In 1862 the New York Times republished a piece from the Friends’ Intelligencer, itself an abridged version of a piece from the Cincinnati Gazette from 1943, asking, Can emancipated slaves take care of themselves?
Mr. MCDONOUGH, finding that his slaves worked for themselves on Sunday, for want of time on other days, proposed to give them Saturday afternoon to work for themselves, if they would keep the Sabbath.
He was soon struck with the amount of labor they performed during the half day they had to themselves, and with the sums of money they contrived to derive from it.
It occurred to him that it would be a good plan gradually to sell them the remaining days of the week, on condition of their paying him certain sums out of their wages, at appointed periods. So far as appears, the plan was suggested solely by financial policy, uninfluenced by any conviction of the wrongfulness of taking other people’s wages. He called his slaves together, eighty in number, and proposed for them to work for him on Saturday afternoons at small wages, instead of working for themselves.
He advised them to draw upon these wages as little as possible, and leave the remainder in his hands to buy Saturday for themselves. That the terms he offered them were pretty hard, is evident from the fact that he told them he calculated it would take them seven years to buy one day. But he reminded them that the first part of the process would be the most difficult; for when they had the whole of Saturday to work for wages, they could, in less time, buy Friday for themselves; and the facility would go on increasing with every day of the week they succeeded in purchasing.
He told them that according to the terms he could offer, and the calculations he had made, it would take them nearly fifteen years to buy their entire freedom.
Undismayed by the tediousness of the process, the slaves seized his offer with eagerness. They went to work so zealously that they bought the whole of Saturday in less than six years. Friday was bought in four years, Thursday in two years and a quarter, Wednesday in fifteen months, Tuesday in one year, and Monday was bought in six months.
In fourteen years and a half they had purchased their freedom, besides working diligently for their master on the days that still legally belonged to him. It would have been done sooner, but during the later years they expended more than they had formerly done for comforts and conveniences for their families The labor of their little boys and girls had not made up the sum required for them by their master, so that there was a balance due on their account which they worked five additional months to pay.
Mr. MCDONOUGH, describing his experiment, says “They had always been well disposed and orderly, but, from the day I made the proposal, a great change took place in them. A sedateness, a care, an economy and industry took possession of them, to which there appeared to be no bound, but their physical strength. They became temperate, moral and religious, setting an example that was admired by all They performed for me more labor and better labor than slaves usually perform, and in addition to that earned money enough to buy themselves. From the time the experiment began to its completion, besides paying for themselves, they gained me money enough to enable me to buy a gang of slaves, nearly twice their number, at the prices in Carolina and Virginia, This I state from exact accounts kept by me, which I am ready to attest to in the most solemn manner at any time.”
The steadiness and industry of these slaves attracted the attention of the neighborhood, and also in the adjacent city of New-Orleans, where twenty or thirty of them were led out to work under the superintendance of a head bricklayer, named JIM. The public were not informed of the stimulus which prompted these slaves to unusual activity and diligence. Perhaps Mr. MCDONOUGH did not consider it prudent to talk much about it.
That sounds like a simple yet powerful lesson in incentives.
(Hat tip to commenter Alex J.)