The Good Old Days of Labor
Collins, William
THE GOOD OLD DAYS OF LABOR By WILLIAM COLLINS WE ARE indebted to the United States Bureau of Statistics for the opportunity of reading about labor conditions as they existed in the early days of...
...Both he and Mrs...
...This business, which was legitimate, naturally led to evils both in procuring and in transporting, which discredited the entire traffic...
...The school system which the Dutch founded and fostered very nearly collapsed under English rule in the colony, the representatives of which were "occupied with other things...
...May 17, 1670 (Wm...
...Another entry in Jefferson's account book in the same year, 1784, reads: "Bob begins work with a barber at 15 shillings ($2.50) a month...
...If any person shall paye or receaue more then according to the rates aboue expressed, he or they, bot buyer and seller, shall forefeit the full treble value of what shall be payed or receaued, one-halfe to the enformer and the other halfe to the Treasurer of the seuerall County Courts...
...Thomas Jefferson's monthly bill at the barber's was 20 shillings ($3.33...
...All which timely to prevent, this Court account it their duty carefully by all good meanes to provide, and therefore doe order as followeth: These wages are allowed as aboue to workmen dyeting themselves...
...Domestic servants shipped from Holland into Pennsylvania, in 1663, for example, were under indenture to serve for a term of years to defray the expenses of bringing them over, but they also received yearly wages of 60 and 70 and 80 guilders, ($24, $28 and $32...
...The barbers in the early days were practically in the same class as the teachers...
...The laborers were paid 2 shillings ($.326 a day...
...The sensible people of the colonies must have been in the majority, because the court order was voted down...
...The school teachers of the seventeenth century were not so important as they have become in our present society...
...Carpenters and Masons, and Stone-layers from March I to October I0, 2/(33.3) 33c...
...Got the newspapers and settled with Mr...
...The story of danger, labor difficulties, privation and tragedy for the rough, unskilled labor that forced a path into a wilderness runs through the prosaic clerical entries in the account against the Province of Pennsylvania for charges on opening a road from the back settlements of said province towards the Ohio for the King's service in pursuance of an application from the late General Braddock...
...They were designated as "indentured servants" and "redemptioners...
...Bulletin 449 is impressive, as bulletins go, but imagine finding this nugget among pages and pages of statistics: This Essex County [Massachusetts] Court, considering the great difficultie and discouragement that at present lyes pressing vpon many inhabitants of this jurisdiction, especially vpon such, as whose callings are in husbandry, not only by reason of the afflicting hand of God vpon them seuerall yeares in blasting their principall grayne . . . but also difficultie and discouragement are yet heaped and increasing vpon them and others by reason of the excessive deerenes of labour by artificers, labourers and servants, contrary to reason and equitie, to the great prejudice of many householders and their familyes, and tending to their vtter ruein and vndoeing, and the produce thereof is by many spent to mayntayne such brauery in apparell which is altogether vnbecoming their place and ranck, and in idleness of life and a great part spent viciously in taverns and alehouses and other sinful practices, much to the dishonor of God, scandall of religion, and great offence and griefe to sober and godly people among vs...
...This day, Mr...
...Another entry dated April 23, 1776, two years after he entered service reads: At noon, road to town...
...He was evidently an assistant of some sort...
...John Mitchell at the Wilderness...
...The distinction was largely one of procedure, because, when a redemptioner had been sold, he had the legal status of an indentured servant...
...In fact, he was not supposed to be, and his character was usually in keeping with his reputation...
...Samuel Edge Planter came to me and begged me to take a son of his to school, who was both deaf and dum, and I consented to try what I could do with him...
...Master Taylors, and such as are fully workemen of that trade, for one daye's worke of I2 hours, I/8 (28 cents...
...His diary continues: Munday, June 20...
...Enemy Indians attacked the camps and the labor force was seriously disrupted not only by killings at the hands of the Indians, but by the loss of men who "deserted the service at the time our people was scalped by the Indians...
...An English bookkeeper, "being reduced to the last shilling I hade, was obliged to go to Virginia for four years as a school-master for Bedd, Board, Washing, and five pounds ($24.50), during the whole time...
