Does Bound Labour Have To Be Coerced Labour?: The Case of Colonial Immigrant Servitude Versus Craft Apprenticeship and Life-Cycle Servitude-in-Husbandry

Itinerario

Volumn 21, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 28-51

  Grubb, Farley ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 85014298020     PISSN: 01651153     EISSN: 20412827     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0165115300022683     Document Type: Article

References (126)

1. For a discussion of self-enforcing contracts see H. Lome Carmichael, ‘Self-Enforcing Contracts, Shirking, and Life Cycle Incentives’, Journal of Economic Perspectives 3 (1989) 65–83.
2. See Richard B. Morris, Government and labor in Early America (Boston 1981) 390–531
3. Abbot Emerson Smith, Colonists in Bondage: White Servitude and Convict Labor in America 1607–1776 (New York 1947) 226–284
4. Robert J. Steinfeld, The Invention of Free Labor: Tlie Employment Relations in English and American law and Culture, 1350–1870 (Chapel Hill 1991) 3–121.
5. See David W. Galenson, White Servitude in Colonial America (New York 1981) 5–15
6. Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York 1975) 123–130
7. Smith, Colonists in Bondage, 8–16.
8. See Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise, of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713 (New York 1972) 72
9. Galenson, White Servitude, 10–15, 171–172
10. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, 71–130
11. Morris, Government and labor, 391–531
12. Gary B. Nash, The Urban Crucible (Cambridge, MA, 1979) 15
13. Sharon V. Salinger, To Serve Well and Faithfully’: labor and Indentured Servitude in Pennsylvania, 1682–1800 (New York 1987)
14. Smith, Colonists in Bondage, 226–284
15. Steinfeld, The Invention of Free labor.
16. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, 72.
17. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, 126–127.
18. The same prohibition on resale was generally true for craft apprentices in England and America, see Morris, Government and labor, 364.
19. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, 128–129.
20. See Farley Grubb, ‘Sen-ant Auction Records and Immigration into the Delaware Valley, 1745–1831: The Proportion of Females Among Immigrant Sen-ants’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 133 (1989) 157
21. Farley Gmbb, ‘The End of European Immigrant Servitude in the United States: An Economic Analysis of Market Collapse, 1772–1835’,Journal of Economic History 54 (1994) 810
22. Morris, Government and labor, 364.
23. See Farley Grubb, ‘Differential Punishments of Runaway Indentured Sen-ants in Seventeenth Century Maryland’ (working paper 90–95, Economics Dept, University of Delaware)
24. Morris, Government and Labor, 391–531
25. Smith, Colonists in Bondage, 226–284.
26. See Farley Grubb, Runaway Servants, Convicts, and Apprentices Advertised in the Pennsylvania Gazette, 1728–1796 (Baltimore 1992)
27. Morris, Government and Labor, 391–461
28. Pennsylvania Gazette, 1729–1786 (Philadelphia 1968)
29. Salinger, ‘To Sen-e Well and Faithfully’, 103–114.
30. Smith, Colonists in Bondage, 264, 277.
31. Grubb, ‘Servant Auction Records’, 159
32. F. W. Gmbb, ‘The Disappearance of Organized Markets for European Immigrant Servants in the United States: Five Popular Explanations Reexamined’, Social Science History 18 (1994) 9–12.
33. Steve Rappaport, Worlds Within Worlds: Structures of Life, in Sixteenth-Century London (New York 1989) 232–233, 311–322.
34. Nash, The Urban Crucible, 15
35. Salinger, ‘To Serve Well and Faithfully’, 46.
36. See Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, 72
37. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, 71–130.
38. See Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, 46–83, 224–262
39. Farley Grubb and Tony Stitt, ‘The Liverpool Emigrant Servant Trade and the Transition to Slave Labor in the Chesapeake, 1697–1707: Market Adjustments to War’, Explorations in Economic History 31 (1994) 376–405
40. Russell R. Menard, ‘From Servants to Slaves: The Transformation of the Chesapeake Labor System’, Southern Studies 16 (1977) 355–390.
41. See Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, 71–130
42. Smith, Colonists in Bondage, 226–284.
43. This is an example of the ‘invisible hand’, Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (New York 1937) 423.
