Bricks Without Straw | Page 6

an
overseer to be dismissed by Colonel Desmit was to forfeit all chance
for employment in that region, since it was looked upon as a certificate
either of incapacity or untrustworthiness.
Colonel Desmit was especially careful in regard to his slaves. His
father had early shown him that no branch of business was, or could be,
half so profitable as the rearing of slaves for market.
"A healthy slave woman," the thrifty father had been accustomed to say,
"will yield a thousand per cent upon her value, while she needs less
care and involves less risk than any other species of property." The son,
with a broader knowledge, had carried his father's instructions to more
accurate and scientific results. He found that the segregation of large
numbers of slaves upon a single plantation was not favorable either to
the most rapid multiplication or economy of sustenance. He had
carefully determined the fact that plantations of moderate extent, upon
the high, well-watered uplands of the Piedmont belt, were the most
advantageous locations that could be found for the rearing of slaves.

Such plantations, largely worked by female slaves, could be made to
return a small profit on the entire investment, without at all taking into
account the increase of the human stock. This was, therefore, so much
added profit. From careful study and observation he had deduced a
specific formulary by which he measured the rate of gain. With a
well-selected force, two thirds of which should be females, he
calculated that with proper care such plantations could be made to pay,
year by year, an interest of five per cent on the first cost, and, in
addition, double the value of the working force every eight years. This
conclusion he had arrived at from scientific study of the rates of
mortality and increase, and in settling upon it he had cautiously left a
large margin for contingencies. He was not accustomed to talk about
his business, but when questioned as to his uniform success and
remarkable prosperity, always attributed it to a system which he had
inexorably followed, and which had never failed to return to him at
least twenty per cent. per annum upon every dollar he had invested.
So confident was he in regard to the success of this plan that he became
a large but systematic borrower of money at the legal rate of six per
cent, taking care that his maturing liabilities should, at no time, exceed
a certain proportion of his available estate. By this means his wealth
increased with marvelous rapidity.
The success of his system depended, however, entirely upon the care
bestowed upon his slaves. They were never neglected. Though he had
so many that of hundreds of them he did not know even the faces, he
gave the closest attention to their hygienic condition, especially that of
the women, who were encouraged by every means to bear children. It
was a sure passport to favor with the master and the overseer: tasks
were lightened; more abundant food provided; greater liberty enjoyed;
and on the birth of a child a present of some sort was certain to be
given the mother.
The one book which Colonel Desmit never permitted anybody else to
keep or see was the register of his slaves. He had invented for himself
an elaborate system by which in a moment he could ascertain every
element of the value of each of his more than a thousand slaves at the

date of his last visitation or report. When an overseer was put in charge
of a plantation he was given a list of the slaves assigned to it, by name
and number, and was required to report every month the condition of
each slave during the month previous, as to health and temper, and also
the labor in which the same had been employed each day. It was only
as to the condition of the slaves that the owner gave explicit directions
to his head-men. "Mighty few people know how to take care of a
nigger," he was wont to say; and as he made the race a study and
looked to them for his profits, he was attentive to their condition.
Among the requirements of his system was one that each slave born
upon his plantations should be named only by himself; and this was
done only on personal inspection. Upon a visit to a plantation, therefore,
one of his special duties always was to inspect, name, and register all
slave children who had been born to his estate since his previous
visitation.
It was in the summer of 1840 that a traveler drove into the grove in
front of the house at Knapp-of-Reeds, in the middle of a June afternoon,
and uttered the usual halloo. He was answered after a