Conflict Over Work Demands on Plantation

I will need you all to work seven full days a week from now on.

Seven days?

That's every person over the age of 10-years-old, man and woman. Understand?

Must work seven days a week, otherwise the crop will spoil.

It be Christmas.

We promised time off.

Yes, no, I know that. The crop is ready now, so we must harvest now.

If we wait until after Christmas, the crop will spoil. You see?

But me got to see my wife.

Massa, five days a week we work for you.

Five days it be.

Yes, but five days is not enough to take off a sugar crop,

is it?

The cane will rot in the fields.

Come James, you're a good Negro, you know this to be true.

Tell you what, Massa. Every one of us in Elte,

we work five days for you,

and we work hard.

No, it must be seven days. Do you hear me, boy?

Just until the crop's in.

Yes, Massa, me did hear you, but me say five

days. We must have Christmas off.

Five days only.

We work hard, five days.

Yes, but remember, if you do not work when required, then you will not be paid.

And if you cannot pay your rents, you cannot stay in your homes.

We build them homes.

Our queen tell us we're staying with homes.

Yes, but all free people, even White people in England,

they all work for wages,

as in when required by their masters.

Look, look, I will give you some time to think this

over, but I suggest you think

very, very hard.

Tell him, Massa, him think very hard. We slaves no more.

Why you make trouble with him for? It's only till crop be over.

It don't be full just 'cause you having picnic. Backra all the same.

No, him different. Him be good, and him be

fair.

Massa go double our rent.

No, true.

True. And hear this, start from today.

Him try fool us, work seven days.

Slavery,

slavery has returned to Amity. Massa, we not-

I know why you've come, and I wish to explain

that I have taken this measure of

increasing your rents for your own good.

You've all lived too long as slaves to really understand what's now in your own

best interests.

But Massa, that not be right.

Now, then, listen.

You must understand that your houses, they belong to me, therefore,

I can rent them

out to whomever I choose, for whatever price I choose.

That's my right, you see, as a landowner.

So it will now be better for you to work seven days a week because then you will be

able to pay the new rent.

And anyone who does not pay the rent in full will be evicted.

I am doing this for your own benefit, because whatever benefits the plantation,

it benefits you, the workers.

But Massa-

Let me finish! Let me finish.

Let's put the past behind us, right?

For once. And let's come together, seven days a week, and let's make

Amity Plantation once more the pride of Jamaica, of England, and

of her great empire. Yes?

Yes?

Yes?

No.