Now that is extraordinarily interesting. It appears to me to tap into
something I've noted in my days of working as an archaeological grunt.
When you have a group of folks doing the same thing in group format,
there tends to be a sort of competition and things soon speed up to
about the fastest that a fit group of people can move.
I also watched two movies filmed just prior to WWI, one of Chinese
laborers and one of African laborers, both sets building a dam, one
basket of earth at a time. Work speed was regulated by a gong for the
Chinese and a whacking great drum for the Africans, but the drummer
set the pace and on each deep beat, the entire workforce moved at once
and shifted. It becomes quite hypnotic (this from personal experience
at swinging an 8 pound sledge alternately with another fellow for 45
minutes without stopping, and when we did, the entire dig was stopped
and was staring at us. We were oblivious as we had just come out of
the trance part. Normally, 3-10 minutes was the norm before stopping
for a break). Work songs for railroad workers is another parallel.
From what you've provided, the suitable comparisons would be a
military crew working on some similar problem wherein you have
superbly conditioned people united in a desire to get something done
rather than white subsistence farmers.
Thanks,
Lyle Browning
On Dec 29, 2007, at 5:50 PM, Henry Wiencek wrote:
> Some points from Robert William Fogel, "The Slavery Debates,
> 1952-1990"
> specifically about gang labor by slaves:
>
> "research disclosed that slaves working under the gang system
> produced as
> much output in 35 minutes as farmers -- white or black -- produced
> in an
> hour when working in the traditional way." (P. 27)
>
> P. 33: "As it turned out, free northern farmers worked about 10
> percent more
> hours than southern slaves, not fewer hours as had been
> hypothesized... It
> soon became evident that the greater intensity of work per hour,
> rather than
> more hours of labor per day or more days of labor per year, was the
> principal form of the exploitation of slave labor. The gang system
> played a
> role comparable to the factory system or, at a later date, the
> assembly
> line, in regulating the pace of labor. It was, in other words, in
> early
> device for speeding up labor."
>
> You will probably want to look at Fogel's notes for his sources on
> these
> statements.
>
> Henry Wiencek
>
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