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§ 5

Such unengaged workers, it is said, even if they have not committed any other crime, are of course, under our laws, criminal enough, as they have not accepted an annual service contract and are therefore justly liable to the penalty of labour on public works and in female penitentiaries that the law prescribes for them. Quite right, if such laws are regarded as equitable and unalterable, but as it is precisely the equity of those laws that is in question, nothing can be proved by that. If it is a crime not to accept an annual service contract, then that must apply to all, whoever they may be, for otherwise we lose all true notions of crime. But as no one can assert such a thing, as being in itself unreasonable, all criminality is likewise at once removed in respect of workers. And if it is ultimately to exist somewhere, it must be found in one’s birth.

What kind of compulsion, then, do they have to complain about? They have no need to fear labour on public works and in female penitentiaries provided that they are willing to accept an annual service contract, and that cannot be regarded as compulsory, especially as they also possess under the law a right to change their employment once a year; that provides them with the food they need, mostly better than what they can obtain for themselves in their cabins; in addition, they have their yearly set of working clothes and moreover on top of that a fair wage for holiday clothes and other necessities, so that they are much better off in annual employment than when they remain unengaged.

To all this I reply that annual service contracts are indeed advantageous for the servants in certain cases, though not always, as long as they are allowed to remain on a natural footing, so that they are entirely voluntary, but when they become an unconditional obligation, and with a specific wage proposed by masters and established by the authorities, then the matter acquires a very different complexion. Freedom with dry morsels is often more attractive to a person than an abundance of food under the domination of someone else. There is a cost attached to being independent, but who would not prefer that, with a meagre income, to being comfortable as the servant of another? The servants, as inhabitants of the earth, naturally also long to be able to settle in some spot in the world and to live, if possible in a cabin or a crofter’s cottage, as fate has not granted them more space, but when even that is denied them by the law, then we all realize that their freedom has disappeared.

 

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