Since last Monday was our annual Labor Day holiday, this seems a good time to reflect on some of the labor arrangements in the earliest days of what became the United States. Less than half, only 41 of the 102 passengers on the famous 1620 Mayflower voyage, were seeking a place to establish their own first-century style Christian community. These Separatist religious rebels had a vision and a plan, but lacked the funding to sail away to a new future. They sold what possessions they could and then sold themselves into indentured servanthood for a period of seven years.

The rest of the Mayflower passengers consisted of merchants, craftsmen, skilled workers, other indentured servants, and several orphaned children. The religious refugees referred to them as strangers, and strangers they were to the Separatists at the start of the voyage. The Investors from the Virginia Company had the financial wherewithal to finance the trip. Reluctantly, the Separatists agreed to a contract with them that secured financial backing in exchange for receiving the profits from their labor for a period of seven years. To boost their profits, the stockholders insisted the Separatists accept the strangers into their close-knit community as part of the deal.

Delayed Financial Gratification

Each adult male was granted a share in the joint-stock company. After seven years, the accumulated earnings were to be divided among the shareholders. During the seven-year indentured servant period, settlers were required to work in common, with each settler contributing everything to a typical store and withdrawing from it to meet their own needs and those of their families.  One-fifth – or about twenty – of the Mayflower passengers came as indentured servants. Most of the others were members of the Established Church of England (Anglican). Ironically, this was the very institution the Separatists had emigrated to Holland to escape a decade earlier.

When the Mayflower crew finally spotted land after two months at sea, they discovered they’d arrived north of the jurisdiction of the Virginia Company. Some among the group immediately decided their commitment as indentured servants was null and void. They believed they could now do as they pleased. To avoid chaos and conflicts before they even started establishing their new settlement, they worked out the details of the Mayflower Compact. Every adult male either signed it or had his mark, or “X,” witnessed on the document before anyone left the ship.

Those who came as indentured servants owed whatever they could grow, make, hunt, or fish to the community and the benefactors back in England. The labor was grueling, as were the living conditions. Half the indentured servants died within the first months in the new location. The other half of the non-indentured new arrivals were also in graves by the spring of 1621.

Send More Workers

The remaining few dozen colonists were desperate for help to establish a stable, long-lasting Colony. Several previous attempts to establish English settlements along the East Coast had failed. To avoid becoming another failed colony, the settlers sent appeals back to England, Scotland, and Ireland, requesting more assistance.

In the ensuing years, hundreds of others joined them. For most, their passage was paid for by their future masters. Between the arrival of the Mayflower and the Revolutionary War, it is estimated that as many as four out of five new immigrants came initially as indentured servants. They came believing they’d get food, clothing, and shelter in exchange for their labor. For people in the British Isles contending with grinding poverty and few prospects for a better future, this was an appealing deal. Men who accepted the offer could anticipate finishing their term of service and then getting their own land and financial compensation for their work. There was also the hope they might participate in local government once they were freemen.

Managing Indentured Servants

Early Plymouth law governed the fate of these indentured servants. When still more labor was needed, the Natives were sometimes forced into slavery. Europeans intentionally destroyed Native crops and means of supporting themselves. According to numerous cases recorded in the Plymouth Court Records, governing these indentured servants was a complex process.

After their period of indentured work, they would become free citizens of the Plymouth Colony. Colonial officials sought to ensure that they would be law-abiding and God-fearing citizens who would contribute to the well-being of the Colony after completing their service.

The servant’s master was responsible for the servant until the term of the contract was completed, and the length of the agreement could not be shortened. Thus, servants typically became adjunct members of their master’s household. This protected the Colony from assuming responsibility for those who, for whatever reasons, could no longer be productive members of the master’s household. Occasionally, the Court ruled the community, not the master, was responsible for a servant who was sick or mistreated. That may have laid a foundation for a future welfare system in the Colonies.

