The method is practically that of South America. In some of our sister republics the laboring men who are on a plantation are called a _consistado_. Men are obtained, in the first place, by a small advance of money, and are told that they can obtain additional sums at such times as they may need them, provided the money is already due them for work done. But these laborers are improvident. When they wish to spend money, the employer good-naturedly--so it is supposed--allows them to draw slightly in advance, and by the laws of the country the laborer can never leave until his indebtedness to the employer is paid. In some of the South American republics there are _consistados_, from which no man can escape to work elsewhere without being claimed and returned by forms very similar to those which prevailed in the United States under the old fugitive slave law in slavery times. If a workman on the plantation of Don Tomas recovers from a feast-day celebration in a state of mind which leads him to run away and go to the plantation of Don Jorge, he is missed at roll-call, his absence is reported to his employer, and straightway a lot of notes are sent out to the owners of surrounding estates notifying them of the runaway and requesting them to return him to his employer, who will pay the expenses incurred by the return. The request is always honored, because what neighbor knows when some member of his own _consistado_ may disappear in the same manner, and be, of course, slightly in debt to his employer? The same state of affairs prevails practically in a number of our mining and manufacturing regions. Men who are paid only once a month or once in two months get advances from their employers in the shape of orders for family supplies upon stores in the vicinity, stores probably owned by the employer. So long as the purchaser is in debt he may be stopped if he attempts to leave the country, and if he goes alone, as usually he must, his family is unable to follow him, and, still more, unable to retain a home and get food, for the roof which shelters them belongs also to the employer, as does the only store which gives credit. Only a few years ago I met in the State of New York a tanner, who was said to be one of the ablest men in his business, who told me that he had been seven years in the town and house in which I found him, trying to work out his indebtedness to his employer, so as to take his family somewhere else where they could have better society and where his children could have better facilities for education, but in spite of all efforts at economy he was still in debt to his employer. As the said employer fixed the rate of wages, the tanner could not possibly see how his condition would ever be otherwise.