Teacher Notes

Description

Students develop a deeper understanding of ideas put forward in the student essays, "Why A Plantation?" and "Why A Factory?" after reading the rules governing work used on two plantations and two factories during the 19th century. They then compare the rules in a class discussion using included questions as a guide.

Duration (approximate): 2 1/2 class periods

Learning Outcomes and Skills

1. Students learn what it meant to have strict rules of discipline.

2. Students think about how industrialization affected the way people were supposed to work.

3. Students can explain how work rules were affected when one person "owned" another person.

4. Students learn that there were different expectations about the workforce in the North than in the South.

5. Students practice reading and analyzing historical documents.

What You Will Need

• Student Activity Packets which include copies of the four sets of work rules for each student or for each group of students.

• Teacher's copy of discussion questions and answers.
  

Additional Information

It is important to remember when reading these documents that rules tell us what the people in charge thought life should be like, rather than what really happened. Conditions on many plantations and factories were probably more brutal and exhausting than these rules would suggest. Reports surfaced periodically in the North of factory workers (especially children) who were beaten by overseers or who collapsed from exhaustion. In the South, slaves were not only beaten, but murdered by both owners and overseers.

However, while rules don't tell us what really happened, they do allow us to look at how employers and masters tried to shape the way those under their control lived and worked. As the introductory essays note, both cotton plantations and textile factories needed strict rules of discipline. Moreover, both factory owners and masters felt that those who worked for them needed direction and protection. This exemplifies the paternalism that was mentioned in the essays. On the other hand, slaves were property, so owners had greater power over the bodies of slaves than mill owners had over their workers. Thus, masters write more freely of physical discipline, on the one hand, and attending to the health of slaves, on the other.

Discussion Questions with Possible Responses

1. Compare the way time is organized on the plantation with the way time is organized in the factory.

   Students might note that a worker's time was extremely regimented in factories, but that plantations were also supposed to run by the clock. This makes us realize that the concern about using a worker's time is not simply a result of technology and for factory production, but that it is related to a concern for profits and demands of the market which existed in both the North and the South.

2. Who are the rules addressed to?

   Note that plantation rules are addressed to overseers while factory rules are addressed to employees. Workers in the North are talked to, slaves in the South are talked about. Students might think about why this is so. In part this difference is probably due to the fact that factory operatives were more likely to be able to read than slaves were. Indeed, slaves were often forbidden by law to learn how to read. But there is also the possibility that the failure to address slaves reflected expectations on the part of masters different from those of factory owners when it came to their work forces.

3. The plantation rules contain more instructions for the care of slaves, as well as for the physical punishment of slaves, than the factory rules do. What does this tell us?

   Masters feel they have the right to control the bodies of their slaves because they own them. Slaves, rather than machinery, are a major capital investment and this investment is managed in a way that workers are not.

4. How would you compare the factory and plantation rules to the rules of your school?

   Students might think about if and why rules are necessary, what is a fair rule, and who should make rules. They might also ask themselves if schools are modeled on factories!
   

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