News Summary

• On October 10, 1842, planter Eli Capell noted the precise amount of cotton picked by each of his slaves in his logbooks.
• Capell had built his plantation from a small operation he inherited from his father to a big plantation with 80 slaves.
• His carefully kept account books that recorded daily production from 1842 to 1867 still exist.
• The whip became not just some racist tool to punish, but as a core precursor of the labor management techniques that spread throughout American workplaces as the 19th century moved on.