Indentured Child Immigrants After 1776

[wkwillis]

Indentured adults were forbidden by the Articles and then the Constitution, but native children could still be indentured till 21. What if there was a loophole where you could indenture children till they were 21, or reached a certain development stage or height or weight?
1. Would the North grow faster than the South by an even greater margin?
2. Would the price of slaves stay low because of the cheap competition?
3. Would the US have greater Catholic, Orthodox, and Jewish minorities?
4. Would the US build the transcontinental railroad before 1869?
I figure that after ten you could break even on a kid, counting food and clothes as costs, and domestic work as a benefit. Seven years would give you a decent return on the cost.

 

[stevep]

Indentured adults were forbidden by the Articles and then the Constitution, but native children could still be indentured till 21. What if there was a loophole where you could indenture children till they were 21, or reached a certain development stage or height or weight?
1. Would the North grow faster than the South by an even greater margin?
2. Would the price of slaves stay low because of the cheap competition?
3. Would the US have greater Catholic, Orthodox, and Jewish minorities?
4. Would the US build the transcontinental railroad before 1869?
I figure that after ten you could break even on a kid, counting food and clothes as costs, and domestic work as a benefit. Seven years would give you a decent return on the cost.

Wkwillis

Might you not also have a divided or more socialist US? What your talking about, albeit with the presumed consent of the parents is verging on extending a form of slavery to the north. It might also slow down US development in some ways. By providing cheap labour like that you provide a barrier to mechanisation - which was encouraged in the US by the higher wages. Also a discouragement for education of children. The US might well have a higher population but it will include a lot of relatively poorly educated youths and young adults who may feel alienated. Also you might see the south muddying the waters by claiming that abolitionist were being hypercritical by ignoring the north's 'own slavery'. You would probably see some division in the north as growing opposition to the policy.

I know vaguely, that indentures were fairly common in the 18thC and not sure how long they lasted elsewhere. However I think your talking about massed organised importation of child labourers, which is probably going to cause a lot of revulsion both in the US and the western parts of Europe. Suspect it would have big, generally negative, social consequences.

Steve

 

[Max Sinister]

I remember reading a TL where the northern US allow a kind of indentured servants, while the South doesn't, with the comical effect that the South later starts a war to liberate those quasi-slaves in the North...