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INDENTURE :(http://www.ulib.iupui.edu/kade/adams/chap4.html)
Another reason why German immigrants never formed a solid ethnic bloc in
the United States was that they crossed the Atlantic with different
interests and expectations. Also, their financial means varied from the
large land owner, for example, who had sold his home and farm in
Württemberg and had already commissioned someone to purchase land for
him in Wisconsin before leaving, right down to the penniless farm hand
who could not pay passage for himself and his family and thus had to
mortgage his future.
To finance their passage, many of the penniless before 1820 became "indentured
servants," also known as "redemptioners." The typical indentured
service contract made out with the captain of a ship provided that the
fare had to be paid together with an additional 12% premium no later
than fourteen days after arrival. If a passenger was not able to wipe
out the debt -- perhaps with help from a relative or a friend in America
-- then the captain was at liberty to "sell" the passenger into a form
of servitude, often together with his wife and children, for three to
four years. Estimates suggest that half of all early German immigrants
financed their passage in this manner. To be sure, only non-German
harbors, in particular Rotterdam and Amsterdam, permitted this manner of
passage. Shippers in Hamburg and Bremen demanded cash payment.
Really profiting from this kind of contract work were the employers
who in the year 1800 paid "bail" amounts of about $70 for a healthy
adult in return for three years of hard work. Under normal circumstances
the owner could realize a profit of between $500 and $900 from his
purchase. A "serve," as these workers were known in German-American
conversation, worked for about six cents per day while a "free" day
laborer, who likewise enjoyed complimentary meals and lodging, earned
between 50 cents and one dollar per day. A casual observer of 1823
points out the possibility for abuse:
The situation is unbelievably difficult for those people who did not
pre-pay their own freight. They almost always fall into the hands of
unscrupulous men. Usually only such a farmer would buy a serve
[that's how the people are called who have to work to pay back their
passage] who could not get any hired hands, for the simple reason
that he did not treat them right. He exploits his serve miserably in
order to earn back the passage costs in the shortest possible time.
Once it has been earned back and the fellow leaves, nothing is lost.
Often a serve is beaten like a slave [Johannes Schweizer, Reise
nach Nordamerika. Leipzig: 1823,115].
Also comparable to slavery was the regulation that the indentured
servant could be assigned to another master; family members often became
separated from each other, even forcing children to be separated from
their parents. It was not uncommon to read advertisements in the
newspapers with descriptions of serves who had escaped, usually offering
a reward for their recapture.
On the other hand, emigration advisers also pointed out the positive
sides of indentured status. Those families who initially worked as
indentured servants acclimated more rapidly to their surroundings. They
picked up the language more readily, got acquainted with American
farming methods, learned the techniques of craftsmen, as well as about
commerce and the law. As a matter of fact, new arrivals were sometimes
advised to volunteer for indentured service as a means to eventually
increase their starting capital. Eventually, a federal law of 1855
forbidding contract labor immigration would have put an end to
indentured service, had it not been abandoned for all practical purposes
in the 1820s due to economic developments.
The dream of most German immigrants in the 18th and 19th centuries
was the debt-free ownership of a farm. Taking up city residence
initially often was a strategy to build up savings of $50 to $150.
Around 1850 in Missouri this sum was sufficient for a down payment on a
farm of about 40 acres, which was about the size needed to make a
living. In addition, the immigrant needed about $500 to acquire
implements, cattle and seed grains, as well as food that would last
until the first harvest. The minimal chattel needed to be able to start
a family farm on the western prairies around 1870 was a team of horses,
a plow and other field implements as well as seed grain, which together
cost about $1,200. That was more than the average annual income of a
factory worker.
By comparison, German farmers were far more attached to their farms
than others, succumbing less frequently to speculative fever. Instead,
they tried to buy up land in their own vicinity for their siblings and
children in order to be able to farm together for several generations.