Immigration Issues Are Ancient History

Migration has been a part of the human experience for as long as humans have existed. Clear back in Genesis, God instructs Abram (Abraham) to pack up all his belongings and head out to a place he’s never been before, to receive the blessing God has in store for him. Famine, floods, wars, droughts, persecution – all these factors motivate an individual or a whole population of people to strike out for a new place. People immigrate from and to every continent, sometimes fleeing trouble, and at other times migrating in search of a fresh start.

Most immigrants make incredible sacrifices for the chance of finding something better. In the early 1600s, immigrants sold themselves into bondage to get to the New World. It was a price they were willing to pay to establish their own community based on their understanding of what the earliest Christian communities were like. Today, immigrants come eager to scrub floors, clear tables, wash dishes, cut lawns, pick crops, and work long hours at hard labor for low wages – hoping to create a better world for themselves and their children.

We set aside one Monday a year to pay tribute to the people whose labor literally built this country. For nearly two centuries, the majority of these laborers came as indentured servants.

Some information for this blog came from Plymouth Colony Archive Project and the Constitutional Rights Foundation. If you enjoyed this blog, you may also enjoy reading about Child Labor.

Thank you for stopping by to read about some of the earliest days of labor in our country’s history. If you got this blog from a friend, you can get your own FREE subscription at HowWiseThen.

Mary Brewster’s Love Life and Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures: available wherever books are sold. Bookshop.org/Mayflower; Mary Brewster
Amazon.com/Mary Brewster’s Love Life
Amazon.com/Mayflower-Chronicles
BarnesandNoble.com/w/mayflower-chronicles
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Autographed copies are available on my website.

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Labor Day Today

As we head into the beloved Labor Day weekend and transition from summer to fall and another academic year, let’s pause and consider the ancient tensions between those who do the manual work that keeps society going and those who finance that work. Labor Day today is more about boats, beaches, and best sales than labor-management disputes. But Labor Day today is still a struggle over who will do the work and how much they get paid for it.

We are experiencing the lowest unemployment rate I can remember; somewhere around 3.5. “Help Wanted” signs are everywhere. I frequently see signs that read, “In a world where you can be anything, be kind.” This is usually followed by a plea to be patient with the staff as the place is short-staffed.

A Classic Apples and Oranges Dispute

And yet, it is virtually impossible to support even oneself on minimal wage income, which has not gone up significantly in decades. We’ve become very good at instantly taking sides on any issue that comes along. One of the current great divides is over the recently implemented policy to forgive sums of student loan debt. Shouting matches have erupted all over social and broadcast media between the “About time!” and “Thank you!” response versus the “Not Fair!” “I paid mine. You pay yours!” response.

A New York Times article this week by David Leonhardt runs the numbers. He graduated in 1994 with about $26,000 of student loan debt (in today’s dollars). Had the Biden debt-relief plan been available then, he would have qualified for it. He was abler to pay off his loan without the Biden plan. But that was then.

Today the combination of household income versus cost of living, combined with usury style interest on student loans, has made it extremely difficult to ever get out from under crushing debt. Young adults in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, have fewer economic resources than their peers of three decades ago did. It is fairly common to head of situations in which the borrower has paid back two and three times the original loan and still is not clear of the debt.

What is Fair?

What is fair? Is fair treating everyone the same without factoring in different circumstances for different people? Should fair be expecting a five-year-old to compete with a fifteen-year-old in a race? That is what we often do. We expect today’s standards to apply to lives lived centuries ago. Or we expect the economics of a century ago to apply to the reality of today’s economy. Is this even the right question to ask? Don’t want today’s just-starting-adult-life people to do well?

We once thought it was perfectly acceptable to send children barely out of diapers to work to do work that was detrimental to their health and safety. Up until the mid-1800s, we accepted that it was appropriate that some should be enslaved to work for the benefit of others.

History Matters

On Labor Day today, few will remember the oppressive, dangerous, work conditions that led to protests demanding improvements for worker conditions. Prior to the reforms, a typical work day was twelve plus hours in hazardous work environments for low pay. Children were a regular part of the workforce.

