agriculturalist more
dependent than ever on work from the large landowner.[78]

The hired man was expected to arrive in time for the early morning
milking and work the lengthy fifteen-hour day alongside the farmer. His
chores ranged from making hay to cutting wood and building fences. Neal
Bailey recalled that he spent his entire first day as a laborer driving
fence posts with a 16-pound hammer. The standard salary was $1.00 to
$1.50 per day plus all he could eat for lunch. Some farmers paid by the
job rather than by the day though they found the latter system
preferable. When the help was not so concerned with completing a task
rapidly, farmers believed it produced a better quality work.
Occasionally the white farmers shared or traded work with their black
counterparts. More frequently, hired hands worked for a share of the
fruits of their labor. At butchering time, the hired help might go home
with sausage, side meat (bacon) or a pork shoulder for his pay. At berry
season they picked a farmer's blackberries or wild cherries for half of
the take.[79]

The women and children of the black communities in Fairfax County also
worked. Black women took in laundry, picked fruit and sometimes came to
the white farmer's houses to help with canning or meat preservation at
butchering time. One woman worked as a midwife; according to Margaret
Lee, the only one in the area. She delivered Miss Lee's younger sister
around 1913.[80] Children as young as nine would thin corn or pluck
potato bugs off the dark, leafy plants for 50c a day. Girls used to pick
berries and pull field cress when it was going to seed, and some
children worked in the farmhouses running errands.[81] The Ellmore
family often had a young boy to help do odds and ends, and another
Floris resident noted that "there was some twins of about twelve years
old and we needed a little help so I took one of them in the house and
my brother had the other out to help him with things."[82] Neal Bailey
recalled going out to help his father cut corn at a very young age and
being told to "keep working--you have no back," even when it felt as if
it were breaking.[83]

Within these labor relationships the white employer retained the most
control since he set wages and hours, and because he worked with the
knowledge that the black families were dependent on him for employment.
Yet the blacks had their influence too, for the larger landowners needed
their labor to keep the farms ope