Dressing Slaves For Work
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I was listening to an interesting presentation on Plantation Goods – these were the products made for the enslaved workers in the south. These included the textiles woven for the clothes worn by the cotton pickers, the tools used by the agricultural and mine workers, and the shoes and hats required by these enslaved folk. Much of this stuff was made by businesses in the north of America, thus linking the slave economy with the greater United States. The author of this book, Seth Rockman, recounts some fascinating and unexpected historical information he found detailed in letters between the merchants and slave holdings involved.
Plantation Goods Equipping The Enslaved
In one incident a group of irate slaves and their master confront a Charlestown merchant and New England manufacturer about the poor quality of the bulk order of clothing provided. The author of Plantation Goods reveals how important the outfitting of enslaved plantation workers was to the optimal running of such exploitative operations. Too often we don’t think about such things in such intimate ways, which immunises us from the realities of slavery to a great degree. If you make an effort to imagine yourself working from dawn to dusk in a physically demanding activity and think about how important it would be to have attire that supports you in executing your labour. Clothing protects us from the elements and for outdoor agrarian slaves it would have been essential. Slaves who were neglected by their owners in this fashion would have been more likely to get upset and the precarious balance in the south was prone to eruptions of rebellion and runaways.
Dressing Labourers For Hard Work
This minutiae strikes me so sharply, I think, because I have been labouring myself under the hot sun of late. The last 8 months have seen me sign on as part of a labour hire work crew. We were issued with 3 high visibility work shirts in the attractive hue of bright orange, 3 pairs of dark blue dungarees, a bright orange broad brimmed hat to keep the sun off, and were recompensed for our purchase of a pair of steel capped work boots. Initially, we were not issued work gloves and gators, as was supposed to have occurred. Of these items of work attire and PPE, the shirts (long sleeved) were all too short to be tucked into pants, the blue work pants were all different sizes in contradiction of how I ordered them, obviously, desiring the one uniform size, and the hat’s brim collapsed after a couple of weeks and I could not get it up again. I soldiered on with what I had been allocated, thinking to take the rough with the smooth. However, after a couple of months at the mercy of the elements, the early morning winter chills in darkness and then, the high humidity and heat as summer fast approached I realised how bloody important it is to be properly outfitted when labouring nearly 9 hours a day. I sort of know about dressing slaves for work.
The Importance Of A Labourer’s Attire
The sweat stains upon shirts and whether the armpits breathe at all. The fabric and weave of your work garments impact upon how you deal with the heat bodily. The rub and rashes you can develop from continual movement in damp clothing imbued with perspiration. My nipples would get really sore, like a nursing mother, but from the rubbing against sweaty fabric. The constant walking on uneven ground in heavy work boots would put strain upon my ankles and lower legs. Their immersion in slushy ground and puddles would mean wet socks. Wearing big thick socks to cushion the constant blows upon my feet from walking became very apparent. On some days we would take 25, 000 steps according to the fitness app on my smart phone. Both the main buttons of the 2 pairs of dungarees I could regularly wear to work soon popped off and I was forced to pull out needle and thread to replace them. These were my essential garments, along with the orange shirts and thick work socks, I depended upon and I have to wash them and hang them out to dry 3 times a week to meet the hygienic demands of 9 day fortnights. Quite apart from the malodorous smell you cannot keep wearing them because of crutch bite in this humid heat. Dressing slaves for work is vitally important, even when you are the slave yourself.
History That Touches Us In Tactile Ways
I do not wish to make light of what real slavery was, however, as there are no actual whips (just passive aggressive messaging) determining my productivity. Seth Rockman is an eloquent speaker and expert on Atlantic slavery who has written a great book. This is his third book written within his field of specialisation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5XDs2v1tbU
“An eye-opening rethinking of nineteenth-century American history that reveals the interdependence of the Northern industrial economy and Southern slave labor. The industrializing North and the agricultural South—that’s how we have been taught to think about the United States in the early nineteenth century”
This is history that gets much closer to the subject than most historical research texts. It is tactile enough that you feel that it rubs up against real flesh. Check out the fabric book cover if you get the chance. Work, manual labour is something integral to human life, I think, although for many of us it is a thing of the past. If, however, you do ever find yourself in the fields, working on a farm or at some such labour spare a moment or two for the enslaved worker. He or she who had little control over their sartorial choices. Think and feel on the relationship between workers, plantation owners, and the merchants and manufacturers who supplied them with their necessary plantation goods. These days most clothing is made in China or India and attracts scant attention from the wearer. There are human beings at every juncture, I would remind us, in the processes that create and transport garments across the globe. In the meantime, I will trudge over another field in my dungarees and hi viz wear hoping that my tired flesh will not rub too much in the wrong places on these hot days.
Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump.
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