Indentured Servants In The 21st Century

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The United States has a long history of things that are long forgotten but best remembered for their significance and relevance to the current state of affairs, even in the 21st Century. Indentured servitude is one of these things, and was used as a means to cultivate and work the fields in the Southern portion of the United States. Leaders of the colonies (as they were known centuries ago) understood how important it was to have labor readily available; human labor, which made amends to get people working as often as they could (Indentured servants, 2014). Without this, the country would not have been able to develop as well as it did, even with slavery fully in force. Indentured servants were different from slaves, though, in many ways. …show more content…
They were both created with the idea that corporations, even those from long ago, needed cheap labor in order to build America into the mighty financial nation it is today. Employers of these people, whether they were indentured servants or persons working in company towns, were motivated by profit of course, and also by a desire to reduce operating costs associated with the businesses they were in charge of (Sociology, 2010). These poor, usually uneducated people were very much exploited and used by their employers. Even though they benefited in some cases, this was an extremely difficult life to …show more content…
In addition, it was interesting to learn about them winning their freedom once they worked for a certain number of years and had the chance to actually build a life for themselves in the colonies. Learning about the company towns was completely new to me, and certainly very intriguing from a historical perspective. America was built in many different ways, but the idea that there were other labor forces suffering nearly as much as the African slaves is certainly quite thought-provoking.
(2). What do you think was the underlying reason for these practices? Well, obviously it was about money and power. Companies are in the business of making money and need cheaper labor in order to maximize profits as much as they can. Any company that can utilize a cheap but effective labor force will be one step closer to dominating their competitors from the very important perspective of time management. While others are waiting around for people to do the job they need done, the owners of these company towns who had servants already working the mines or fields, never really had a quick turnover of help. The ones who were working usually stayed in those jobs, pretty much working to death. At the time, there were no unions present to support workers’ rights so these companies were allowed to get away with whatever
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