The performance of every hand tended accordingly to be standardized at the customary accomplishment of the weakest and slowest members of the group.

The sugar industry, which by 1542 exported the staple to the amount of 110,000 arrobas of twenty-five pounds each, was standardized in plantations of two typesthe trapiche whose cane was ground by ox power and whose labor force was generally thirty or forty negroes (each reckoned as capable of the labor of four Indians); and the inqenio, equipped with a water-power mill and employing about a hundred slaves.

The purposes and policies of the masters were fairly uniform, and in consequence the negroes, though with many variants, became largely standardized into the predominant plantation type.