44. For an application of the same idea to the explanation of the rise of factory discipline during the industrial revolution, see Gregory Clark, ‘Factory Discipline’ Journal of Economic History 54 (1994) 128–163. The same idea can be seen at work in contemporary society in the example of speed limits for automobiles. As an individual I want a twenty-five mph speed limit on the street in front of my house to stop fast drivers from whizzing by and risking my family's life, and I want the limit enforced, but when I'm in my car, if 1 can violate the law in front of other people's houses, I will. I don't want to be caught and don't like being caught but 1 still support the law and its enforcement. Without it, I know my life would be far worse. So I've knowingly and voluntarily submitted myself to being coerced and stopped from doing something that I personally would benefit from (speeding in my car) in order to stop others from doing something that causes me harm (the speeding by other people).
45. Ann Kussmaul, Servants in Husbandry in Early Modern England (New York 1984) 31–93.
46. See also, A.L. Beier, Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England, 1560–1640 (London 1985)
47. Peter Laslett, The World We Have Lost: England Before the Industrial Age (second ed., London 1971)
48. Alan Macfarlane, The Origins of English Individualism: Family, Property and Social Transition (New York 1978)
49. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, 58–70.
50. The few contracts that were less than a year long were designed to end at the same time as the typical year-long contract, Kussmaul, Servants in Husbandry, 32.
51. Kussmaul, Servants in Husbandly, 62.
52. On servant mobility see Beier, Masterless Men; Kussmaul, Servants in Husbandry, 31–93
53. Laslett, The World We Have Lost
54. Macfarlane, The Origins of English Individualism.
55. See Galenson, While Servitude, 41–43, 200–203
56. Kussmaul, Servants in Husbandry, 31
57. Smith, Colonists in Bondage, 14–15.
58. Kussmaul, Servants in Husbandry, 31–32
59. Steinfeld, The Invention of Free Labor, 74.
60. Kussmaul, Servants in Husbandry, 4,33,45–47,66–67.
61. See also Beier, Masterless Men
62. Laslett, The World We Have Lost
63. Macfarlane, The Origins of English Individualism.
64. The skills learned by the apprentice are general human capital, saleable to any master or customer in the market Being the ultimate beneficiary, workers will have to pay to acquire these skills. Masters will not pay to have workers trained, unless they have long-term property rights to the workers' labour, such as under slavery. For a discussion of general human capital and who pays for the training see Gary S. Becker, Human Capital (second ed., Chicago 1980) 15–44.
65. This is a common assumption in the literature, for example see Bernard Elbaum, ‘Why Apprenticeship Persisted in Britain but not in the United States’, Journal of Economic History 49 (1989) 337–349
66. Gillian Hamilton, ‘Enforcement in Apprenticeship Contracts: Were Runaways a Serious Problem? Evidence from Montreal’,Journal of Economic History (forthcoming)
67. Ian M. G. Quimby, Apprenticeship in Colonial Philadelphia (New York 1985) 22.
68. See also W.J. Rorabaugh, The Craft Apprentice (New York 1986) 11.
69. See Margaret Gay Davies, The Enforcement of English Apprenticeship (Cambridge, MA, 1956)
70. Elbaum, ‘Why Apprenticeship Persisted’, 337–349
71. Daniel Jacoby, ‘The Transformation of Industrial Apprenuceship in the United States’, Journal of Economic History 51 (1991) 887–910
72. Daniel Jacoby, ‘The Legal Foundations of Human Capital Markets’, Industrial Relations 30 (1991) 229–250
73. Morris, Government and Labor, 379
74. Quimby, Apprenticeship in Colonial Philadelphia, 76–92
75. Rappaport, Worlds Within Worlds, 234–235.
76. See Hamilton, ‘Enforcement in Apprenuceship Contracts’
77. Quimby, Apprenticeship in Colonial Philadelphia, 51
78. Rorabaugh, The Craft Apprentice, 3–15
79. Anne Yarbrough, ‘Bristol's Apprentices in the Sixteenth Century: The Cultural and Regional Mobility of an Age Group’, (unpublished PhD thesis, Catholic University of America 1977) 86.
80. See Hamilton, ‘Enforcement in Apprenticeship Contracts’.
81. See Elbaum, ‘Why Apprenticeship Persisted’, 337–349
82. Farley Grubb, ‘Fatherless and Friendless: Factors Influencing the Flow of English Emigrant Servants’,Journal of Economic History 52 (1992) 96–97
83. Jacoby, ‘The Transformation of Industrial Apprenticeship’, 887–910
84. Jacoby, ‘The Legal Foundations of Human Capital Markets’, 229–250
85. Morris, Government and Labor, 369
86. Rappaport, Worlds Within Worlds, 232–238, 291–322. The ability to substitute parental sponsorships for up-front cash fees may have depended on the legality of enforcing parental liability as well as the parents' level of wealth which could be targeted as compensation in a suit brought by the master for apprentice misconduct. Legal differences between the French civil code and English common law may explain why apprentices in Quebec made more use of parental sponsorship than apprentices in English America.
