"Was the threat of Debtor's Prison the reason that most northern factory worker kept on working under such awful conditions instead of changing jobs? So were they really "Free" of their employeers domination?"

It may have been a factor bigger than we would have thought. The large number of immigrants came from areas where Debtors Prisons were a reality if one owed for a loaf of bread. Most of Georgia's Indentured were debtors, along with the run of the mill criminal. The Northern mill workers lived and worked in some of the same squalid conditions that they had believed they were leaving behind in the 'Old Country'. Many a factory owner or boss knew that they could replace a worker at any given moment so that kept some in their place. It was indeed a vicious cycle. They came to do better and ended up in the same place unless they enlisted in the Army and then they stood a good chance of dying. Factory workers were expendable just as migrant workers have been considered for years.

Pam