"You could quit your job and move out of the company house anytime you wanted to.'

In theory that may be correct. You would think that by todays standards, but I am not sure that it was true in 1860. It is my understanding of the Factory system of that period is that a person COULD NOT quit if he owned the company for rent or had a bill at the company store.

And since the wages were minimal at best, the company housing rent and items in the company stores overprice, which you as an employee were required to live in and buy from, the debt cycle became a neverending mobius loop. The factory owners would pay you a wage, but they had devised a system which meant that this money would come back to them with a profit while keeping a work force indebted to these owners. And since all the large factories worked 12 hours a day and used the same system, you could not get a second job to pay off your debts.

At least this was the way it was explained to me way back in my High School history class days. It doesn't get taugh too much today and I always felt that the Article 4, Section 2, para 3, clause of the Constitution promoted this form of servitude the same as it did slavery. These types of working conditions were the basis for the Labor movement later in that century.

Of course this all worked out fine for the Factory owners because they had no responcibility for the welfare of their workers, unlike the southern slave owners did, such as it may have been.

That is my contention that not all chains were then, or are today, as George P. says, made of iron.