In 1868, a German farmer in Missouri described the opposite attitude,
for which he had little sympathy:
There are people here who are forever moving around. They buy
themselves a piece of land, live on it a while, work like a dog, and
then, when they do not end up rich in a few short years, they curse
the area, sell everything for a song, and move on to spots where
they finish up worse off than when they left. Sometimes they return
and would be delighted if only they could buy back their original
land. In this way they frequently move five or six times before they
finally come to their senses and admit that wealth does not fly into
every mouth that opens [Kamphoefner, News, 168].
As a matter of fact, the persistency of Germans in certain regions of
Wisconsin, the Dakotas, Minnesota, Illinois, Missouri, Indiana and Texas
resulted in German islands that have lasted well into the 20tH century,
at least in the sense of German conservative-rural, family-oriented
values and memories.
If we categorize them by occupation, the largest group of German
immigrants in any given period were those in the skilled crafts. Upon
their arrival in Chicago in 1875, for example, one third of the Germans
were registered as skilled craftsmen, a quarter of them as common
laborers, and another quarter as farmers. Both in urban and rural
settings, Germans held an equally high profile as businessmen and
shopkeepers, and in the final third of the century also as skilled
laborers. Some fields of work were filled almost exclusively by Germans,
for example, brewers, watchmakers, distillery workers and land
surveyors. They supplied a large proportion of the bakers and butchers,
cabinet makers and blacksmiths, tailors and flour millers, stone masons
and tinners, cigar makers, shoe makers, typesetters and printers. Well
paid indeed were mechanics, plumbers, and plasterers.
Especially in high demand in the category of unskilled workers, and
continuing through all periods of immigration, were domestic servants --
young women who could earn more working in an English-speaking home than
in a German-language household of their fellow countrymen. Potential
emigrants from certain other occupational categories were well advised
not to leave Germany, for they were not in demand. For example, an
emigrant guidebook of 1859 admonishes caustically but certainly not
erroneously, "a sloppy student would end up a fanatic Methodist
preacher; a discarded lieutenant would end up splitting wood or boiling
soap; a proud Baron would end up driving a team of oxen; a Catholic
priest might end up with a wife and child, happily farming; but a clever
stable hand is now in charge of one of the largest business places in
St. Louis" [Friedrich Munch, Der Staat Missouri, 1859, quoted by
Görisch (1990), 267]. Another guidebook in the 1890s warned that, "those
who should under no circumstances even consider emigration include
clerks, school teachers, writers, scholars, preachers, telegraph
operators, civil servants, students and military officers, even if they
have to continue working under the most unfavorable conditions in
Germany. For this class of people there are no opportunities whatsoever
in America" [Görisch (1990), 203].
Another pointer that frequently appears in emigration guides as well
as in letters coming back from America is equally down to earth, namely
the nearly unrestricted right to conduct business in America, which was
unheard of in Germany. This economic freedom called for both
geographical and occupational mobility. Thus in 1868 a successful farmer
from Missouri reported to his parents in Germany that America offered
some great advantages, "the greatest is that you can be more independent
than there, that you can start something today, if you are not happy or
satisfied you can start something else without making a stir. That is
the main thing that makes America so dear to people, the freedom of
movement, in many other things Germany is almost as good" [Kamphoefner,
News, 164-5].
The family as an economic unit and as the cornerstone of the social
structure probably played an important role for most Germans -- farmers,
skilled workers, and industrial laborers alike. Many commentators have
discussed family orientation as a highly significant feature of the
German-Americans. The Germans practically swore allegiance to the value
of the family as the core of a strong society. Outsiders, however, in
comparing German and Anglo-American family patterns, have also commented
on the domineering role played by the German father and the subservience
of his wife and children.
German women were less frequently employed outside the home, but the
influence of their work on the farm was all the greater. Wife-beaters,
however, were apparently found less in Anglo-American families than in
German families. The 1868 example of Carl Wihl, a farmer in Indiana,
also shows that it was less tolerated in America: "He beat up his wife
for every little thing," reported his neighbor writing to Germany, "and
that's not done here; here, a wife must be treated like a wife and not
like a scrub rag like I saw in Germany so often, that a man can do what
he wants to with his wife. He who likes to beat his wife had better stay
in Germany, it doesn't work here, or soon he'll not have a wife anymore,
that's what happened to Carl Wihl" [Kamphoefner, News, 139].
