

READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



purchased all or nearly all the food supplies. Some planters 

 furnished twice as much clothing to their slaves as others did. 

 Some planters furnished meat as a regular article of diet. Others 

 furnished it only occasionally. The shelter and clothing required 

 by slaves in the border states was, of course, in excess of that 

 needed in the mild climate of the Gulf States. From observations 

 made and statistics gathered by De Bow, Russell and others, it 

 would seem that on the large plantations the average cost of 

 maintaining a slave throughout the year, including expenditures 

 for clothing, food, tobacco, etc., and the payment of taxes, .was 

 not far from $15, and that on the small plantations the expendi- 

 tures for maintenance of the slaves often amounted to $30 or $40 

 per capita. Perhaps the average expense for maintenance of the 

 slaves, young and old, throughout the cotton belt, would be not 

 far from $20- per annum. 



Merely from a business standpoint it was to the interest of the 

 planter to furnish sufficient food and clothing to his slave to keep 

 him in health and good working order ; and suffering for want of 

 food was no doubt a thing of seldom occurrence. This food, how- 

 ever, was of a coarse kind, and though healthful, lacked variety. 

 Olmsted considered it inferior to that furnished prison convicts 

 at the North. From four to six (sometimes as high as ten) quarts 

 of corn meal and a quart of molasses were usually dealt out to 

 the negroes each week. To this were sometimes added vegetables 

 in their season and usually half a pound of bacon for every 



