Chapter 13: You're the Best
TL: Hanguk
After Kate and John left, I immediately gathered every worker on the plantation.
"Gentlemen, regrettably, I bring you a piece of grim news. It seems our dear brother and sister planters of the great state of Mississippi are positively writhing with the desire to learn how I improved my profit margins so dramatically."
In truth, a day like this was bound to come, and only by clearing this hurdle could I achieve the plan I'd set my sights on.
In that sense, you could say John's sense of justice, the way he'd come charging in to talk his brother-in-law down while throwing a one-man fit, had actually done me a favor.
"Master! If the other planters mean to persecute you, we'll become your shield and hold them off!"
"Just give us the order!"
It warmed my heart, but no, that wouldn't do.
By the standards of the South, their side was the normal one, and I was the very definition of an aberration.
"As your master, your loyalty truly gladdens me, but unfortunately I can't make them accept the method itself. Those crusty old fossils will never take to this approach, no matter how much more money it brings in."
To put it coldly, no matter how efficient and fine my current method looked, it was hard to permit within the framework of slavery as it stood.
But here's the thing: I can handle it whether slavery survives, gets moderately reformed, or even gets abolished outright. Every scenario.
Right now everyone's working their slaves to the bone, so they only fall a little short of my margins. But once the war ends?
It's a historical fact that planter profit margins plummeted after the switch to the sharecropper system.
In other words, if slavery turns more moderate or gets abolished entirely, the planters who only scramble to adapt at the last minute will naturally be weeded out.
Which means I'll be the only Cotton King left in the South commanding Black workers on this kind of massive scale. That's the point.
"The reason I ordered you to keep this under absolute lock and key is that I don't want my trade secrets getting out, but it's also to keep us from being dragged into pointless trouble. And since you all understand that, that's why you've cooperated so well in keeping it quiet."
"We'll do anything we can!"
"Just give us the order!"
Field workers, house staff, personal attendants, every last one of them, I could feel how desperately they wanted to protect the way things were now.
Watching them react even more fiercely than I did, it was clear they'd become incapable of living without me. Heh heh heh.
"Good. Then I'll tell you what we need to do from here. Next Sunday afternoon, a number of planters from all over Mississippi will be visiting our plantation. And they'll be touring various parts of it."
"Then they won't get to see us actually working?"
"Correct. Letting outsiders snoop around during harvest season would tank our margins on the spot, and that's something I absolutely cannot allow. They're all planters who run their own plantations, so none of them will quibble about it."
It's not as if they're running a plantation for the first time, anyway; men with a bit of experience can get a rough sense of how a place works just from walking the grounds.
"So the conclusion these men reach after touring our plantation has to be the following: 'Wow, this bastard James Sergent really is grinding his slaves into dust to squeeze out his profits. Even I couldn't go that far.' Everyone understand?"
"…"
"Put simply, we make them think our improved margins came from me wringing you all dry even more brutally than before. Then no one will pick at this policy. On the contrary, they'll praise me as a model slaveowner."
With the public image I'd gain this way, I could go about my outside affairs in peace, and my workers could keep on living the life they had now.
This, right here, is the completion of a world where nobody gets hurt.
And what happens after the war, if word spreads that I'm a monstrous, ruthless exploiter of slaves?
I guarantee it: whether slavery gets drastically reformed or abolished entirely, the workers on my plantation won't go anywhere. They'll stick to me like glue.
A man is judged by his deeds, not by a hundred fine words.
Let them bark all they like about me being a slave-exploiter; when the very people supposedly exploited all line up on my side, will it really leave so much as a scratch?
"Now then, if you all understand, let's hear some halfway decent ideas. Whoever's idea I pick gets a glass of whiskey as a special reward."
Leo was the first to shoot his hand up.
"The best thing would be visible marks. How about carving clear whip marks into our backs? You can't really tell from a distance anyway, so what if we smeared on something like oak sap to fake them? Or charcoal might work too!"
"A fine suggestion. We'll test it as soon as the meeting wraps up."
Not to be outdone, Ben jumped in right after.
"We should all act as one, like we don't have the strength to lift a finger. And what if you put on a show of forcing anyone who tries to do something else to rest instead?"
"Hm, that's good too. It'd give off a strong impression that this isn't rest so much as cooling down a machine that's overheated from overwork."
The power of collective intelligence really is something.
Useful ideas kept rolling in…
"Every time the visitors pass by, we flinch in terror! Like we're bracing to get hit on instinct."
