convict labor

Indentured Servitude. Indentured servitude, which had appeared in colonial America by 1620, was developed by the Virginia Company as a means to connect the English labor supply to colonial demand. Most hired labor in preindustrial England was performed by servants in husbandry—youths who lived and worked in the households of their masters on annual contracts. Since passage fares to America were high relative to the earnings of these servants, few could afford the voyage. The Virginia Company's solution was to pay the passage of prospective laborers who contracted to repay this debt from their earnings in America.

This arrangement was soon adopted by merchants in England's ports, as migrants signed indentures that the merchants sold to colonial planters upon the servants' arrival in America. Servitude became a central labor institution in early English America: Between one‐half and two‐thirds of all white immigrants to the British colonies arrived under indenture. Indentured servitude therefore enabled between 300,000 and 400,000 Europeans to migrate to the New World. Unmarried men predominated among the servants throughout the Colonial Era. Most were in their late teens or early twenties—the same ages that were prevalent among servants in husbandry in England.

Indentured servants were most important in the early history of those regions that produced staple crops for export, particularly the sugar islands of the West Indies and the tobacco colonies on the Chesapeake Bay. Over time, as colonial conditions for servants deteriorated and economic conditions improved in England, attracting indentured workers to these colonies became more difficult. Planters increasingly found African slaves a less expensive source of labor and responded by substituting slaves for servants.

Some historians have characterized the indenture system as debased and the servants who participated in it as disreputable. Yet indentured workers were governed by the same basic legal conditions as English farm servants, and studies of emigration lists have shown that the servants were not drawn from England's poorest or least skilled workers, but rather from a broad cross section of English society. Historians have also argued that servants were exploited economically by English merchants. Yet the servants' long terms did not imply exploitation, for the large debt for passage meant that repayment would necessarily take longer than the standard single year worked by farm servants in England. Analysis of collections of contracts has furthermore revealed that more productive servants received shorter terms, evidently because they could repay their debts more quickly. Servants bound for less desirable colonial destinations also received shorter terms. Competition among merchants thus protected servants from economic exploitation.
See also Agriculture: Colonial Era; Immigration; Labor Markets; Slavery; Tobacco Industry.

Bibliography

Abbot Emerson Smith , Colonists in Bondage: White Servitude and Convict Labor in America, 1607–1776, 1947.
David W. Galenson , White Servitude in Colonial America: An Economic Analysis, 1981.

David W. Galenson

convict labor work of prison inmates. Until the 19th cent., labor was introduced in prisons chiefly as punishment. Such work is now considered a necessary part of the rehabilitation of the criminal; it is also used to keep discipline and reduce the costs of prison maintenance. The main types of work in prison communities are maintenance activities, outdoor public works (farming, road building, reforestation), and industrial labor. Considered a source of cheap labor, convicts were formerly put to work on contract, lease, or piecework bases for private industries. Convict labor played an important role in the settlement of Australia, and in the development of some of the Middle and Southern colonies established by Britain in America. In recent decades these methods have been condemned, and prison industries are devoted to the production of goods used in state institutions. Because of competition with nonprison labor, interstate commerce in the products of convict labor has been restricted in the United States since 1934. Wages are paid in many state and federal prisons in the United States and in many European countries. The notorious chain gangs of some Southern states, in which convicts engaged in physical labor outside the prison were shackled together, no longer exist, but Alabama briefly and unsuccessfully attempted to revive the chain gang in the mid-1990s. Work-release programs have been introduced with some success in France, Norway, Sweden, and the United States, whereby convicts are allowed to work outside prisons in private industry during the latter part of their prison terms; for this work the convict receives the same wages as a regular civilian worker. Although U.S. law bans the importation of goods produced by convict labor, a sizable percentage of China's exports is alleged to come from labor camps.

ear·nest¹ / ˈərnist/ • adj. resulting from or showing sincere and intense conviction: an earnest student. PHRASES: in earnest occurring to a greater extent or more intensely than before: after Labor Day the campaign begins in earnest. ∎  (of a person) sincere and serious in behavior or convictions. DERIVATIVES: ear·nest·ly adv. ear·nest·ness n. ear·nest² • n. a thing intended or regarded as a sign or promise of what is to come: the presence of the troops is an earnest of the world's desire not to see the conflict repeated elsewhere.