Page:The Rise of American Civilization (Volume 1).djvu/144

 The hope of the laboring classes, thus buoyantly expressed, was generous, but the handicap of their economic status was not to be quickly overcome by any mere effort of the imagination. Even after the declaration of independence their position was not elevated in the eyes of ruling persons by the profession of radical doctrines. "It is of no consequence," coldly remarked John Adams in the Continental Congress in 1777, "by what name you call the people, whether by that of freemen or slaves; in some countries the laboring poor are called freemen, in others they are called slaves; but the difference as to the state is imaginary only. What matters it whether a landlord employing ten laborers on his farm gives them annually as much money as will buy them the necessaries of life or gives them those necessities at short hand? The condition of the laboring poor in most countries—that of the fishermen particularly of the Northern states—is as abject as that of slavery."

Below the level of freedom were the indentured servants employed usually in agriculture or menial work. Altogether these temporary bondmen made up a large proportion of the population, especially in the regions south of New York. It is true that, on the expiration of their terms of bondage, such servants passed into the class of freemen and that many acquired property and position in time; but their ranks were constantly recruited by newcomers from England and from the Continent and a large percentage never rose above the level of casual laborers after they served out their indenture. If no legal disability separated them from the main body of the population when their liberty was attained, the badge of their servile experience usually hung heavily around their necks. At all events, in the South, where they were despised by masters and slaves alike, they formed great settlements of "poor whites" that lay like a blight upon the land.