Question

What is the system of peonage?

Answer 1

A method in which an employer forces a worker to repay a debt through working.

Answer 2

Answer:

According to PBS (Public Broadcasting Service), "Peonage, also called debt slavery or debt servitude, is a system where an employer compels a worker to pay off a debt with work."

Explanation:

A common practice in the America's from her inception until the mid 19th century, peonage was a method to ensure those that found themselves in debt who didn't have the money to repay would be able to pay off their debt in another way, physical labor. While outlawed in 1867, this practice would continue until the early 20th century, mainly in the south with black men being indebted to white plantation owners as sharecroppers, often times by the very same master's theyselves and their ancestors were once owned by. Workers were often commonly trapped in this cycle of forever paying off their debt for life, as often times the interest on the debt would accumulate faster than they could pay it off.

Perhaps some of the worst abuses of this could be found in the American south, where black men who were picked up for minor crimes. (Soliciting, loitering, petty theft) would be stacked with fines so high they would have to sell them selves into peonage to a local employer who would pay the fines for them. Only to find themselves trapped in this never ending debt cycle. The state would also lease these prisoners out to factories, and often times debt records would become lost or destroyed, dooming the men to a lifetime of servitude to southern states post-civil war.