labor.

In all English speaking countries the freedom of labor has been a fundamental principle of the law, and the freedom of contract has been absolutely unlimited and unhampered, as was also the right to abrogate or to disregard the contract of labor on the part of the laborer, there being no remedy of specific performance against him. The failure to observe the contract of employment was never, until recently, regarded as a criminal offense, and the only remedy that the employer had against the employee who willfully or who for good reason or for no reason refused to live up to his contract was an action for damages sustained. Of late years there has grown up in the former slave-holding states of the South a series of laws which abrogate all this well-known and time-honored common law principle.

Does peonage exist in any part of the United States to-day? The question is answered both in the affirmative and in the negative. Those who deny the existence of peonage assert that merely the voluntary or involuntary service or labor of a person in payment of a debt or obligation is not peonage; that it is not the system of peonage as practiced in Spanish-American countries and in Mexico; that there is in this country nothing resembling the Spanish or Mexican peonage system. It is probably true that there are no laws on statute books which resemble the laws under which peonage is practiced in Mexico, and under which it was practiced in New Mexico and Arizona before they became parts of the United States. The thirteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States forbids such laws, and certain acts of Congress have been passed which render that amendment effective. It is therefore to be presumed that no State which desired to establish a system of forced labor would pass a law which, on its face, would be in violation of the thirteenth amendment, or of the laws of Congress passed in pursuance of it. The counterfeiter has before him the task of making false money to look as much like genuine money as possible. The maker of laws violative of fundamental rights has before him the task of doing the forbidden thing in a way which will as nearly as possible conceal the fact that it has been done. What peonage is, has been defined by the United States Supreme Court.

Justice Brewer said: “It may be defined as a status or condition of compulsory service based upon the indebtedness of the peon to the master. The basal fact is indebtedness. One fact exists universally, all were indebted to their masters. This was the cord by which they seemed bound to their masters’ service.” Therefore, wherever we have compulsory service for debt, we have peonage, it matters not by what method the result is attained. There are to-day in certainly six states, and probably in ten, in which the institution of slavery formerly existed, laws which make it possible to compel men to render service against their will, and that too when they have committed no act which, outside of those States would be held to be a crime in any English-speaking community.

For convenience, these laws may be classed under at least five heads: Contracts of employment, enticement of laborers to quit their employers, violation of a contract with a surety by one convicted of a misdemeanor, the laws of vagrancy, and the laws relating to immigrant agents.

The laws relating to contracts of employment are to be found on the statute books of six States—Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina. These laws are very similar in their phraseology and in the penalties attached to their violation in all of these States. The Alabama law, which has recently been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States, may serve as an example. It provides, in short, that any person who enters into a contract in writing to perform any service for another and thereby obtains money or other personal property from such person with intent to defraud