"That's a bit much, isn't it?"
"What if we straight up stage someone dying!"
"Then I get hauled off for breaking the law."
"How about looking like we've been whipped so much we've gotten addicted to the pain?"
Nothing's coming. This right here must be the shortcut straight to mob rule.
A couple seemed usable at first, but then everyone blew past a second verse, a third verse, all the way into total nonsense.
And what was that about digging a pit and playing dead bodies in it?
The role I'm playing here is a vicious slaveowner, not a psychopath!
"I get the picture. The level of your creativity, that is. Let's call the meeting here. The rest of you just go practice your acting."
Nothing for it. As a twenty-first-century man who got at least a speck of creativity training, I'd have to shoulder the load myself.
Fortunately, working out a plan didn't take all that long.
And so the JLB went on a brief hiatus, and the Sergent family's slaves found themselves thrown into an out-of-season crash course in honing their acting skills.
***
The last Sunday of November, 1856.
Perhaps because the harvest season was nearly over, the planters' steps looked noticeably lighter.
"Well now, if he was going to invite us, he could've done it sooner. He opens his gates only once the harvest's all but finished."
"Can't be helped, can it? Honestly, even showing us this much, indirect as it is, I'd say the master of the Sergents has extended plenty of generosity toward his peers."
"That's true enough, I suppose. From what the brokers say, his net profits rose nearly fifteen percent. Though I do wonder whether that sort of improvement is possible just from changing how he manages his slaves."
"Still, it's got to be true he works them hard. Didn't they say the Miner family got spooked and went rushing over there?"
Exchanging bits of information among themselves, the planters stepped into the Sergent plantation, the talk of the town these days.
They'd come on the weekend to avoid the harvest hours, but the men gathered here were all owners commanding at least fifty, and in some cases over a hundred, slaves apiece.
Just from the rest facilities or the schedules, they could get a feel for roughly how the work was run.
No way he'd show them the unvarnished truth?
That would only invite the suspicion that he was hiding something.
Whether the items were ones the plantation actually used day to day or things hastily set out for show was obvious at a glance; there was no missing it.
So then. Just how reckless a man was James Sergent?
Just how honest a man? Shall we have a look?
When the work wagon finally arrived, the planters alighted onto the ground with grace, and James, master of this land, greeted them.
"Welcome to the Sergent cotton plantation. So many have been hoping for a tour of late that I arranged this occasion. I do hope you find the experience a worthwhile one."
"The thanks are ours, for the invitation."
"The Sergent method of management has been the talk of all Mississippi lately, and now, at last, we get to glimpse even a fragment of it."
James met the planters' remarks with a courteous smile and led them in without delay.
"I'll keep my words brief. I, too, have no wish to have my operations disrupted by every manner of idle rumor. I'll show you my plantation with nothing concealed, so judge for yourselves freely."
The first stop on James's tour was an enormous wooden board erected beside the bell tower.
Crammed with schedules, rules, and all manner of symbols, the thing looked less like a plantation notice board and more like a military operations status map.
"Good God… what on earth is this."
Stanton, the wealthiest man in Natchez after Sergent, was the first to let out a groan thick with shock.
<04:55 Assembly / 05:00 First row deployed / 05:15-05:17 Water>
<10:30-10:32 Straps/Gloves / 10:32-10:35 Water>
<15:30-15:35 Focus>
"James, are you controlling your slaves down to the very minute?"
"Because time is cost. A minute's delay, compounded, becomes an hour's loss. I do not tolerate loss."
At the dry reply, the planters' faces went pale.
Their eyes fixed on a red placard that read, 'Maximum Efficiency, Greatest Happiness'.
This young upstart's plantation was truly transforming its slaves into a single precision machine.
The next place they headed was the rest-time cabins.
James had deliberately left the doors of a few of the shabbiest cabins thrown wide open.
The planters peered inside without hesitation, then sucked in their breath.
"Ngghhh."
"You there! Sleep properly. Get even a little sleep and recover your strength!"
Men sprawled across the cots as though they'd all but passed out.
Exhausted breathing filled the cabin, and whenever a few of them shifted, dark red welts flickered into view beneath their sweat-soaked shirts.
Of course, control that thorough couldn't have come without a price.
Even on a Sunday, he was forcing them to sleep so they'd recover just a little more strength, like cooling down an overheated machine, wasn't he?
"See here, Sergent… if you keep this up, mightn't the authorities catch wind of it? This seems to sit right on the line between legal and illegal."
