Tuesday, September 08, 2009

Post-Civil War Labor Contracts

The phrase labor contracts instantly brings to mind images of the massive reform movement of the late nineteenth century and the powerful political organizations of the twentieth. My father was an active member of his labor union, which protected his rights as a worker in a scissor manufacturing plant in New Jersey. He served as shop steward at one time.

Transcribing the 1866 agreement between Cyrus N. Brown, owner of the Alterra plantation along the Yazoo Delta in Mississippi, and the freedman who were formerly his slaves, I wondered what impact contracts like this (preserved on rolls and rolls of microfilm at the National Archives) had on the larger efforts of labor reform. Here is the transcribed contract:
Yazoo City Jany 5th 1866

We the undersigned foremen agree to work faithfully & honestly for C.N. Brown for the year 1866 for the following considerations. All field hands are to have one third of the corn & cotton made on this plantation for the year 1866, our employer to furnish teams & farming essentials, good rations & medical attention, half of every Saturday to be given to our own pursuits, with team and farming essentials for the cultivation of our gardens, patches & the sawing of wood. All hands are permitted to raise poultry, & four hogs to each family, to furnish their own corn in rearing & fattening their hogs. The hands will select from their number a foreman or leader to be governed & controlled by him as to hours for working & the time to come in from the field. We the foremen of Alterra plantation do agree to obey & respect the orders of the foreman or leader.
All stock shall be regularly attended to on Saturday & Sunday.

C.N. Brown
Samuel (his X mark) Hustin
Dolley (her X mark) Hustin
From Records of the Field Offices for the State of Mississippi. Bureau of Refugees, Freedman, and Abandoned Lands, 1865-1872. I became aware of these files after finding Freedom's Women: Black Women and Families in Civil War Era Mississippi (Indina University Press, 1999) by Noralee Frankel.

Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,