HUMMEL, JEFFREY ROGERS

English

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San Jose State UniversitySJSU ScholarWorksFaculty Publications Economics12-1-1998Review of Mastered by the Clock: Time, Slavery,and Freedom in the American South by Mark M.SmithJEFFREY ROGERS HUMMELSan Jose State University, jeff@jrhummel.comFollow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/econ_pubPart of the Economic History Commons, and the Macroeconomics CommonsThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Economics at SJSU ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in FacultyPublications by an authorized administrator of SJSU ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact scholarworks@sjsu.edu.Recommended CitationJEFFREY ROGERS HUMMEL. "Review of Mastered by the Clock: Time, Slavery, and Freedom in the American South by Mark M.Smith" Journal of Economic History (1998): 1157-1158. doi:10.1017/S0022050702000852Book Reviews 1157 ordinating management ofthe federal workforce. The federal budget replaced the "diverse vernaculars ofall the particular bureaus and offices" with "a single, official administrative language," rendering the work of these agencies "transparent" to executive oversight and thus vulnerable to executive control (p. 153). Responding to Stephen Skowronek (Building the American State: The Expansion ofNational Administrative Capacities, 1877-1920. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), Kahn argues that new American "state" emerged not merely from the enlarged administrative capacities ofparticular bureaus, but from these formalized relationships among government agencies. The newly empowered executive branch did not serve the cause of democracy, Kahn concludes. Though energetic and imaginative leaders like Franklin Roosevelt used their budget power to create agencies that gave the illusion ofdemocratic participation, in truth the budget system as it emerged in the United States excluded citizens from budget making. The result was a "crisis ofrepresentation" (p. 214) that helps account for Proposition 13 and the tax revolts of the 1970s. This brooding conclusion is perhaps too dark. William Nelson (The Roots ofAmerican Bureaucracy, 1830-1900. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982) has located a "crisis ofrepresentation" in the late nineteenth century, not the late twentieth. In his view political parties proved incapable of the pluralism demanded by the country's increasing complexity and diversity. The budget and other administrative reforms served this purpose. to influence the budget process, federations of women's clubs, labor unions, farmers, bankers, teachers, automobile owners, and others with an interest in government spending hired their own budget experts who became permanent fixtures in a political process that, while messy, was more inclusive than the party-centered decision-making system which preceded budget politics. More broadly, as James Savage (Balanced Budgets & American Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988) has found, modern debates over the budget process merely replay an argument over representation, public fmance, and political morality that dates back to at least the Revolution. For revealing the broader impor.ance ofpublic f.nance to American political culture, and for raising fundamental questions about the nature of the American state, Budgeting De­mocracy deserves a wide readership. THOMAS LAICHAS, Crossroads School. Santa Monica, CA Mastered by the Clock: Time, Slavery, and Freedom in the American South. By Mark M. Smith. Chapel Hill: University ofNorth Carolina Press, 1997. Pp. xx, 303. $45, cloth; $16.95, paper. Mechanical timepieces-clocks and watches-were among "the great inventions in the history ofmankind," to quote DavidS. Landes (Revolution in Time: Clocks andthe Making ofthe Modern World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983: 6). "Not in a class with frre and the wheel," he adds, the clock was "comparable to movable type in its revolu­tionary implications for cultural values, technological change, social and political organiza­tion, and personality." This ubiquitous technological innovation helped the modern world attain sustained economic growth and has attracted such talented scholars, in addition to Landes, as Carlo M. Cipolla, E. P. Thompson, and Michael O'Malley. Now Mark M. Smith, assistant professor of history at the University of South Carolina, offers the frrst study of this invention's penetration in to the antebellum American South. Smith discovers that the Old South, rather than clinging to a premodern, task-oriented sense oftime, increasingly embraced the clock as ''the legitimate arbiter ofwork and social 1158 Book Reviews organization" (p. 8). Ownership oftimepieces steadily increased among white Southerners from the colonial period forward, so that at the outbreak of the civil War it encompasses two-thirds of all households. What the author terms "the gospel of punctuality" (p. 70} emanated from Southern merchants; spread through the postal service, steamships, rail­roads, and the telegraph; and by the 1830s had permeated the plantation economy. Emulat­ing time-thrifty Northern managers, planters widely utilized clocks and watches to regulate slave labor. Although slaves themselves may not have internalized this time discipline to anywhere near the same extent as contemporary factory workers in theNorth and in Europe, the effective conjunction of"the whip and the watch" (p. 137) ensured that slaves exhibited considerable time obedience. A final chapter on the post-Civil War era concludes that the New South shared at least "one crucial continuity" with the old, slave South: "the way white southerners viewed, appreciated, and applied time" (p. 154). Based on the author's dissertation, Mastered by the Clock buttresses these claims with a rich and impressive array of evidence, including census data, probate records, contracts to hire slaves, plantation account books, diaries, agricultural journals, and slave narratives. Smith also explores the obvious relevance of his fmdings to the interminable debate over whether slaveholders were fundamentally seigniorial or capitalistic. His focus on time sensibilities even adds a new dimension to postemancipation conflicts over the reconstruc­tion ofSouthern agriculture. The fierce black resistance to resurrecting the plantation gang with wage labor turns out to have owed much to the freed people's desire to control their own time. This book unfortunately is marred by Smith's unrelenting insistence upon wrenching the historical material into alignment with a Marxist interpretive superstructure. Not content to write a mundane technological history, Smith aspires to "an intellectual history ofthe southern time consciousness" (p. 215). That he is in over his head comes across noticeably in the second chapter, by far the book's least satisfactory.lt starts by glibly positing a sharp trichoto­my between "God's time," "nature's time," and "clock time" (p. 40) without precisely defin­ing these terms nor apparently considering whether they are actually competing alternatives. Smith admits that his empirical evidence turns up no tension among these notions in Southern thought, yet it never occurs to him that the categories therefore might need reformulation. Mastered by the Clock exhibits other, related shortcomings. Smith's philosophical con­ception of time is so radically subjectivist that it often muddles and warps the analysis. Repeated references and allusions to the "tyranny ofthe clock" are an irritating distraction that does not bring historical clarity to what remains mere metaphor. Despite a statistical appendix, the author's somewhat unsophisticated handling ofquantitative data betrays a lack ofadvanced training in such techniques. And the text is not engagingly written or organized. The historical literature boasts several fascinating works on the clock's development and on evolving concepts oftime. This book will not become one ofthem. Nor will it enter the distinguished ranks of profound studies ofthe South's peculiar institution. Nonetheless, Mastered by the Clock has a material base ofexhaustive research that makes a solid contri­bution to our understanding of the Old South. JEFFREY ROGERS HUMMEL, Golden Gate University Transforming the Cotton Frontier: Madison County, Alabama 1800-1840. By DanielS. Dupre. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1997. Pp. xii, 269. $40.00. In this book Daniel Dupre offers a history ofMadison county, Alabama from the time of settlement in 1800 to 1840. He sees this work as "an exploration of the intersection of the frontier community and the broad forces of ideological and social change sweeping through early republic America" (p. 3). His emphasis is on the ideological conflicts that 

