United States 1864

Synopsis

The United States Congress's Act to Encourage Immigration legalized and bureaucratized a practice similar to indentured servitude. Under this measure, employers could contract with a foreign laborer to come to the United States and pay for his passage in exchange for up to a year's wages. This practice, legally sanctioned by the federal government in 1864 at the prodding of industrialists and President Abraham Lincoln, met with immediate resistance from the embryonic labor movement of the time. Rather than attracting skilled labor for the formation of new industries, third-party recruiting organizations contracted with unskilled laborers to work for wages substandard to those in the United States. Employers often imported contract laborers in efforts to break strikes during labor disputes. Congress technically repealed the law in 1868, but the practice of importing labor already under contract was not made illegal until the...