Slave Life in Georgia - African American History

Slave Life in Georgia 93
bag. In the mouth of the bag a hoop is sewn. There is a hole in the floor, through
which the bag is dropped, so that it hangs by the hoop. The cotton is now
packed into it by hand, as fast as it comes from the jin, and rammed down with a
packing-iron. This implement is a bar of iron from four feet and a half to five
feet long, and about an inch and a half thick, of an eight-sided shape all the way
down to the bottom, where it is flattened out at the end into the form of a wedge,
till it is only about a quarter of an inch thick. This must be constantly used, or
the cotton, which is naturally
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elastic, will "swell back," and the bag will not weigh the right weight, namely,
from three hundred and fifty pounds, or over. The packer has no guide but the
hardness of the cotton to go by; so that it is pretty much guess-work with him. If
his bag should be short in weight, or he does not keep up with the jin, he gets a
flogging. The average day's packing is two bags for each man. Packing is very
hard, oppressive work. The dust and fibres fly about in thick clouds, and get into
the chest, checking respiration, and injuring the lungs very seriously. It is a
common thing for the slaves to sicken off with chest diseases, acquired in the
packing-room or jin-house, and to hear them wheezing and coughing like
broken-winded horses, as they crawl about to the work that is killing them.
As a closing remark on the subject of cotton-growing, I may say that cottonlands
work out in two years, when they require rest. Corn is sown on them for a
rotation, one year, which is often ploughed in green. The fourth year the land is
quite fit for another sowing of cotton. The average produce per acre varies more
than any thing else that is grown.
I will now give an account of the cultivation of TOBACCO.
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In the month of February they begin what is called "burning the beds," that is,
the dry brush is burnt off from the beds intended to be sown and planted. The
ground is then broken up with the grubbing-hoe, an implement something like a
pick-axe, only that it is four inches wide, and heavy. The ground must be well
manured before it is broken up, because the tobacco-plant is greedy of food, and
likes good living. Indeed, without it, it would soon pine, and grow up a
starveling.The usual manure is that from the stable or the cattle-pen. It is better
to break up the ground with the grubbing-hoe, because it pulverizes the soil
24.03.2006