The wages paid were, as a rule, small, though some complaints are found, especially in New England, of high wages and poor service.[53] More often the wages were a mere pittance. Elizabeth Evans came from Ireland to serve John Wheelwright for three years. Her wages were to be three pounds a year and passage paid.[54] Margery Batman, after five years of service in Charlestown, was to receive a she-goat to help her in starting life.[55] Mary Polly, according to the terms of her indenture, was to serve ten years and then receive “three barrells of corn and one suit of penistone and one suit of good serge with one black hood, two shifts of dowlas and shoes and hose convenient.”[56]
Peter Kalm writes of Pennsylvania in 1748: “A servant maid gets eight or ten pounds a year: these servants have their food besides their wages, but must buy their own clothes, and what they get of these they must thank their master’s goodness for.” He adds that it was cheaper to buy indented servants since “this kind of servants may be got for half the money, and even for less; for they commonly pay fourteen pounds Pennsylvania currency, for a person who is to serve four years.”[57] Even at the beginning of the present century wages had scarcely risen. Samuel Breck writes of two redemptioners whom he purchased in 1817: “I gave for the woman seventy-six dollars, which is her passage-money, with a promise of twenty dollars at the end of three years if she serves me faithfully; clothing and maintenance of course. The boy had paid twenty-six guilders toward his passage-money, which I agreed to give him at the end of three years; in addition to which I paid fifty-three dollars and sixty cents for his passage, and for two years he is to have six weeks’ schooling each year.”[58]
For the protection of both masters and servants the law sometimes interfered and attempted to regulate the matter of wages received at the end of an indenture. In Virginia by the code of 1705 every woman servant was to receive fifteen bushels of Indian corn and forty shillings in money, or the value thereof in goods.[59] In 1748 it was enacted “that every servant, male or female, not having wages, shall, at the expiration of his, or her time of service, have and receive three pounds ten shillings current money, for freedom dues, to be paid by his, or her master, or owner,”[60] and in 1758 the same law was re-enacted, but excepting convicts from the provisions of the Act.[61] In South Carolina all women servants at the expiration of their time were to have “a Wastcoat and Petticoat of new Half-thick or Pennistone, a new Shift of white Linnen, a new Pair of shoes and stockings, a blue apron and two caps of white Linnen.”[62] The laws of Pennsylvania provided that every servant who served faithfully four years should at the expiration of the term of servitude have a discharge and be duly clothed with two complete suits of apparel, one of which should be new,[63] while in Massachusetts and New York it was provided that all servants who had served diligently and faithfully to the benefit of their masters should not be sent away empty.[64] In North Carolina every servant not having yearly wages was to be allowed at the expiration of the term of service three pounds Proclamation money, besides one sufficient suit of wearing clothes.[65] In East New Jersey the law was more liberal and gave every servant two suits of apparel suitable for a servant, one good felling axe, a good hoe, and seven bushels of good Indian corn.[66] West New Jersey gave ten bushels of corn, necessary apparel, two horses, and one axe.[67] In Maryland a woman at the expiration of her term was to have the same provision of corn and clothes as men servants, namely, “a good Cloath suite either of Kersey or broad Cloath, a shift of white Linnen to be new, one new pair of shoes and stockings, two hoes one Ax and three barrˡˡˢ of Indian corn.”[68] A later act specified that women servants were to have “a Waist-coat and Petty-coat of new Half-thick, or Pennistone, a new Shift of White Linen, Shoes and Stockings, a blue Apron, Two Caps of White Linen, and Three Barrells of Indian Corn.”[69]
The test question to be applied to any system of service is—Is the service secured through it satisfactory? It has been seen that a considerable number of servants could be secured through the system of indenture, though probably less than the colonists desired, and that the wages paid them were, as a rule, remarkably low. But it must be said that the service received from indented servants was, as a rule, what might be expected from the class that came to America in that capacity.
It is easy to surmise the character of the service rendered at first in Virginia and the difficulties encountered by employers. Many of the redemptioners had been idlers and vagabonds, and for idlers and vagabonds, there as elsewhere, stringent laws were necessary. In 1610, under the administration of Sir Thomas Gates, various orders were passed with reference to pilfering on the part of launderers, laundresses, bakers, cooks, and dressers of fish.
“What man or woman soeuer, Laundrer or Laundresse appointed to wash the foule linnen of any one labourer or souldier, or any one else as it is their duties so to doe, performing little, or no other seruice for their allowance out of the store, and daily prouisions, and supply of other necessaries, vnto the Colonie, and shall from the said labourer or souldier, or any one else, of what qualitie whatsoeuer, either take any thing for washing, or withhold or steale from him any such linnen committed to her charge to wash, or change the same willingly and wittingly, with purpose to giue him worse, old or torne linnen for his good, and proofe shall be made thereof, she shall be whipped for the same, and lie in prison till she make restitution of such linnen, withheld or changed.”[70]
Even more stringent penalties are attached to purloining from the flour and meal given out for baking purposes.[71]