Slaveholders also developed an equivalence unit called “the prime field hand.” They assigned certain capabilities to the prime hand, such as expected production per day. Workers were measured against this standard and given values such as “half hand” and “quarter hand.” Owners used these units as benchmarks across plantations. If one slaveholder reported that he had 13 hands who were the equivalent of 10 prime hands, other slaveholders would have known exactly what that meant in terms of production.
Caitlin Rosenthal, Plantations Practiced Modern Management, Harvard Business Review, September 2013 (via inthenoosphere)
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