even. Young workers were broken in as water boys or in the the "trash gang." At the age of ten or twelve, children were given a regular field routine. A former slave recalls, "Children had to go to the fiel' at six on out place. Maybe they don't do nothin' but pick up stones or tote water, but thy got to get used to bein' there." (Johnson, 40-45)Cooking on the plantation was a collective project. On most plantations food was prepared in a common kitchen and sent to the workers in the field. In most cases, however, slaves were expected to cook the evening meal in their cabins. The food, which was issued once a week, was generally coarse and lacking in variety. The usual allocation was a peck of corn and three of four pounds of bacon or salt pork. They were also given milk, potatoes, peas and beans, molasses, and fish. Fractional amounts, usually one-half, were allotted to each child in the family. Most slaves supplemented this meager fare by trapping coons and opossums in the fields or by stealing corn from the master's corncribs and chickens from his chicken coops. Slaves made a distinction between taking and stealing. It was considered right to take anything that belonged to white folk but it was wrong to steal the property of other slaves (Olmsted 69-72).While the diet provided to the slave kept them alive and functioning, it lacked many important nutrients, and diet-related diseases plagued slave communities. The diseases and other inflictions that befell slave include hernia, pneumonia, and lockjaw. Because of the lack of proper sanitation, slaves also suffered from dysentery and cholera more severely than the whites (Berkin, 266-267).Twice a year the slave was issued a clothes ration. A South Carolina planter described a typical allowance in his plantation manual: "Each man gets in the fall two shirts of cotton drilling, a pair of woolen pants and a woolen jacket. In the spring two shirts of cotton shirting and tw...
