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Exevea, Karen Faye S. Feb.

17, 2011

RZL-10 ANO1 Professor Buenvenida

Slavery in the United States was a form of unfree labor which existed as a legal institution in

North America for more than a century before the founding of the United States in 1776, and

continued mostly in the South until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United

States Constitution in 1865. The first English colony in North America, Virginia, first imported

Africans in 1619, a practice established in the Spanish colonies as early as the 1560s. Most

slaves were black and were held by whites, although some Native Americans and free blacks

also held slaves; there were a small number of white slaves as well. Europeans also held some

Native Americans as slaves, and African-Native Americans. Slavery spread to the areas where

there was good-quality soil for large plantations of high-value cash crops, such

as tobacco, cotton, sugar, and coffee.


By the early decades of the 19th century, the majority of slaveholders and slaves were in

the southern United States, where most slaves were engaged in a work-gang system of

agriculture on large plantations, especially devoted to cotton and sugar cane. Such large groups

of slaves were thought to work more efficiently if directed by a managerial class called

overseers, usually white men. Before the widespread establishment of chattel slavery (outright

ownership of a human being, and of his/her descendants), much labor was organized under a

system of bonded labor known as indentured servitude. This typically lasted for several years

for white and black alike. People paid with their labor for the costs of transport to the colonies.

They contracted for such arrangements because of poor economies in their home countries.By

the 18th century, colonial courts and legislatures had racialized slavery, essentially creating a

caste system in which slavery applied nearly exclusively to Black Africans and people of African

descent, and occasionally to Native Americans. Spain abolished slavery of Native Americans in

its territories in 1769. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, an estimated 12 million Africans were

shipped as slaves to the Americas. Of these, an estimated 645,000 were brought to what is now

the United States. African American trade was like trading puppies in a petshop, buyers will pay

a sum of money in exchange for a pet, that will make them happy. For me, that was really

unhuman thing to do because I believe that every human whether he/she is black, brown or

white has a right to live in a freedom world.

There were also a slavery in the phillipines it is what they call forced labor, The system of forced

labor otherwise known as polo y servicios evolved within the framework of the encomienda

system, introduced into the South American colonies by the Conquistadores and Catholic

priests who accompanied them. Polo y servicios is the forced labor for 40 days of men ranging

from 16 to 60 years of age who were obligated to give personal services to community projects.

One could be exempted from polo by paying the falla (corruption of the Spanish Falta, meaning

"absence"), a daily fine of one and a half real. In 1884, labor was reduced to 15 days.
The polo system was patterned after the Mexican repartimento, selection for forced labor. There

were also what they call Child slave labor refers to the illegal employment of children below 18

years of age in hazardous occupations. Underage children are being forced to manual labor to

help their families mainly due to poverty. About 2.06 million all around the Philippines are

compelled to do labor, such as in crop plantations, mining caves, rock quarries, and factories.

Child labor has many ill effects in children who are supposed to be in the environment of a

classroom rather than roaming the streets and risking every chance, time and time again, to

earn money. Although most do get the privilege of education, most end up being dropouts and

repeaters because they are not able to focus on their studies. Because of child labor, children

suffer from malnutrition, hampered growth, and improper biological development.

The Philippines is literally a young nation with a high percentage of young people in its overall

population. Children between ages five and seventeen number 22.4 million, comprising a third

of the overall Philippine population. Working children represent sixteen percent of the overall

population of children between ages five and seven. That means that one out of every six

children work (Working Children 1). In the last twelve months, 3.7 million children ages five to

seventeen worked.

Children from rural households make up 67.1 percent of this amount and almost half are

between the ages of five and fourteen. In addition, in the last week, 2.85 million children

between the ages of five and seventeen worked. Of this number, half are between the ages of

five and fourteen, consisting of approximately 1.4 million children. These working children

consist of largely of boys, who account for 65 percent. As far as the locations where these

children work, 60 percent perform unpaid family work in their own households, 17.2 percent

work in their own homes and 53 percent work in family farms.

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