These facts, together with the foregoing documents, show that, in some
respects, many white youth of that day were subjected to an experience
not wholly unlike that of the colored youth. Often the indentured
parties became the victims of cruelty. Sometimes they were half
clothed and fed. Sometimes they were beaten unmercifully. They were
completely in the hands of the "master," and whether their experience
was pleasant or sad depended upon his temper.

Add another fact to the foregoing about the indenture of apprenticeship,
and the similarity of white to Negro slavery, in that day, is quite
remarkable. No longer than seventy-five years ago, a poor child, left
to the town by the death of the father, was put up at auction, and
the man who bid the lowest sum was entitled to him. The town paid the
amount to get rid of the incumbrance, without much regard to the future
treatment of the orphan.

A near neighbor of the author, eighty-three years of age, was sold in
this manner three times in his early life, suffering more and more
with each change, until he was old enough to defend himself and run
away. His first buyer, for some reason, wanted to dispose of him, and
he sold him at auction to another. The second buyer was heartless and
cruel, against which the boy rebelled, and, for this reason, he was
sold to a third "master," who proved to be the worst tyrant of the
three, subjecting the youth to all sorts of ill-treatment, to escape
which he took to his heels. He was not given a day's schooling by
either master, nor one holiday, nor the privilege of going to meeting
on the Sabbath, nor was he half fed and clothed. At twenty-one he
could neither read nor write.

We have turned aside from our narrative to record a somewhat barbaric