In early America, the settlers had to start from the bottom up to make the new land anything like their European counterpart. Europe had many ways of developing the land and creating structures for society. All people who lived in the colonies faced challenges like hunger and disease and, it took a long time for the colonies to be self-sufficient. All people in the colony also had to deal with growing difficult relationships with the natives of the land. In the end you could argue that life was difficult for all of the people who lived in the colonies. However in the book Voices of Freedom by Eric Foner you get a glimpse of what life was like for what we might consider lower class people at the time period. After analyzing three groups of settlers, slaves, indentured servants, and apprentices we can see that while none of these groups would have had an easy time in the developing world in early America, It was slaves that would have the hardest time simply due to the fact that they were considered property with no real rights or privileges. While one might argue that only slaves were people who were deprived of freedom, you could argue that if you take in consideration of the average lifespan of people at the time all three of these groups would spend a good amount of time of their lives that were not free. If we take a look at the role of the apprentice it was the position that offered the most benefits but there was still a big restriction on the freedom of the apprentice. In Voices of Freedom you read the stipulations of a contract between a young man and a master cordwainer. The young man had to live at the master’s estate for 7 years (Foner 55) the time he spent as an apprentice he would not be able marry, gamble, or leave without permission from his master. (Foner 56) These restrictions would make it seem that life is like a servant but unlike a slave or indentured servant the master had responsibility towards the apprentice.