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 their masters.”  It would not be unfair to add that such was their lot in all other colonies.  Their fate depended upon the temper of their masters.

Cruel as was the system in many ways, it gave thousands of people in the Old World a chance to reach the New—­an opportunity to wrestle with fate for freedom and a home of their own.  When their weary years of servitude were over, if they survived, they might obtain land of their own or settle as free mechanics in the towns.  For many a bondman the gamble proved to be a losing venture because he found himself unable to rise out of the state of poverty and dependence into which his servitude carried him.  For thousands, on the contrary, bondage proved to be a real avenue to freedom and prosperity.  Some of the best citizens of America have the blood of indentured servants in their veins.

=The Transported—­Involuntary Servitude.=—­In their anxiety to secure settlers, the companies and proprietors having colonies in America either resorted to or connived at the practice of kidnapping men, women, and children from the streets of English cities.  In 1680 it was officially estimated that “ten thousand persons were spirited away” to America.  Many of the victims of the practice were young children, for the traffic in them was highly profitable.  Orphans and dependents were sometimes disposed of in America by relatives unwilling to support them.  In a single year, 1627, about fifteen hundred children were shipped to Virginia.