Wage Slavery In The Early 1800s

Throughout time, in all places, there is an upper class and a lower class. During the 16th to 19th century in America people came from all over Europe. People from Europe found America as an escape from their life; a new start. Some could not afford to take a boat ride across the Atlantic with their whole family. Because of this, some people became indentured servants. Later on, the South revolutionized America by bringing in black slaves and getting rid of indentured servitude. Slaves generated the economy for the South, but was also the main cause of the civil war. Both slaves and indentured servants were treated badly, however, black slaves were much more expensive and had to work for life,

During the 19th century slavery was a very prominent and controversial issue between the north and the southern states. In the South, most people believed that slavery was a profitable way of life and if the slavery was to be abolished it would then affect their economy. On the hand the northern had different opinions about slavery and intended to stop it. The fact that the perception were different between the two led to a very difficult situation in resolving the issue.

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.

Today, slavery is not something you see in modern day society. For the most part, people are treated fairly while working, are given benefits such as holidays and the option to take a sick day when feeling ill, and are paid a good wage for their services as an employee. But unfortunately this was not the case back in the 1800s where slavery was popular among the southern parts of the United States.

Africa was once a thriving and wonderful continent filled with luxurious and wealthy kingdoms, but that had all changed when a new and appalling type of slavery was introduced. Around the 18th century, Africa became an ideal place for Europeans to trade and buy slaves from. The slave trade in Africa seemed to be manageable and somewhat peaceful before the Europeans brought in a new type of slavery. When the Europeans bought slaves from Africans, they kept them as slaves for life which were very different from how long slaves were kept in Africa. Europeans kept slaves in extremely poor conditions and treated them as if they were less than human. These actions caused a great spike in the slave trade all over the world and many

This shows that the South lacked in the white working force, forcing them to find another source of labor, African slaves. Another source of labor that was quickly dwindling for the plantation owners were indentured servants. In the first couple of waves of settlers that came over to the New World, many came over as indentured servants because it was the only way for them to pay for a trip over to escape the English economy and poverty. But the English economy began to improve and people didn?t need to come over anymore causing even more trouble for the plantation owners to find people to work the fields.

What is slavery? Slavery is forced labor and this forced labor is what built America and made them become more developed. “Africans peoples were captured and transported to the Americas to work. Most European colonial economies in the Americas from the 16th century through the 19th were dependant on enslaved African labor for their survival.” Many claim that enslavement was very necessary in order for America to thrive and not die off for it is now one of the best countries in the world. However, slavery was not necessary in the Americas it was just a mechanism that just stripped Africans of their human rights, giving the slave masters the “right” to abuse them. Slavery was not necessary in the Americas because without slavery America would

Because there were many immigrants coming to America during the Gilded Age, there was an abundant amount of labor. There were so many people in America at the time that there were more workers than there were jobs. Since there were more people than jobs, many companies would pay workers lower wages. The wages that were given were so low many people could barely survive or live comfortably. Because it was a struggle for families to survive from parent’s income alone, many children had to work. Depending on the company, some children were paid little to no money for their services. In addition to low wages, companies made people work longer days which could range from ten to twelve hours a day with minimum to no off days. The significant increase of people coming to America led business owners to abuse the labor they had for their companies.

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.

By the 1630s, about 1.5 million pounds of tobacco was hauled out of Chesapeake Bay (and almost 40 million towards the 1700s). The Chespeake was hospitable for tobacco cultivation and it blew up the tobacco economy.

wealthy and were swindled into years of free labor in the freshly colonized America, by offering them “an all-expenses paid trip” to the New World.

“Indentured servitude declined over the century, and most of these domestic servants were now either free women or slave women” (Coryell, pg. 104). Those who worked in a servitude role were indentured servants, who had the ability to work a number of service years in order to earn their freedom and they would be given a small plot of land, afterwards, to continue to thrive. Eventually, in order to compensate for the growing American need of lower overall costs to purchase labor workers, longer time in servitude, and to decrease the need to give land lots, the term of indentured servant changed to slave, which limited potential freedoms and humanity. This demand for labor changed the owner and slave relationship. “Owners began providing minimal clothing and food. Owners viewed all of slaves’ labor as their own” (Coryell, pg. 105). By forcing a dependent relationship, owners were able to maintain their

In the early years of the 19th century, slavery was more than ever turning into a sectional concern, such that the nation had essentially become divided along regional lines. Based on economic or moral reasoning, people of the Northern states were increasingly in support of opposition to slavery, all the while Southerners became united to defend the institution of slavery. Brought on by profound changes including regional differences in the pattern of slavery in the upper and lower South, as well as the movement of abolitionism in the North, slavery in America had transformed from an issue of politics into a moral campaign during the period of 1815-1860, ultimately polarizing the North and the South to the point in which threats of a Southern disunion would mark the beginning of the Civil War in 1861 (Goldfield et. al, The American Journey, p. 281).

In the 1800s, the living conditions of plantation life were poor. Workers had to live

As America became more industrial more people left their farms and small towns to work in the city so they could pay their expenses, whatever they may be. This led to the minimal pay of workers while the owners became wealthy leading to a functional economy. Most would receive little money while the rest lived a life of luxury. Since more factories were opening children, women, and immigrants could now find jobs, which led to more production which gave more money to the owners of the factories. Americans feared that industrialists were changing freemen into “wage slaves.” “By 1920, nearly 20 percent of all manufacturing workers were women, and 13 percent of all textile workers were younger than 16 years old. In 1900, it was estimated that