It was nearly a century later when Africans were brought to America’s first English settlement, Jamestown, in 1619. Initially the English colonists treated the Black newcomers, who had been seized from a Portuguese slave ship, as indentured servants. Further up the coast, eleven enslaved Blacks arrived in New Amsterdam (today’s New York City) in 1625, courtesy of the Dutch West India Company. And in 1641, Massachusetts became the first colony to address slavery via legislative action: the “Body of Liberties” strictly forbade some kinds of bondage… but just as firmly authorized others.
Massachusetts’ neighbor to the south, Rhode Island, became the first of the colonies to ban slavery in 1652, but the law was not enforced. Instead, by the 18th century, tiny Rhode Island had maximized its ports and maritime connections to become a powerhouse in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Fully 10 percent of Rhode Island’s population was living in bondage by 1750.
While slave labor was an early component in all of the colonies’ economies, it became especially important to the southern states when they began growing cotton for export. By the time Americans won independence from Great Britain, the presence of slavery in America was even acknowledged in the formulation of the United States Constitution with the Three-Fifths Compromise.
Our 21st Century sensibilities may be shocked to learn that the construction of the very seat of our democracy, the United States Capitol, was built in significant part by Black laborers who had been rented out by their enslavers. The same was true for the White House. And the historical record indicates that at least nine American presidents relied on enslaved individuals as a way of cutting down domestic staffing expenses at the White House.
Slavery wouldn’t be rendered obsolete in the (re)United States until the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution was enacted following the end of the Civil War.
But chattel slavery hasn’t been the only tool in the United States’ kit of egregious labor arrangements. Indentured servitude, sharecropping, sweatshops, child labor, exploitative company towns, prison labor, human trafficking – all have been accepted, or at least tolerated, practices at one time or another in this country.
With the abolition of slavery, workers discovered their own agency and became more vocal about working conditions and pay. But it wasn’t until 1884 that Congress established a Bureau of Labor to address the concerns of American workers – this was following two periods of economic depression that had been tough on the nascent labor movement. Over the next three decades there were efforts to elevate the Bureau to a Cabinet level position, but other rising interests in the nation were demanding more attention, too. Congress considered creating a Cabinet level department that would pair Labor with Agriculture, or with Commerce. But in the end a bill was passed that created an independent Labor Department. President Taft signed it into law on his final day in office in 1913, which gave his successor, Woodrow Wilson, the opportunity to name the first Secretary of Labor.
The initial Labor Department included the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a Children’s Bureau (the first federal agency anywhere in the world to focus on bettering the lives of youngsters), a Bureau of Immigration, and a new U.S. Conciliation Service, which was created to mediate labor disputes.