Review of Mastered by the Clock: Time, Slavery, and Freedom in the American South by Mark M. Smith

San Jose State University

San Jose State University
SJSU ScholarWorks
Faculty Publications Economics
12-1-1998
Review of Mastered by the Clock: Time, Slavery,
and Freedom in the American South by Mark M.
Smith
JEFFREY ROGERS HUMMEL
San Jose State University, jeff@jrhummel.com
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/econ_pub
Part of the Economic History Commons, and the Macroeconomics Commons
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Economics at SJSU ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty
Publications by an authorized administrator of SJSU ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact scholarworks@sjsu.edu.
Recommended Citation
JEFFREY ROGERS HUMMEL. "Review of Mastered by the Clock: Time, Slavery, and Freedom in the American South by Mark M.
Smith" Journal of Economic History (1998): 1157-1158. doi:10.1017/S0022050702000852
Book Reviews 1157 
ordinating management ofthe federal workforce. The federal budget replaced the "diverse 
vernaculars ofall the particular bureaus and offices" with "a single, official administrative 
language," rendering the work of these agencies "transparent" to executive oversight and 
thus vulnerable to executive control (p. 153). Responding to Stephen Skowronek (Building 
the American State: The Expansion ofNational Administrative Capacities, 1877-1920. 
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), Kahn argues that new American "state" 
emerged not merely from the enlarged administrative capacities ofparticular bureaus, but 
from these formalized relationships among government agencies. 
The newly empowered executive branch did not serve the cause of democracy, Kahn 
concludes. Though energetic and imaginative leaders like Franklin Roosevelt used their 
budget power to create agencies that gave the illusion ofdemocratic participation, in truth 
the budget system as it emerged in the United States excluded citizens from budget making. 
The result was a "crisis ofrepresentation" (p. 214) that helps account for Proposition 13 and 
the tax revolts of the 1970s. 
This brooding conclusion is perhaps too dark. William Nelson (The Roots ofAmerican 
Bureaucracy, 1830-1900. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982) has located 
a "crisis ofrepresentation" in the late nineteenth century, not the late twentieth. In his view 
political parties proved incapable of the pluralism demanded by the country's increasing 
complexity and diversity. The budget and other administrative reforms served this purpose. 
to influence the budget process, federations of women's clubs, labor unions, farmers, 
bankers, teachers, automobile owners, and others with an interest in government spending 
hired their own budget experts who became permanent fixtures in a political process that, 
while messy, was more inclusive than the party-centered decision-making system which 
preceded budget politics. More broadly, as James Savage (Balanced Budgets & American 
Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988) has found, modern debates over the 
budget process merely replay an argument over representation, public fmance, and political 
morality that dates back to at least the Revolution. 
For revealing the broader impor.ance ofpublic f.nance to American political culture, and 
for raising fundamental questions about the nature of the American state, Budgeting De­
mocracy deserves a wide readership. 
THOMAS LAICHAS, Crossroads School. Santa Monica, CA 
Mastered by the Clock: Time, Slavery, and Freedom in the American South. By Mark M. 
Smith. Chapel Hill: University ofNorth Carolina Press, 1997. Pp. xx, 303. $45, cloth; 
$16.95, paper. 
Mechanical timepieces-clocks and watches-were among "the great inventions in the 
history ofmankind," to quote DavidS. Landes (Revolution in Time: Clocks andthe Making 
ofthe Modern World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983: 6). "Not in a class 
with frre and the wheel," he adds, the clock was "comparable to movable type in its revolu­
tionary implications for cultural values, technological change, social and political organiza­
tion, and personality." This ubiquitous technological innovation helped the modern world 
attain sustained economic growth and has attracted such talented scholars, in addition to 
Landes, as Carlo M. Cipolla, E. P. Thompson, and Michael O'Malley. Now Mark M. Smith, 
