, so valuable
did they suddenly beco