“What the state may not do directly it may not do indirectly. If it cannot punish the servant as a criminal for the mere failure or refusal to serve without paying his debt, it is not permitted to accomplish the same result by creating a statutory presumption which, upon proof of no other fact, exposes him to conviction and punishment. Without imputing any actual motive to oppress, we must consider the natural operation of the statute here in question (Henderson v. Mayor, 92 U.S. p. 92 U. S. 268), and it is apparent that it furnishes a convenient instrument for the coercion which the Constitution and the act of Congress forbid -- an instrument of compulsion peculiarly effective as against the poor and the ignorant, its most likely victims.” - US Supreme Court in Bailey v. Alabama