Oppressive work conditions led to strikes and protests that eventually resulted in better hours and pay. Ten thousand workers took a day off without pay on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, to parade from City Hall to Union Square in New York City to pay tribute to American workers. That was the first, unofficial, Labor Day parade.

Social change rarely happens without a fight. Some of the ensuing rallies turned violent. In 1894 workers who built Pullman train cars in the Southside of Chicago went on strike when 4,000 workers had their wages reduced. Their strike, coupled with a massive boycott against trains, led to a national transportation crisis. The strike involved a quarter million workers in twenty-five states, with riots in many cities. President Grover Cleveland called out Army troops and twelve were killed in the riots. When the situation was finally resolved, President Cleveland urged Congress to designate the first Monday in September as a national holiday.

Competing Agendas

Tensions between employers and employees escalated in the Industrial Revolution. Employers wanted to maximin profits. Employees want to maximin wages. Factory owners realized children, who could be paid less than adults, could operate some of the new machines, thus increasing productivity while reducing costs. By the mid-1800’s child labor was a major problem. Children sometimes worked twelve to eighteen hours a day, six days a week, for a dollar ($31 today) a week.

The United States started outlawing child labor in the late 1800s. In 1918 and 1922, Congress passed laws banning or limiting child labor, but the Supreme Court declared those laws unconstitutional. Congress tried again in 1924, but the states failed to ratify it. In 1938 Congress finally passed a Fair Labor Standards Act that set the minimum work age at 16 during school hours, 14 for some after-school jobs, and 18 for work deemed dangerous.

Swinging Pendulums

It seems to me today’s debate about providing some debt-relief assistance is a continuum of ancient competing values. How can we make the most profit for some while keeping the compensation for others as low as possible? It is also a competition between individual rights and community obligations. Do we lean into the “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul?” philosophy penned by William Ernest Henley in Invictus? Or do we lean toward John Donne’s theory that “No man is an island?”

Do we go with the “I had to do it, you should too” attitude? Or might we go with the “I had to endure it but no one should have to go through that” approach? Competition or collaboration? As for me and my family, which includes six young adults with student loan debts, I would much prefer my tax dollars go to helping them retire them as quickly as possible than finance more war weapons.

Meanwhile, for Labor Day today, I’m thankful for people who do the work that keeps society going.

Some information for this blog comes from “Child Labor.” Reviewed by Milton Fried. The New Book of Knowledge. Grolier Online, 2014. Web. 04 June 2018.

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Read about how some of the folks on the Mayflower paid their way by entering into indentured servants for seven long years. Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale or Two Cultures is available in libraries or wherever you get books in electronic, print, and audio format, including these places:
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Amazon.com/Mayflower Chronicles
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When I was a camp director I took a call one day from a mother who wanted to interview me to determine whether or not she would send her eight-year-old son to our camp for a week. I described a typical camp day and asked her if she had any questions. She did. “Do you apply sunscreen to the campers?”

“Well, of course, if they need it. They spend quite a bit of time outside. But I suspect there’s something behind your question.” There was. It seems the camp she’d sent her son to the previous summer had initiated a “no touch” policy, meaning the staff was forbidden to touch a camper for any reason. She reported her son came home looking like a lobster because no one helped him apply sunscreen.

I told her I was removing my camp director hat and talking to her mother to mother. “That is ridiculous. If a child needs sunscreen on his back, the counselor will make sure he has it on.”

In Search of Common Sense

As a camp director I understand the “no touch” policy. Camp directors go to workshops and heard the horror stories about summer college age staff being accused of molesting innocent children in their care. In response, camps now assign two staff members to be with campers anytime they aren’t participating in a large group activity. Some adopt “no touch” policies.