...Today equity courts prevent the worker from joining trade-unions while the calenders of federal courts are cluttered with owners and habitues of speakeasies...
...The courts representing the colonies decried the extravagance of the working people, drinking in ale taverns and wearing their buckskin pants abbreviated or made with a flourish known as the bell bottom...
...This bureau so intelligently conducted by the picturesque, but efficient Ethelbert Stewart, brightens many a page of statistics with that occasional human sedative so essential to any study of economics...
...And all weauers for their worke at 12 hours per day, are to haue the like wages as taylors...
...working time was calculated from the day each man arrived at the road...
...Anderson to one Peggy Dewar at the House of Mr...
...Apprentices to that trade the first of four yeares, the like daye, I./ (16.7 cents...
...Speaking of conditions in the country in 1784, "MacMaster said that the wage of the unskilled laborer was $.25 a day...
...This morning entred to school, Phillip and Dorothea...
...The informers and reformers of those days demanded that courts regulate the lives of the workers, the same as our present-day regulators believe legislation will solve all of our economic problems...
...An agreement made in Philadelphia in 1807 between a hatter and a barber calls for three shaves a week at $2.00 a quarter, to be paid for in hats...
...per day...
...They charged for their services by the month or quarter instead of by the job...
...THE GOOD OLD DAYS OF LABOR By WILLIAM COLLINS WE ARE indebted to the United States Bureau of Statistics for the opportunity of reading about labor conditions as they existed in the early days of the colonies...
...In spite of the fact that in the southern and middle colonies, "it was largely the redemptioners and indentured servants that instructed the youths of the time," the schoolmaster of that class was not "a model of excellence...
...In the manuscript collection of Jones Family Papers "to one year's shaving, July, 1724, to 1725-15 shillings" ($2.50...
...That sobriety was at a premium among this class may be inferred from the following advertisement: Wanted a sober person that is capable of teaching a school, such a person, coming well recommended may find encouragement in said employee...
...That it was a profitable undertaking is suggested by the fact that a servant might be transported at a cost of from 6 to 8 pounds ($29 to $38) and sold for 40 or 60 pounds ($194 to $291...
...Porter, for teaching his two sons 12 months when he very gentelly allowed me six pounds [$20.00] for them, besides a present of two silk vests and two pair of nankeen breeches last Summer and a gallon of Rum at Christenmas...
...Schools there were, but so poorly supported that our historian Smith testifies that after he was born, "Such was the negligence of the day, that an instructor could not find bread from the voluntary contributions of the inhabitants...
...Has the mass productive method with its horse-power and waste elimination, changed the real make-up of the human family...
...In 1724 the Boston barbers were about the only ones who had an organization...
...When he was not busy teaching, he acted as bookkeeper and purchasing agent for his master, and when in town, in the latter capacity, he occasionally picked up such additional jobs as writing a "love-letter from Mr...
...and all worke taken by the great piece by Carpenters, masons, joyners, or shinglers, is to be apportioned according to the equitie of the value of dayes' worke as above, they dyeting themselves...
...Torrey, Cleric...
...Children and adults were kidnapped to keep up the business volume for the shipping...
...We wonder if there is as much change in human families as we are led to believe by the advent of scientific industry...
...Porter, being ex-treamly satisfied with what I had don to them...
...It was hard to stop this profitable form of business, and it is reported that ten years after the act became a law, 10,000 persons were annually kidnapped from Great Britain...
...Indentured servants came to the new world under contract to pay for their passage either to the ship master or the owner by working until such time they paid the indenture...
...Redemptioners" were usually persons who, desiring to emigrate, but having no means to pay for their own passage, permitted the shippers to dispose of their services...
...Parliament granted the request with an act, making the stealing and transportation of children and adults a crime punishable by death, "without benefit of clergy...
...It became so alarming that it compelled legislative action...
...Importation of servants to the early colonies was largely an individual matter, but gradually it grew into a business, with the development of a steady market and greater shipping facilities...
...Bulletin 449, bearing all the earmarks of the usual government publication, carries much information of occupations existing in the colonies at that time...
Vol. 11 • March 1930 • No. 18
