indentured servants

Indentured servants are usually children who are on loan to you for a set amount of years in order that they learn something and for you to gain from their  free labour. 

We've been reading a lot of American history lately and there has been quite a bit of talk about indentured servants.  So the boys have decided that their lives are little better than that of an indentured servant.

I'm always making them do stuff.  They don't get paid.  They have to go to bed when I tell them. 

Poor waifs.

It’s important to have  lots children so that you, too may experience the benefits of indentured servants.  It works great.  You put in a solid ten or twelve years (per child) and they can do about one twentieth of everything that needs to be done.  So if you have seven or eight children, in about twenty years, you have enough servants to do about one third of what you do.  Some of them even do it willingly.  By the time they are sixteen, they can do about a tenth of what you do, then it is really starting to pay off.  Then two years later they leave home.

I frequently get told how hard I work my children.  By them, of course.   Clear the table?  Unload the dishwasher?  Tidy the basement?

But I am relentless, no?  Tote that barge.  Lift that bale.
Don't I deserve to lie on the couch and eat bonbons?