The Landless Worker: An Index of Economic and Social Change in Chester County, Pennsylvania, 1750-1820
The Landless Worker: An Index of Economic and Social Change in Chester County, Pennsylvania, 1750-1820 WHEN SLAVERY SHALL CEASE or be inhibited, in our country, where or how are means of cultivating the lands of the southern and middle states to be found?" wrote John Beale Bordley in 1801. Bordley, a founder of the Philadelphia Society for Agriculture, went on to outline a solution to the question he posed. He urged his fellow planters to follow the English and European example and use hirelings. English farmers, he pointed out, met the varying labor demands of the agricultural year by combining two types of labor: that of servants in husbandry, hired usually by the year though occasionally by the month, and that of cottagers hired by the day. Servants were taken into the household and received