Do I really mean to say that slavery is possible in the United States? Why, such a question is behind the times, for slavery practically exists. What else but slavery can you call the condition of some of the coal-miners, tanners and factory hands of the United States? Men with their wives and families go to a small town which practically belongs to their employer. They live in houses owned by their employer, buy their household supplies at stores owned by their employer, take their pay in checks, tickets or orders signed by their employer, and get the remainder of their pay when their employer is ready. Suppose they wish to improve their condition and go away; how can they move at all unless they have saved some money, the saving of which, by a peculiarity well understood in all such localities, is simply impossible?
The method is practically that of South America. In some of our sister republics the laboring men who are on a plantation are called a _consistado_. Men are obtained, in the first place, by a small advance of money, and are told that they can obtain additional sums at such times as they may need them, provided the money is already due them for work done. But these laborers are improvident. When they wish to spend money, the employer good-naturedly--so it is supposed--allows them to draw slightly in advance, and by the laws of the country the laborer can never leave until his indebtedness to the employer is paid.
In some of the South American republics there are _consistados_, from which no man can escape to work elsewhere without being claimed and returned by forms very similar to those which prevailed in the United States under the old fugitive slave law in slavery times. If a workman on the plantation of Don Tomas recovers from a feast-day celebration in a state of mind which leads him to run away and go to the plantation of Don Jorge, he is missed at roll-call, his absence is reported to his employer, and straightway a lot of notes are sent out to the owners of surrounding estates notifying them of the runaway and requesting them to return him to his employer, who will pay the expenses incurred by the return. The request is always honored, because what neighbor knows when some member of his own _consistado_ may disappear in the same manner, and be, of course, slightly in debt to his employer?