Page:History of the Supreme court of the United States (IA historyofsupreme00myeriala).pdf/52



While an extremely powerful and dictatorial landed aristocracy was thus being created by royal grants and official favoritism, or by illegal or fraudulent methods, severe statutes were enacted in all the colonies, the effect of which was to create and perpetuate a dependent and servile class of workers whom the laws differentiated into various menial classes.

The extraordinarily profound piety ascribed to the Puritan fathers was accompanied with a series of drastic laws passed by them prescribing the sharpest limitations for the many of both sexes compelled to work for wages, or for those whom musfortune, in one way or another, branded as defenseless objects of legal and religious persecutions.

The act of the Massachusetts authorities in 1630, passed in response to the self-interested demands of those who had already acquired property and who needed a constant supply of subservient workers, was the first measure in that colony the purpose of which was to form a permanent class of practically hereditary working people. This act, "Respecting Masters, Servants and Laborers," opened by decreeing that no servant should give, or sell, any truck during time of service without the consent of masters. All workmen, it declared, should work the whole day—that is, as long as they should be ordered—allowing "convenient time for food and rest." Compulsory adherence to their tasks was decreed by Section