But still, this “no touch” policy seems over the top to me. Humans need human touch. This is especially true of children. Pendulums swing from one extreme to the opposite extreme. We can see this clearly in the way our attitudes toward children have changed over the past couple centuries.Today’s children are so over-protected and restricted there is now a Let Grow  movement gaining traction. Co-founders Daniel Shuchman and Lenore Skenazy believe children are smart, strong, and at least as capable as their parents were at their age. They formed Let Grow  to encourage parents, teachers and other adults to let kids get out there, on their own to explore their world and practice solving their own problems. Our modern excessive concern about every detail of their lives is an over-action to the fear peddling that exaggerates the dangers of the world. This attitude stunts their emotional growth and teaches them to be very afraid of everyone and everything around them. Yes, there are real dangers. Yes, we need to protect our children, but not by programming every minute of every day of their lives.

From Over-worked to Over-Protected

A century ago children not only weren’t over-protected, they were considered cheap labor and sent off to work – often in dangerous situatons. We just celebrated Labor Day. We typically celebrate this annual September holiday with picnics, pools, and shopping. Few remember the oppressive, and often dangerous, work conditions that led to protests demanding improvements for the conditions of workers, including children. Prior to the reforms, a typical work day was twelve plus hours in hazardous work environments for low pay. Children were a regular part of the work force.

Oppressive work conditions led to strikes and protests that eventually resulted in better hours and pay. Ten thousand workers took a day off without pay on Tuesday, September 5, 1882 to parade from City Hall to Union Square in New York City to pay tribute to American workers. That was the first, unofficial, Labor Day parade.

Social change rarely happens with out a fight. Some of the ensuing rallies turned violent. In 1894 workers who built Pullman train cars in the Southside of Chicago went on strike when 4,000 workers had their wages reduced. Their strike, coupled with a massive boycott against trains, led to a national transportation crisis. The strike involved a quarter million workers in twenty-five states, with riots in many cities. President Grover Cleveland called out Army troops, resulting in a twelve people getting killed in the riots. After the situation was finally resolved, President Cleveland urged Congress to designate the first Monday in September as Labor Day, a national holiday.

Competing Work Place Agendas

The on-going tensions between employers and employees escalated with the Industrial Revolution. Employers want to maximize profits by keep wages low. Employees want to maximize wages to improve their quality of life. The Industrial Revolution led to the formation of large factories. Factory owners realized children, who could be paid less than adults, could operate some of the new machines, increasing productivity and keeping costs low. By the mid-1800’s child labor was a major problem. Children often went to work in factories at age seven, or even younger. They sometimes worked twelve to eighteen hours a day, six days a week, for a dollar ($31 today) a week. Such long work hours left no time to play, go to school or get adequate rest.

The United States started legislating laws outlawing child labor in the late 1800s. Congress passed laws in 1918 and again in 1922 banning or limiting child labor, but the Supreme Court declared the laws unconstitutional. Congress tried again in 1924, but the states did not ratify it. In 1938 Congress finally passed a Fair Labor Standards Act that set the minimum work age at 16 during school hours, 14 for some after school jobs, and 18 for work deemed dangerous.

Swinging Pendulums

Now, nearly a century later, neighbors report parents to Child Protective Services or the police when they see children outside without an adult. One mother was investigated for letting her grade-school-age daughter walk the family dog around the block alone. In another neighborhood someone called the police when a twelve-year-old boy was shooting baskets in his own driveway when his parents weren’t home.

Pendulums keep swinging. Attitudes regarding children have swung from considering them cheap labor to treating them as helpless, fragile beings incapable of doing anything on their own. I hope I live to see the day when children are neither abused nor isolated from the world beyond their homes, schools, or parents’ cars. There must be a healthy balance between denying children a childhood for the sake of profiting off their labor and denying them the freedom to learn by doing because of our exaggerated fear they might get hurt.

Meanwhile, Labor Day is a good time to give thanks to the people who keep our economy going through their work. And to let children have a childhood before they join the work force.

Some information for this blog comes from “Child Labor.” Reviewed by Milton Fried. The New Book of Knowledge.Grolier Online, 2014. Web. 04 June 2018.

How did you spend your free time as a child? My friends and I often roamed our neighborhood, playing in empty lots or unsupervised at the school playground.

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