87. See Hamilton, ‘Enforcement in Apprenticeship Contracts’.
88. Hamilton, ‘Enforcement in Apprenticeship Contracts’.
89. Rappaport, Worlds Within Worlds, 233–234, 311–322.
90. For example see Quimby, Apprenticeship in Colonial Philadelphia, 74
91. Rorabaugh, The Craft Apprentice, 3–15.
92. See Galenson, White Servitude
93. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom
94. Morris, Government and labor, 391–531
95. Smith, Colonists in Bondage
96. Steinfeld, The- Invention of Free Labor.
97. Farley Grubb, ‘The Incidence of Servitude in Trans-Atlantic Migration, 1771–1804’, Explorations in Economic History 22 (1985) 316–317.
98. For the typical labourer there was little income left after paying for food, shelter, clothing, and other living expenses which could be accumulated as savings to pay for passage expenses. For German immigrant sen-ants in Pennsylvania it has been estimated that eighty per cent of each year's work effort went to cover food, shelter, and other living expenses, seven per cent went to cover freedom dues expenses, leaving only thirteen per cent of each year's work effort to repay their passage expenses. Farley Grubb, ‘The Auction of Redemptioner Servants, Philadelphia, 1771–1804: An Economic Analysis’, Journal of Economic History 48 (1988) 588.
99. See Grubb, ‘Differential Punishment’
100. Grubb, Runaway Servants
101. Susan L. Klepp and Billy G. Smith eds, The Voyage and Adventures of William Moraley, An Indentured Servant: Or the Infortunate (University Park, PA, 1992; orig. 1743)
102. Narrative of Johann Carl Buettner in the American Revolution (New York 1915).
103. See Grubb, ‘The Auction of Redemptioner Servants’, 588
104. Farley Grubb, ‘The Long-Run Trend in the Value of European Immigrant Servants, 1654–1831’, Research in Economic History 14 (1992) 185
105. Farley Grubb, German Immigrant Servant Contracts Registered at the Port of Philadelphia, 1817–1831 (Baltimore 1994).
106. For example see Galenson, White Servitude, 101, 253–254
107. David W. Galenson, ‘Labor Market Behavior in Colonial America: Servitude Slavery, and Free Labor’ in: David W. Galenson ed., Markets in History: Economic Studies of the Past (New York 1989) 57
108. Grubb, ‘The Disappearance of Organized Markets for European Immigrant Servants’, 10
109. Robert Owen Heavner, Economic Aspects of Indentured Servitude in Colonial Pennsylvania (New York 1978) 50–51.
110. For example, Morris, Government and labor, 398, suggests that freedom dues were enforced savings so that the servant would not become a public charge when dismissed. Immigrant servitude in other parts of the world made use of return passage tickets as freedom dues.
111. For example see Patricia Cloud and David W. Galenson, ‘Chinese Immigration and Contract Labor in the Late Nineteenth Century’, Explorations in Economic History 24 (1987) 22–42
112. P.C. Emmer ed., Colonialism and Migration: Indentured labour before and after Slavery (Boston 1986)
113. S. Marks and P. Richardson eds, International labour Migration: Historical Perspectives (Hounslow 1984)
114. Ralph Shlomowitz, ‘Melanesian Labor and the Development of the Queensland Sugar Industry, 1863–1906’, Research in Economic History 7 (1982) 327–361. The problem of the role of legally required freedom dues in the institution of immigrant servitude is currently being investigated by the author. Preliminary findings are available upon request.
115. Bernard Bailyn, Voyagers to the West (New York 1986) 85–240
116. Galenson, White Servitude, 102–113, 220–227
117. Grubb, ‘The Incidence of Servitude’, 332–337
118. Smith, Colonists in Bondage.
119. See Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, 46–116. Kidnapping came to be called ‘Barbadosized’.
120. Archives of Maryland (Baltimore, Mankind Historical Society, 1883)
121. Grubb ‘Differential Punishment’
122. Gloria L. Main, Tobacco Colony: Life in Early Maryland, 1650–1720 (Princeton 1982) 116.
123. Morris, Government and Labor, 478.
124. Smith, Colonists in Bondage, 56.
125. See Donald R. Adams Jr, ‘Some Evidence on English and American Wage Rates, 1790–1830’, Journal of Economic History 30 (1970) 499–520 on relative wages
126. Grubb, ‘The Auction of Redemptioner Servants’, 588 on immigrant servant forced saving rates. It would be hard for labourers to have as high a saving rate in Europe because food, shelter, and other living expenses were relatively higher in Europe, so this estimate may understate the labour time difference. In addition, the wage differential may have been larger earlier in the colonial period, which would also imply that this estimate may understate the labour time difference.