MS01.01.03.B02.F10.006

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they command at the smallest possible price or for nothing almost.
There is hardly any trade or craft which has not been learned and is
not carried on by Negroes."3

The emergence of the black craftsman as a force to be reconed with within
the labor [crossed out : force] field came about in the mid-1720's when slaves, newly brought to the
American market, were trained to participate in the manual aspect of those trades
that allowed labor to be combined with artistic skills. [crossed out: In so doing] It was in this sense that a master
and servant relationship of trust [crossed out: could] was maintained through labor which gave
little or no credit to the slave who may have done most of the work involved
in the making of certain objects. There appear very few written accounts of
the leniency of slavemasters permitting their "property" to be identified by
name, though the refined qualities of their work is often stressed in numerous
press accounts. Even though the art of the ^[black] craftsman was accepted as a necessary
tool for living, it [crossed out: in no ways] did not provided a format [crossed out: of] or forum for black participation
in the mainstream of what was later to be defined as the fine arts. [crossed out: in America }

The presence of black skilled craftsmen in the American economy in the
eighteenth century was welcomed relief to those persons of European origin
who had lofty visions of imitating the life style of the wealthy class whom they
had served back in Europe. Black presence in the trades of the ironsmither,
the carpenter and the furnituremaker, to mention only a few, was widely respected
and counted on by those European settlers who were able to amass small fortunes

3 Johann D. Schoepf, TRAVELS IN THE CONFEDERATION, 1783-1784, Morrison, A.J.
editor {Philadelphia, 1911}, II, 221.