LABOR ACT


 Provisional Act to Regulate the Relations between the Proprietors of Landed

 Estates and Rural Population of Free Laborers.


 I, Peter Hansen, Knight Commander of the Order of Dannebrog, the King's
Commissioner for, and officiating Governor-General of the Danish West India Islands,
Make known: That, whereas the ordinance dated 29th July, 1848, by which yearly
contracts for labor on landed estates were introduced, has not been duly acted upon:
whereas the interest of the proprietors of estates, as well as of the laborers, requires
that their mutual obligations should be defined: and whereas on inquiry into the
practice of the Island, and into the printed contracts and agreements hitherto made, it
appears expedient to establish uniform rules throughout the Island, for the guidance of
all parties concerned, it is enacted and ordained:

 1st. All engagements of laborers now domiciled on landed estates and
receiving wages in money, or in kind, for cultivating and working such estates, are to
be continued as directed by the ordinance of 29th July, 1848, until the first day of
October of the present year: and all similar engagements shall, in future, be made, or
shall be considered as having been made, for a term of twelve months, viz: from the
first of October till the first of October, year after year. Engagements made by heads of
families are to include their children between five and fifteen years of age, and other
relatives depending on them and staying with them.

 2d. No laborer engaged as aforesaid, in the cultivation of the soil, shall be
discharged or dismissed from, or shall be permitted to dissolve, his or her engagement
before the expiration of the same on the first of October of the present, or of any
following year, except in the instances hereafter enumerated.

 A. By mutual agreement of master and laborer, before a magistrate.

 B. By order of a magistrate on just and equitable cause being shown by the
parties interested.

 Legal marriage, and the natural tie between mothers and their children, shall be
deemed by the magistrate just and legal cause of removal from one estate to another.
The husband shall have a right to be removed to his wife, the wife to her husband, and
children under fifteen years of age to their mother, provided no objection to employing
such individuals shall be made by the owner of the estate to which the removal is to
take place.