Hire Negroe from public Works

That title is not a typo. It should not read "hire negroe for the public works." My book is about how the federal government hired slave laborers to help build the Capitol and White House, but here a slave is hired from the government. In the commissioners' records there are rarely explanations of their policy, so we are left with interpreting the meaning of documents that contain the word "Negro" which was synonymous with slave. 

The commissioners made no secret of their desire to find skilled workers who would accept a lower wage and they favored using contractors in order to lower costs. Dobson was a British stone mason who promised to provide a crew of English masons who would accept a lower wage. The commissioners signed a contract with him more or less like the one they signed with an Irishman, Cornelius McDermott Roe who promised them lower wage Irish masons. Both contractors were paid by piece, i.e. based on how much stone was laid on the Capitol walls, so we don't know what they paid their masons.

It took more that skilled masons to build a wall. They needed tending. The commissioners thought they had the best way to keep the demands of those laborers in check. They hired slaves who had no motive for demanding higher wages.

Contractors were not as successful as the commissioners when it came to hiring slaves. The contractors were creatures of the commissioners' needs, with no record of prior successes. Slave masters trusted the federal government to pay them but not immigrant contractors. By the way, the work of slaves was always paid for after it was done, the same as for free workers.

So the contractors flattered the commissioners by asking them to provide the laborers needed to tend masons. The commissioners also hired free laborers, mostly white and a few free blacks, but the contractors made a point of asking for slave laborers. Evidence for that comes from a comment in a letter written by the disgruntled former head of stone operations, Collen Williamson. That he was disgruntled casts doubt on all he wrote so the note below showing Dobson hiring a slave is significant.

The receipt also has the line "hire stone cutters." I found a payroll listing who those stone cutters were and what they were paid for their work in September 1795. I seem to be the only person interested in these details and I am too old and live too faraway to dig into the records and try to figure who those men were. But I share their names because is underscores the difference between a skilled worker and a slave. The former made as much as 13 pounds 15 shillings for a month's work, about $36. The slave who had been working since January, made $40 for his master. Yet, the slave's labor was just as necessary.

Stone cutters' petitions on wages 1798

In 1793, the commissioners boasted that hiring slaves "proved a very useful check and kept our affairs cool." They clearly meant that hiring slaves cowed free workers into accepting the wages and working conditions offered. In the spring of 1798 slave labor was clearly no longer a check even though the commissioners hired almost 100, around three times the number hired in 1792.

None of the six men who served as commissioners during this period had any prior experience in building. They included two doctors, three lawyers and a planter/politician. One of the doctors, William Thornton, described himself as an architect but at the same prided himself on knowing nothing about building. So their boast that slave labor checked the demands for free workers was really more a hopeful projection than a proven fact.

In my book, I suggest that the use of slaves made it easier for the commissioners to shift more of the work from day wages to wages by the piece, by the perch for masons. Then the Capitol walls built by the piece collapsed and the piece-work regime ended and with it what leverage the use of slaves gave the commissioners ended. Commissioner Thornton suggested buying slaves and training them to be stone masons, but his colleagues did not take the idea seriously. All the commissioners agreed on trying to get indentured stone cutters from Europe, but all efforts to that end proved in vain.

Because the commissioners needed money from congress, then sitting in Philadelphia, one commissioner was often in that city while congress was in session. Commissioner Alexander White's reports on the wages of skilled workers in Philadelphia became the stick with which the commissioners tried to beat back the demands of their workers. In the spring of 1798 they told their supervisor of the stone work, George Blagden, to tell the stone cutters that they were no longer getting an increase in their wage during the summer which made working in the heat and humidity of Washington easier to bear.

Working closely with slaves who worked for no more than three meals and a place to sleep didn't prevent the free stone cutters working on the Capitol and White House from threatening to quit if their summer wages were cut. As I explain in Through a Fiery Trial, page 479, the commissioners refused to give them 13 shillings a day during the summer and told them they were lucky to get the 10 shilling winter wage because stone cutters in Philadelphia only made 9 shillings.

Unfortunately, the petitions scanned below are in poor shape and I made some notes on the copies I made from the microfilm. There are two petitions. One from the stone cutters at the Capitol and one for those at the President's house. The commissioners fired the petitioners and ordered stone cutters from Philadelphia. But they wanted a written guarantee. Meanwhile the stone for the buildings wasn't being prepared for setting. Blagden negotiated a compromise giving all stone cutters a base pay of 10 shillings a day and increasing that to 12 shillings 6 pence a day for those with greater skill.

Stone Cutters Petition on their wages 1795

When they looked to Europe for workers, the president and the commissioners yearned for stonecutters because they feared those already in America "could command their price."

Quote from Slave Labor in the Capital, page 85

In 1794 and 1795 the commissioners tried to reduce their labor costs by forcing stone workers to do piece-work or accept lower wages. The petition below is a scan of a photocopy I took from the microfilm of the commissioners' records in the National Archives. As you can see the microfilmer improperly copied the letter and I think mislabeled it. I don't think it was sent to Congress, but was sent to the commissioners.

Stonecutters worked throughout the winter in sheds by the Capitol and White House preparing stone for the masons to set when weather permitted. It is unclear if the commissioners lowered their wage for the remainder of the winter or permanently. The stonecutters argued that they crossed "the western ocean" attracted by good wages. The evidence of Washington's, Jefferson's and the commissioners' desire to get indentured skilled workers is in the published writing of Washington and Jefferson. I share this letter to show the skilled workers' view which in essence was this: by emigrating to America to help build a republican government they were entitled to respect. Our Founders wanted to force them to pay their dues.  

Payroll for Capitol Stone Cutters August 1795

"could not muster a force sufficient without putting an entire stop to the setting."

Quote from Slave Labor in the Capitol, page 94. 

While there is no evidence that hired slaves did any of the skilled stone work on the Capitol and White House, we can get a sense of what the slaves were doing from payrolls of skilled stone workers because the hired laborers, mostly slaves, moved the stone.

Stonecutters were the key workers in the construction of any stone building so it is strange that in August 1795 only 7 were working at the Capitol:

Most likely some of the stonecutters were working on the Capitol walls as masons. Blagden wrote a note to the commissioners explaining that he delayed some stone cutting work because the laborers he would need to move the stone were working so well with the masons raising the walls.

This payroll like several others for May through August shows workers at the job for more working days than there are in the month. Blagden and Waterstone worked 30 days and August has 31 days. I interpret this as meaning that rather than working on Sundays, they were credited for working longer summer daylight hours. If they had worked on Sunday slaves who assisted them would be entitled to extra wages of at least a shilling a day.

Four of the stone cutters evidently got a raise during the month, from 11 shillings a day to 13. George Bladgen got twice the common was for stonecutters. In August he earned 41 Pounds 5 shillings or about $110. The highest salaried worker, James Hoban, earned $1500 a year and the commissioners $1600. Masters who hired out slaves got $60 to $72 a year. There is no evidence that slaves tending stonecutters and masons ever got extra wages they could keep themselves.