There is as yet no comprehensive statistical analysis concerning the
German-American's choice of a mate .
One sample that is perhaps not very representative because it deals with
the lives of successful business people in Milwaukee, who themselves or
whose parents had immigrated from Germany, shows the following results
of mate selection: From among the 16 who immigrated before 1882 and who
averaged 25 years of age, 75% married a German woman. Only three married
an American, three did not get married. Of the 32 children of German
immigrants who were born in America around the turn of the century of
German parents, or with one parent born in Germany, and who in 1920 were
at the head of their companies and married on the average at age 28, 66%
married "German" women but not necessarily women who had been born in
Germany. Only five of them married Americans. Six picked someone out of
the melting pot and decided to marry non-Germans or a non-American, for
that matter. Four never even took the plunge.
Studies on
intermarriage between Germans and others on the American frontier
include Hildegard Binder Johnson, "Intermarriages Between German
Pioneers and Other Nationalities in Minnesota in 1860 and 1870,"American
Journal of Sociology, 51 (1946), 299-304, and Richard M. Bernard,
The Melting Pot and the Altar: Marital Assimilation in Early
Twentieth-Century Wisconsin (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1980).
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An indentured servant is a
laborer under contract of the employer for some period of time,
usually four to seven years, in exchange for such things as ship's
passage, food, land and accommodations.A major problem with the
system of indentured servitude was that in many cases, an indentured
servant would become indebted to their employer, who would forgive
the debt in exchange for an extension to the period of their
indenture, which could thereby continue indefinitely. In other
cases, indentured servants were subject to violence at the hands of
their employers in the homes or fields in which they worked.
The labor-intensive cash crop of
tobacco was farmed in the
American South by indentured laborers in the 17th and 18th
centuries.[1]
Indentured servitude was not the same as the
apprenticeship system by which skilled trades were taught, but
similarities do exist between the two mechanisms, in that both
require a set period of work.
In addition to African slaves, Europeans, mostly
Irish,[2]
Scottish,[3]
English, and
Germans,
were brought over in substantial numbers as indentured servants,[4]
particularly in the British
Thirteen Colonies.[5]
Over half of all white immigrants to the English colonies of North
America during the
17th and
18th centuries consisted of indentured servants.[6]
On the journey to America, people aboard the ship sailing were given
a portion of food set to last 2 weeks, with no opportunity for more, and
no care as to the lives of those who finished their rations early. Many
passengers did not survive the trip to the new land. Some died of
starvation, disease, or suicide. In
Colonial North America, employers usually paid for European workers'
passage across the
Atlantic Ocean, reimbursing the shipowner who held their papers of
indenture. In the process many families were broken apart. During the
time living with their masters, their fellow indentured servants took
the role of family. In return, laborers agreed to work for a specified
number of years. The agreement could also be an exchange for
professional training: after being the indentured servant of a
blacksmith for several years, one would expect to work as a
blacksmith on one's own account after the period of indenture was over.
During the 17th century, most of the white labourers in
Virginia came from
England
this way. Their masters were bound to feed, clothe, and lodge them.
Ideally, an indentured servant's lot in the establishment would be no
harder than that of a contemporary
apprentice, who was similarly bound by contract and owed hard,
unpaid labour while "serving his time." At the end of the allotted time,
an indentured servant was to be given a new suit of clothes, tools, or
money, and freed.
On the other hand, this ideal was not always a reality for indentured
servants. Both male and female laborers could be subject to violence,
occasionally even resulting in death. Female indentured servants in
particular might be raped and/or sexually abused by their masters. Cases
of successful prosecution for these crimes were very uncommon, as
indentured servants were unlikely to have access to a magistrate, and
social pressure to avoid such brutality could vary by geography and
cultural norm. The situation was particularly difficult for indentured
women, because in both low social class and sex, they were believed to
be particularly prone to vice, making legal redress unusual.
