America 's Value Of Labor

Other Europeans, Native Americans and West Africans were the groups thought to be most suitable for the economic demand of labor. Many of the early views of West Africans were received through the bible until written accounts of encounters with these people were made. These written accounts of the encounters of West Africans led to the idea West Africans could be brought over and sold in the Americas to work in chattel slavery. This in turn made them the ultimate choice for the labor force of the English. However the famous sale of twenty Africans to the colonists at Jamestown in 1619 by Dutch slave traders did not equate to the introduction of chattel slavery just yet. Many early African slaves were treated similarly to indentured servants brought in from England. They could work the land for a set number of years then after their term was up be freed and given a piece of land. Indentured servitude was not hereditary but their contract could be sold, bartered, given away or gambled away. These contracts gave away the servant’s labor but it did not give away the servant’s person. Despite this African presence, slavery was slow to arrive in Virginia because the mortality rate for indentured servants was so high during the first decades of the Virginia colony. Indentured servitude remained the primary source of labor in Virginia through the 1680s, until economic considerations made slaves the cheaper alternative.

In the essay "The Evolution of Slavery in Colonial America," author Jon Butler examines the growth of the slave practice in the land which would become the United States. As the European nations began exploring North America, they overtook the native populations of the areas and turned them into unpaid laborers. However, these people were not enough to supply landholders with sufficient aid. To make up the necessary numbers, plantation owners utilized indentured servants and then a number of slaves imported from Africa. Indentured servants were people who would be taken from the Old World to the New in order to start a new life. However, since they would not have the necessary funds to pay for their transportation, their journey would be funded by either a manufacturer or a plantation owner and their debt would be paid off by working for their benefactor. Slaves were not given this opportunity. These were people who were taken from their homes and families and forced into labor by threat of violence or death. This practice did not begin in the United States, but America was still allowing slavery well into the 19th century, long after other nations had come to the conclusion that slavery was inhumane and brutal.

In the middle colonies, a large part of the labor force consisted of indentured servants--men and women, but more often men, who would travel to the colonies to work under a contract for approximately four to seven years. However, according to “Indentured Servants in The U.S.”, “an indentured servant’s contract could be extended as punishment for breaking a law” such as running away or becoming pregnant, in a woman’s case. Throughout the time that they worked, the indentured servants were under the complete rule of their masters, but they were provided transportation/passage, food, clothing, and shelter. Indentured servants were a useful source of labor, but the problem was that it was only temporary, and after their contract ended, they had the option of continuing to work

During the establishment of the Virginia colonies, the ownership of indentured servants became popular. In Document 1, during years 1645 and 1657 the number of indentured servants per probate inventory increased from about 0.6 to about 2.1 showing that Virginia preferred them probably because of their low cost. Although they were

Indentured servants were used in early colonial times as a means of passage to the new world. The cash crops of the early settlers were exhaustingly labor intensive. In fact, U.S. History (2015) indicated that “the growth of tobacco, rice, and indigo and the plantation economy created a tremendous need for labor in Southern English America” (p. 1). The technology did not exist at the time for machinery that clears the ground and works the land as it does today. The work had to be done by hand; from clearing and prepping the fields to harvesting the crops, it was all manual labor for which the new land did not have ample supply of.

In the 17th and 18th century many were lured, some were forced, children even kidnapped to travel to America as indentured servants. These people became “commodities of profit” to everyone they were controlled by, much like the slaves. The immigrants agreed to pay the cost of their voyage to the New World by working as a servant for a master for five to seven years, they then would be free (but most likely still poor) to build a life of their own in America –that is, if they survived the whole process. Indentured servants were severely mistreated, but they did have some rights during their service- even if those rights were fist decided on by their masters (who they could marry, etc.). They were much like slaves, but they could go to court (even though the court almost always decided in favor of the

During the 17th century there was a fairly new form of labor in Colonial America. The concept of indentured servants was already well established in England, but the new labor force had to be gotten used to in Colonial America. The lives of indentured servants in the colonies were extremely different and their living conditions were poor.