assistant professor of history at the University of South Carolina, offers the frrst study of 
this invention's penetration in to the antebellum American South. 
Smith discovers that the Old South, rather than clinging to a premodern, task-oriented 
sense oftime, increasingly embraced the clock as ''the legitimate arbiter ofwork and social 
1158 Book Reviews 
organization" (p. 8). Ownership oftimepieces steadily increased among white Southerners 
from the colonial period forward, so that at the outbreak of the civil War it encompasses 
two-thirds of all households. What the author terms "the gospel of punctuality" (p. 70} 
emanated from Southern merchants; spread through the postal service, steamships, rail­
roads, and the telegraph; and by the 1830s had permeated the plantation economy. Emulat­
ing time-thrifty Northern managers, planters widely utilized clocks and watches to regulate 
slave labor. Although slaves themselves may not have internalized this time discipline to 
anywhere near the same extent as contemporary factory workers in theNorth and in Europe, 
the effective conjunction of"the whip and the watch" (p. 137) ensured that slaves exhibited 
considerable time obedience. A final chapter on the post-Civil War era concludes that the 
New South shared at least "one crucial continuity" with the old, slave South: "the way 
white southerners viewed, appreciated, and applied time" (p. 154). 
Based on the author's dissertation, Mastered by the Clock buttresses these claims with 
a rich and impressive array of evidence, including census data, probate records, contracts 
to hire slaves, plantation account books, diaries, agricultural journals, and slave narratives. 
Smith also explores the obvious relevance of his fmdings to the interminable debate over 
whether slaveholders were fundamentally seigniorial or capitalistic. His focus on time 
sensibilities even adds a new dimension to postemancipation conflicts over the reconstruc­
tion ofSouthern agriculture. The fierce black resistance to resurrecting the plantation gang 
with wage labor turns out to have owed much to the freed people's desire to control their 
own time. 
This book unfortunately is marred by Smith's unrelenting insistence upon wrenching the 
historical material into alignment with a Marxist interpretive superstructure. Not content to 
write a mundane technological history, Smith aspires to "an intellectual history ofthe southern 
time consciousness" (p. 215). That he is in over his head comes across noticeably in the 
second chapter, by far the book's least satisfactory.lt starts by glibly positing a sharp trichoto­
my between "God's time," "nature's time," and "clock time" (p. 40) without precisely defin­
ing these terms nor apparently considering whether they are actually competing alternatives. 
Smith admits that his empirical evidence turns up no tension among these notions in Southern 
thought, yet it never occurs to him that the categories therefore might need reformulation. 
Mastered by the Clock exhibits other, related shortcomings. Smith's philosophical con­
ception of time is so radically subjectivist that it often muddles and warps the analysis. 
Repeated references and allusions to the "tyranny ofthe clock" are an irritating distraction 
that does not bring historical clarity to what remains mere metaphor. Despite a statistical 
appendix, the author's somewhat unsophisticated handling ofquantitative data betrays a lack 
ofadvanced training in such techniques. And the text is not engagingly written or organized. 
The historical literature boasts several fascinating works on the clock's development and 
on evolving concepts oftime. This book will not become one ofthem. Nor will it enter the 
distinguished ranks of profound studies ofthe South's peculiar institution. Nonetheless, 
Mastered by the Clock has a material base ofexhaustive research that makes a solid contri­
bution to our understanding of the Old South. 
JEFFREY ROGERS HUMMEL, Golden Gate University 
Transforming the Cotton Frontier: Madison County, Alabama 1800-1840. By DanielS. Dupre. 
Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1997. Pp. xii, 269. $40.00. 
In this book Daniel Dupre offers a history ofMadison county, Alabama from the time 
of settlement in 1800 to 1840. He sees this work as "an exploration of the intersection of 
the frontier community and the broad forces of ideological and social change sweeping 
through early republic America" (p. 3). His emphasis is on the ideological conflicts that 


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