"Push a man to the limit, and injury inevitably follows. Of course, they must never die. They've got cotton to pick again tomorrow. And I've already studied the statutes thoroughly; I work them only up to the line of what's lawful. Why, even now I make certain they get their rest, don't I?"
Best to say nothing more.
As they went on touring the rest of the plantation, they came to realize, beyond any doubt, just how merciful and devoted slaveowners they themselves were.
And the long-awaited final stop of the tour was the open field where the JLB league was held.
The planters wore puzzled looks as they took in the vast clearing marked with strange lines.
"And what's this place? Some kind of training ground?"
"Indeed. A training ground, and a place of punishment."
James tapped the baseline, where dust rose in little puffs, with the toe of his boot.
It was a dirt path beaten hard and firm by countless feet over a long stretch of time.
"The ones who slip up or fail to meet their quota run here. Round and round along those lines, until I tell them to stop."
"Good heavens… just how much running does it take to wear the ground down like this?"
"My apologies, but I don't recall. I tend to spend the time I might use counting my slaves' laps on calculating my margins instead."
Just then, another planter spotted a pile of planks stacked haphazardly against the wall.
Out of curiosity, he picked up the topmost board.
Beneath the crude word 'TALLY', the numbers one through nine were written, each accompanied by countless tally strokes.
1: I I I I
2: I I I
3: I I I I I I
"James, what in the world are these marks?"
James only gave an awkward smile and said nothing, but the men, whose powers of deduction had by now reached the heavens, had no trouble guessing what they were.
'This is insane… these are records of how many times he punished them! He's logged it down to the exact number of lashes!'
This madman had claimed he took no interest in how many laps his slaves ran, yet in truth he'd been managing every single flogging by the numbers.
Ridel, a middle-aged man in his forties who'd come all the way from Louisiana, flung both arms wide and cried out, looking genuinely impressed by James.
"Goddaaaamn! James! I've seen plenty of planters, but you're the finest of the lot! Aye, aye, this is how a man of the South ought to be, bold as brass."
A radical who had fallen out with planters who treated their slaves with any kindness, gone so far as to duel them, and killed two men that way.
To him, the young man before him gleamed like a polished jewel, near dazzling to behold.
"This is how you handle niggers! Now this is a real man!"
No one raised a single objection.
Through this tour, in which admiration, horror, and astonishment all crossed paths, the planters of the South reached their conclusion.
James Sergent's method was ideal, but mishandled it could leave slaves dying in droves, so any actual application would have to be approached with caution.
And whenever the struggle to defend slavery began in earnest, James Sergent would surely prove to be Mississippi's most dependable guardian.
And no wonder, for a plantation owner like this couldn't possibly fail to stand for the South.
*
"They gone?"
"Yes, Master. Every last one of them."
"Bloodsucking leeches, the lot of them. Leo, good work to you too. Tell the other workers they did well, and pass around a drink for everyone."
With this, no matter what I get up to from here on, no one will suspect I'm secretly out to betray the South.
After all, look at the world through dark-tinted glasses and everything can't help but look dark.
Now I can invest in whatever I please with an easy mind.
For starters, buy up huge tracts around Oil Creek in Pennsylvania, then railroad stocks, and… a hospital wouldn't be half bad either.
Play it right, and I can grab image and money both in one go.
And of course, that I'll keep using this swelling pile of money to expand my plantations and slaveholdings in the South whenever the chance arises, well, that hardly needs saying.
I was happily scouting out my next investment when Leo, who'd gone downstairs, came back up with a bundle of papers.
"Master, I've put together the proposals from the new farm-supply firms you requested the other day. Most were on terms no different from our current ones, but… one proposal, from Cleveland, Ohio, stood out from the rest."
"Cleveland? That's quite a distance off, isn't it?"
"Yes. But they cut out a great deal of the middle distribution steps, so their unit price actually comes in lower. On top of that, there are three additional proposals, and every one of them looks solid. They seem to offer advantages across the board, in logistics, communications, and asset management, so I thought you'd want to review them, Master, and brought them up."
"All right. What's the name of this firm?"
Leo held out the line written at the very bottom of the page and read it aloud.
"It reads, 'Hewitt & Tuttle, submitted by John D. Rockefeller, clerk in charge'."
"What did you say?" "Hewitt & Tuttle, sir. It seems to be an agricultural brokerage company."
No, no, not that.
Who did you say?
*****
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