These people became known as voluntary indentured servants. However, not all servants were voluntary. Once they arrived in America, they became their master’s property and had to do what the master said. If they did not do what they were told, they were punished. If they tried to run away, they were punished. They were not allowed to do anything outside of their instructions without their master’s permission. These servants were kept in poor conditions. In my opinion, they were not feed, clothed, or sheltered properly. Because of this lack of care, many servants or slaves died. Some indentured servants or slaves did work off their debts and became free. In fact, seven former indentured servants served on the Virginia legislature in 1629. As slaves became more and more popular across America, more and more slaves were forced to work for the rest of their lives. Slaves were even sold between masters because of the money they could bring in. By the 1660s, lifelong slavery was legalized. By this time, slaves were used mostly in the fields to grow crops like tobacco in Virginia and rice in South Carolina. The slave population in each colony continually grew. However, there were more slaves in the

Puritans came to new land to escape religious persecution and free themselves from the English Monarchy. They brought religious intolerance with them and after they arrived conflict arrose. Slavery and warfare followed throughout the next century. Virginia was one of the first states to acknowledge slavery in its laws, initially enacting such a law in 1661. The difference was that indenture was a contract, entered into voluntarily for a stated period of time, at the end of which the indentured person would generally either have learned an economically valuable skill or have paid off some debt.

Many of these poor whites from Europe found they had been deceived by their wealthy counterparts upon arrival to America. Some were forced to work up to 5-7 years of forced labor. Later in the 1700s, more than 50,000 white men and women were shipped to the new world colonies and auctioned off as punishment for petty crimes committed in Europe, such as theft, trespassing, and pick-pocketing. These men and women would serve as the basis for the lower class in America for centuries to come.

Indentured servants were people who came over to the southern colonies in America from Britain were bound to a contract to work off their debt overseas. The women who came over as indentured servants were often convicted of crimes back in England or came from poor families, either way these women hoped to create a new life for themselves after working off their debts. A large portion, about three-fourths of the women who came over from Britain to the Southern Colonies during the seventeenth century, were indentured servants (Dubois, ch.2 p.51).

The growth of tobacco, rice, & and other crops and the plantation economy gave rise to the high demand of labor in the English southern colonies. In the early years of the southern colonies, it was mostly indentured servants who would work for their aristocratic landowning masters in accordance to the Headright System. As this system benefited the masters some may also say it benefited the laborers. Each indentured servant would have their fare across the Atlantic paid in full by their masters if they willing to work a certain amount of years. They would also be supplied room & board while working in the masters’ fields. And if completion of contract is successful, laborers would receive a bonus. However, as good it seemed, the reality showed otherwise. Only forty percent of indentured servants lived to complete the terms of the contract. And female servants were recorded to have been subjects of harassment by their masters. Furthermore, the high demand of labor due to the plantation system influenced the general favor of forced labor

Eventually there was less land to give away and it became impractical for plantation owners to buy indentured servants. This is what shifted the labor force to African slaves. The slaves are not under a contract like the indentured servants. They worked for the plantation owner for life and then their children worked for life. Punishment for the slaves are physical violence such as whipping, starving, and

In 1625 and according to the British historian Betty Wood, 23 Africans lived in Virginia. This number had increased thirty five years later to 950 representing three or four percent of the whole colony population. This number rose and the colony had more indentured servants. Some historians such as Edmund Morgan said that the treatment of the indentured servants was mysterious from that of slaves. During this period of time, white indentured servants and black servants met each other, worked and even escaped from their holders together. Yet, there was a big difference between European and black indentured servants. The European could demand the help of his governments and ask for his freedom but the Africans could not because their are blacks

Indentured servants were men and women that signed a indenture contract to agree to work on plantations and farm for 4 to 7 years for employer. The motivation to agree to this contact was free passage to America from their homeland. During the 1600s, the French had many people come to the America by such contacts and most indentured servants “returned home after their contracts expired” (pg 35) for many reasons. During the English colonization, the people who could afford to come to the America were “government officials, clergymen, merchants, artisans, and landowning farmers” (pg 53) who were able to be free people upon arrival and acquired a great amount of land. But they were only about one third of the English settlers,