History of the United States | Page 8

farmhouses or their Dutch
ovens; but they were slowly losing their identity as the English pressed

in beside them to farm and trade.
The melting pot had begun its historic mission.
THE PROCESS OF COLONIZATION
Considered from one side, colonization, whatever the motives of the
emigrants, was an economic matter. It involved the use of capital to pay
for their passage, to sustain them on the voyage, and to start them on
the way of production. Under this stern economic necessity, Puritans,
Scotch-Irish, Germans, and all were alike laid.
=Immigrants Who Paid Their Own Way.=--Many of the immigrants to
America in colonial days were capitalists themselves, in a small or a
large way, and paid their own passage. What proportion of the colonists
were able to finance their voyage across the sea is a matter of pure
conjecture. Undoubtedly a very considerable number could do so, for
we can trace the family fortunes of many early settlers. Henry Cabot
Lodge is authority for the statement that "the settlers of New England
were drawn from the country gentlemen, small farmers, and yeomanry
of the mother country.... Many of the emigrants were men of wealth, as
the old lists show, and all of them, with few exceptions, were men of
property and good standing. They did not belong to the classes from
which emigration is usually supplied, for they all had a stake in the
country they left behind." Though it would be interesting to know how
accurate this statement is or how applicable to the other colonies, no
study has as yet been made to gratify that interest. For the present it is
an unsolved problem just how many of the colonists were able to bear
the cost of their own transfer to the New World.
=Indentured Servants.=--That at least tens of thousands of immigrants
were unable to pay for their passage is established beyond the shadow
of a doubt by the shipping records that have come down to us. The
great barrier in the way of the poor who wanted to go to America was
the cost of the sea voyage. To overcome this difficulty a plan was
worked out whereby shipowners and other persons of means furnished
the passage money to immigrants in return for their promise, or bond,
to work for a term of years to repay the sum advanced. This system was

called indentured servitude.
It is probable that the number of bond servants exceeded the original
twenty thousand Puritans, the yeomen, the Virginia gentlemen, and the
Huguenots combined. All the way down the coast from Massachusetts
to Georgia were to be found in the fields, kitchens, and workshops,
men, women, and children serving out terms of bondage generally
ranging from five to seven years. In the proprietary colonies the
proportion of bond servants was very high. The Baltimores, Penns,
Carterets, and other promoters anxiously sought for workers of every
nationality to till their fields, for land without labor was worth no more
than land in the moon. Hence the gates of the proprietary colonies were
flung wide open. Every inducement was offered to immigrants in the
form of cheap land, and special efforts were made to increase the
population by importing servants. In Pennsylvania, it was not
uncommon to find a master with fifty bond servants on his estate. It has
been estimated that two-thirds of all the immigrants into Pennsylvania
between the opening of the eighteenth century and the outbreak of the
Revolution were in bondage. In the other Middle colonies the number
was doubtless not so large; but it formed a considerable part of the
population.
The story of this traffic in white servants is one of the most striking
things in the history of labor. Bondmen differed from the serfs of the
feudal age in that they were not bound to the soil but to the master.
They likewise differed from the negro slaves in that their servitude had
a time limit. Still they were subject to many special disabilities. It was,
for instance, a common practice to impose on them penalties far
heavier than were imposed upon freemen for the same offense. A free
citizen of Pennsylvania who indulged in horse racing and gambling was
let off with a fine; a white servant guilty of the same unlawful conduct
was whipped at the post and fined as well.
The ordinary life of the white servant was also severely restricted. A
bondman could not marry without his master's consent; nor engage in
trade; nor refuse work assigned to him. For an attempt to escape or
indeed for any infraction of the law, the term of service was extended.

The condition of white bondmen in Virginia, according to Lodge, "was
little better than that of slaves. Loose indentures and harsh laws put
them at the mercy of