Hiring Time for Wages

Within the system of slavery, the meaning of hiring time varied according to place and situation. According to his or her master's discretion, a slave might hire his own time for compensation outside of the time allotted for work for his master. Likewise, a master might hire out or rent his slave to another master. In one variant of this system of slave hire, wages for labor performed were paid directly to the slave, a portion of which was given to the master.

Though, legally, their lives and labor were not their own, some enslaved people seized opportunities to earn wages for themselves during time in which they were not engaged in labor for their masters. A crucial component of the internal economy, this system of wage work allowed bondpeople to accumulate small amounts of cash and property as a means of supplementing their allowances. The amount of free time available for hire depended upon the type of labor in which a slave was engaged for his or her master. In the gang system of labor, generally seen in interior cotton and tobacco plantations, bondpeople commonly worked from sunup to sundown with Sundays allowed for rest. Under the task system, slaves were assigned a task to be completed by the end of the day. If slaves completed their tasks early, the rest of the day was theirs to spend as they chose (as sanctioned by the master). During this free time, many slaves performed additional labor for compensation in the form of cash payment or in-kind goods.

In Fifty Years in Chains and Slavery in the United States, Charles Ball (c. 1780–?) explained the "universally" followed practice of "working on Sunday for wages," describing a typical Sunday on a South Carolina plantation:

At the time I rose this morning, it wanted only about fifteen or twenty minutes of sunrise; and a large number of the men, as well as some of the women, had already quitted the quarter, and gone about the business of the day. That is, they had gone to work for wages for themselves—in this manner: our overseer had, about two miles off, a field of near twenty acres, planted in cotton, on his own account … About twenty of our people went to work for him to-day, for which he gave them fifty cents each. Several of the others, perhaps forty in all, went out through the neighbourhood, to work for other planters. (1859, p. 128)

It is important to note that although slaves such as Ball benefited materially from overwork opportunities, such labor was often performed after a hard day's or week's labor, often taking the place of rest and recreational time.

Slaves might also receive wages through the hiring out system. Masters hired out or rented their slaves to other masters. While, in some cases, the slave owner received sole payment for labor performed, it was common for bondpeople to receive a wage as well. Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903) observed this phenomenon in a coal mine in Virginia: "The slave [s] are, some of them, owned by the mining company; but the most are hired of their owners, at from $120 to $200 a year, the company boarding and clothing them." But, according to Olmsted, these Virginia slaves earned compensation as well. He noted, "it was customary to give them a certain allowance of money and let them find their own board" (1861–1862, p. 54).

In some cases, particularly in cities such as Savannah and Charleston, bondpeople were responsible for finding work for themselves. Here, slaves earned wages for labor performed, provisioning themselves and paying a monthly or annual share of these wages to their master. Ex-slave Lunsford Lane (1803–1863) described this process for the readers of his narrative: "I hired my time of her [his mistress], for which I paid her a price varying from one hundred dollars to one hundred twenty dollars per year. This was a privilege relatively few slaves in the south enjoy; and in this I felt truly blessed" (1845, p. 15). Ball noted a similar practice in Savannah where he "saw many black men who were slaves, and who yet acted as freemen so far that they went out to work, where and with whom they pleased, received their own wages, and proved their own subsistence; but were obliged to pay a certain sum at the end of each week to their masters" (1859, p. 287).

The notion and practice of receiving wages for hire complicated the relations between slaveholder and slave. For slave owners, this system of payment challenged lines of authority, their mastery threatened by employers willing to compensate slaves for their labor. Likewise, slaves hiring time for wages acted with a degree of choice and independence rarely seen in work for their masters and, in fact, some bondpeople used these opportunities as justification and means of resistance to their enslavement. In the end however, masters allowed slaves to hire time for wages in the hope that short-term economic opportunities would allay long-term discontent.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ball, Charles. Slavery in the United States: A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Charles Ball, a Black Man, Who Lived Forty Years in Maryland, South Carolina, and Georgia, as a Slave under Various Masters, and was One Year in the Navy with Commodore Barney, during the Late War. New York: John S. Taylor, 1837.

Ball, Charles. Fifty Years in Chains; or, The Life of An American Slave. New York: H. Dayton, 1859.

Lane, Lunsford. The Narrative of Lunsford Lane, Formerly of Raleigh, N.C., Embracing an Account of His Early Life, the Redemption by Purchase of Himself and Family from Slavery, and His Banishment from the Place of His Birth for the Crime of Wearing a Colored Skin. Boston: Hewes and Watson, 1845.

Olmsted, Frederick Law. The Cotton Kingdom: A Traveler's Observations on Cotton and Slavery in the American Slave States: Based upon Three Former Volumes of Journeys and Investigations by the Same Author. New York: Mason Brothers, 1861–1862.

                                Kathleen Hilliard