Early nineteenth-century productivity accounting: the Locust Grove Plantation slave ledger

Abstract

The University of Mississippi Archives houses a ledger used by the Locust Grove Plantation to record slave inventory and cotton harvest for the years from 1825 to 1844. This ledger provides daily harvest data, by slave, for those years. The ledger also lists the inventory of the plantation's slaves as of 1 January 1828, and their marriages, births and deaths. Locust Grove increased its inventory of slaves over the years 1825 to 1844 and sold few slaves. Correlation and regression analysis show that age was not related to picking productivity, while gender was related. Females were better pickers than males. Accounting is a product of its environment, and the environment in antebellum south Mississippi provided a need for a sophisticated record of worker productivity. Research evidence shows that plantation management used the slave ledger to manage by the numbers.