In the islands where apprenticeship was tried, the irritability of the masters made it work worse than it would otherwise have done. All that most of them seemed to care for was to get as much work out of their servants as they could, during the six years that they were to work without wages, and it vexed them that they could not use the lash whenever they pleased. They took away various little privileges which they had been accustomed to grant; while during four days and a half of the week the apprentices received no wages to compensate them for the loss of those privileges. Being deprived of the power to sell the children, they refused to supply them with any food. In fact, they contrived every way to make the colored people think they had better have remained slaves. But if they called out, "Work faster, you black rascal, or I'll flog you!" the apprentices would sometimes lose patience, and answer, "You can't flog we now." That would make the master very angry, and he would send the apprentice to a magistrate to be punished for impudence. The magistrates were the associates of the planters; they ate their good dinners, and rode about in their carriages. Consequently, they were more inclined to believe them than they were to believe their servants. The laborers became so well aware of this, that they were accustomed to say to each other, "It's of no use for us to apply to the magistrates. They are so poisoned by massa's turtle-soup." It has been computed by missionaries that, in the course of two years, sixty thousand apprentices received, among them all, two hundred and fifty thousand lashes, besides fifty thousand other legalized punishments, such as the tread-mill and the chain-gang. The planters were full of complaints to travellers who visited the West Indies. If they were asked, "Why don't you emancipate your laborers entirely, and give them wages, as they do in Antigua,--they have no such troubles there?" the prejudiced men would shake their heads and answer: "Negroes will not work without being flogged. We must get what we can out of them before 1840; for when they are their own masters they will rob, murder, or starve, rather than labor."