“All idle persons who, not having visible means to maintain themselves, live without employment, are declared vagrants, and forced into hard labor for the term of six months, and for which they receive nothing but food sufficient to keep body and soul together; and on the expiration of their slave term, are cast penniless adrift, to shift for themselves the best way they can, until hard fortune returns them to slavery again.”
In some States, this class of persons are sold at public auction to the highest or lowest bidder, as the case maybe, for a certain length of time, and the proceeds, if there be any, go into the town treasury. The writer [New York Gov. Horatio Seymour] has often witnessed this kind of public slave-auction in New England.
[The Law of Pennsylvania 1863]
“In the State of Pennsylvania, all persons who live idly and without employment, and refuse to work for the usual and common wages given to other laborers in the like work, are sent to the workhouse of the county, if such there be, otherwise to the jail of the county, there to be kept at hard labor by the keeper of such workhouse or jail.”
[The Law of Iowa 1863]
“In the State of Iowa, such idle persons are, in the first instance, required to give a good and sufficient bond to refrain him from idleness, and in default they are sent to jail. Then the District Court authorizes (unless discharged) the Judge of the County Court, to bind such idle persons, if minors, to some lawful calling, as servants or apprentices, or otherwise, until they shall be of full age respectfully; or to contract for the services of such vagrants as shall be of full age, with any suitable person, as laborers or servants, for any time not exceeding one year; which binding out and contracts shall be as valid and effectual as the indenture of any apprentice with his own consent, and the consent of his parents, and shall subject the person so bound out or contracted for to the same control of their MASTERS respectfully, and of such court, as if they were bound apprentices.”
____________________________
David Upton