Unfree Labor

Unfree Labor Labor in colonial American society meant long, hard hours of toil, working from dusk to dawn to make an honest living. In the beginning, the workers were the original colonists themselves, but as more and more people began to cross the Atlantic and more and more land began to be used for agriculture and homesteads, this changed. The labor force in the American colonies began to evolve until it consisted mainly of indentured servants and slaves who worked for the settlers in exchange for little to nothing. This system of unfree labor was crucial in shaping both the society and economy of the American colonies. Indentured servants from Britain were generally the jobless poor of the country’s citizens. Needing work, they essentially signed up to toil for a certain length of time, generally four to nine years, for colonial masters in America, particularly around the Chesapeake region. In exchange for their labor they received transatlantic passage and “freedom dues,” such as a few barrels of corn, a set of clothes, and a small amount of land to live on and care for. The “head-right” system was used by Virginia and Maryland to increase the importation of indentured servants. Under this system, the individual who paid the passage of a laborer received the right to obtain fifty acres of land. Thus, the masters, not the servants, were benefited by this system. In the 1600s, the indentured servants represented over three-quarters of all European immigrants to Maryland and Virginia. By the brink of the eighteenth century, about 100,000 of these laborers had been imported to the Chesapeake area. These servants led a hard life, but looked forward to their eventual freedom and gaining their own land after finishing their term of servitude. As land became scarcer, though, the masters became reluctant to include land in the “freedom dues.” Life became even harsher for the indentured servants as the years went by, the smallest infractions being punished with