ost and he
was made to feel in many ways his particular low place in the social
organization.

Far above him, vested with enormous personal and legal powers, towered
the patroon, while he, the laborer, did not have the ordinary burgher
right, that of having a minor voice in public affairs. The burgher right
was made entirely dependent upon property, which was a facile method of
disfranchising the multitude of poor immigrants and of keeping them
down. Purchase was the one and only means of getting this right. To keep
it in as small and circumscribed class as possible the price was made
abnormally high. It was enacted in New Netherlands in 1659, for
instance, that immigrants coming with cargoes had to pay a thousand
guilders for the burgher right.[8] As the average laborer got two
shillings a day for his long hours of toil, often extending from sunrise
to sunset, he had little chance of ever getting this sum together. The
consequence was that the merchants became the burgher class; and all the
records of the time seem to prove conclusively that the merchants were
servile instruments of the patroons whose patronage and favor they
assiduously courted. This deliberately pursued policy of degrading and
despoiling the laboring class incited bitter hatreds and resentments,
the effects of which were permanent.

[Illustration: JEREMIAS VAN RENSSLAERR.
One of the Patroons.
(From an Engraving.)]

[Illustration: Signature]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] O'Callaghan's "History of New Netherlands," 1:112-120.

[2] Documents Relating to the Colonial History of the State of New York,
1:89-100.

[3] O'Callaghan, 1:124. Although it was said that Kiliaen van Rensselaer
visited America, it seems to be established that he never did. He
governed his estate as an absentee landgrave, through agents. He was the
most powerful of all of the patroons.

[4] Ibid., 125.

[5] Colonial Documents, 1:41. The primary object of this company was a
monopoly of the Indian trade, not colonization. The "princely" manors
were a combination fort and trading house, surrounded by moat and
stockade.

[6] Colonial Documents, 1:86.

[7] "Annals of Albany," iii:287. The power of the patroons over their
tenants, or serfs, was almost unlimited. No "man or woman, son or
daughter, man servant or maid servant" could leave a patroon's service
during the time that they had agreed to remain, except by his written
consent, no matter what abuses or breaches of contract were c