Student Activity Packet

Activity #9: "Comparative Labor Systems:
Plantation Rules/Factory Rules"

Left: Slaves harvesting cotton fromThe Progress of Cotton, 1835-40. Courtesy of Slater Mill Historic
Site, Pawtucket, RI. Right:Winslow Homer "Bell Time" Harpers Weekly Vol.XII, July 25, 1868.


Description

You will compare the rules governing work enforced on two plantations and in two factories during the 19th century. By doing so, you will develop a deeper understanding of the ideas put forward in the student essays "Why A Plantation?" and "Why A Factory?"

Questions

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

  2. Who are the rules addressed to?

  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?

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


Below are two historical documents that give insight about the working conditions in New England textile mills.

.
Lewiston Mill rules
Time Table of Lowell Mills
Click on an image to see a full-size version

Follow these links to read historical documents about the management of plantations and slaves:

Plantation Management, DeBow's, xiv (February 1853): 177-8.

Plantation Rules, from Ulrich Phillips, ed., Plantation and Frontier, Volume 1 (New York: Burt Franklin, 1910)



Copyright © 1998 The Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. All rights reserved.

Comments and questions to the Lemelson Center:lemcen@si.edu

Last Revision: 6/15/98