Indentured servitude was a method of increasing the number of
colonists, especially in the British colonies. Voluntary migration and
Convict
labor only provided so many people, and since the journey across the
Atlantic was dangerous, other means of encouraging settlement were
necessary. Contract-laborers became an important group of people and so
numerous that the
United States Constitution counted them specifically in appointing
representatives:
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the
several States which may be included within this Union,
according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined
by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including
those bound to Service for a Term of Years.... [7]
Most indentured servants were recruited from the growing number of
unemployed poor people in urban areas of England. Displaced from their
land and unable to find work in the cities, many of these people signed
contracts of indenture and took passage to the Americas. In
Massachusetts, religious instruction in the
Puritan
way of life was often part of the condition of indenture, and people
tended to live in towns. In the north, indentured servants were more
likely to be integrated with the community to some extent, with more
household chores and town-oriented trade skills associated with their
work. What was often great mental stress and suppression in combination
with hard work and the possibility of physical abuse took its toll on
many indentured servants, particularly women, who were subject to even
stricter social mores than their male counterparts. Historians have
speculated that these conditions might have produced symptoms of
"possession" that young women attributed to witches.[citation
needed]
By contrast, in Virginia, the majority of the population did not live
in individual towns, and indentured servants were more likely to work on
isolated farms. The majority of Virginians were Anglican, not Puritan,
and while religion did play a large role in everyday lives, the culture
was more commercially based. In the Upper South, where tobacco was the
main cash crop, the majority of labor that indentured servants performed
was related to field work. In this situation, social isolation could
increase the possibilities for both direct and indirect abuse, as could
lengthy, demanding labor in the tobacco fields.
Indentured servants rebelled in Virginia in response to poor work
conditions and the hardships they faced after they were freed, which
could include a lack of land, poverty, taxes, militia duty, and forced
labor on county projects. Nathaniel
Bacon's Rebellion found its support among white, disillusioned
laborers in Virginia and slaves.
Indentured servants differed from slavery. There was a continuum
between the designations "free" and "unfree" in the colonial period. In
this sense, the development of racial thinking to separate and privilege
the mainly white laborers from black slaves solidified the institution
of slavery even as it opened, at least in name, opportunities for
lower-class whites. Ultimately, Slavery persisted until 1865 in the
South, but indentured servitude did not.
The system was still widely practiced in the 1780s, picking up
immediately after a hiatus during the American Revolution.
Fernand Braudel (The Perspective of the World 1984, pp 405f)
instances a 1783 report on "the import trade from Ireland" and its large
profits to a ship owner or a captain, who:
"puts his conditions to the emigrants in
Dublin or some other Irish port. Those who can pay for their
passage—usually about 100 or 80 [livres tournois]—arrive
in America free to take any engagement that suits them. Those
who cannot pay are carried at the expense of the shipowner, who
in order to recoup his money, advertises on arrival that he has
imported artisans, laborers and domestic servants and that he
has agreed with them on his own account to hire their services
for a period normally of three, four, or five years for men and
women and 6 or 7 years for children."
In 1638, for example, several lashes were the punishment for running
away. In the following year, the punishment was extended to hanging the
runaway. By 1641 the law was changed such that death would be the
punishment unless the servant requested that his or her service be
extended after the expiration of the contract. The service could be
extended up to twice the time absent, not to exceed seven years.
In modern terms, the shipowner was acting as an
contractor, hiring out his laborers. Such circumstances affected the
treatment a captain gave his valuable human cargo. After indentures were
forbidden, the passage had to be prepaid, giving rise to the inhumane
conditions of Irish "coffin
ships" in the second half of the 19th century.
Indentured servitude was also used by the
Hudson's Bay Company, in what is now
Canada,
to staff the coal mines around
Nanaimo well into the late 1800s.
Modern indentured servitude takes the form of illegal
immigrants paying their passage by long work-hours in harsh conditions,
often at subsistence pay rates to support themselves. Such activity is
not uncommon in America and Europe as well.
Article 4 of the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human
Rights (passed in 1948) declares such servitude as illegal. But, only
national legislation can implement that illegality. In America, the
Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000 extended servitude to
cover
Peonage as well as Involuntary Servitude.
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