PEONAGE

PEONAGE is involuntary servitude, under which a debtor is forced to make payment to a master through labor. It differs from slavery, serfdom, and contract labor by both the necessary element of indebtedness and the indefinite term of service. Prior to 1800, the system was prevalent in Spanish America, especially Mexico and Guatemala. While not wholly confined to blacks in the United States, peonage developed in the South after the abolition of slavery in 1865, just as it had in the Southwest following its acquisition from Mexico. An employer paid fines imposed for a petty crime in exchange for work by the sentenced person. And when agricultural laborers and tenants were advanced cash and supplies, any attempt to leave was interpreted as having obtained credit under false pretenses, which, under state law, was a criminal offense.

Peonage did not lose its legal sanction until 1910, when the U.S. Supreme Court declared such state laws to be in violation of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments (Bailey v. Alabama,219 U.S. 219). In spite of the laws, as late as 1960, sharecroppers in the Deep South were pressured to pay off old debts or taxes through peonage. Peonage is interpreted in the Constitution (Title 18, U.S.C., Section 1581), as holding a person in debt servitude. This practice, though illegal, is being found again in the U.S. in relation to the smuggling of illegal immigrants into the country. The immigrants are then placed in garment "sweat shops" or other small businesses to work off their transportation debt. The current law states that those found enforcing peonage on another can be fined or imprisoned up to ten years.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Daniel, Pete. The Shadow of Slavery: Peonage in the South, 1901– 1969. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990.

Packard, Jerrold M. American Nightmare: The History of Jim Crow. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2002.

Karen RaeMehaffey

Rupert B. Vance

See alsoSharecroppers .