Twenty-two citizens complain about the difficulty "of obtaining efficient and responsible hirelings and laborers, in the occupations of the field and household affairs." They attribute this condition to "the great number of lazy, irresponsible, lawless, and miserable free negroes and mulattoes, upon whom our citizens have mainly to depend for assistance in the cultivation of their fields, and their domestic concerns." They assert that free blacks "constitute a migratory tribe, without fixed abode; alternately roving from city to country, as whim or necessity may drive them in their erratic and wayward course," with the consequence being that "our farmers are deserted by the laborers they have employed in the cultivation of their crops, at the busiest season of the year." The petitioners ask the legislature to enact laws that "will be more efficient in correcting and restraining the idle and roving habits of the negroes and mulattoes, by putting it in the power of our farmers and housekeepers to compel such as would otherwise be idle and worthless, to enter into engagements for the month or year, at the customary wages."
Result: House: presented, read, referred.
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Repository: Delaware State Archives, Dover, Delaware
