Many members of the Utah legislature had already enacted a similar form of unfree labor when they sat as lawmakers for the provisional State of Deseret. In September 1850, the Deseret legislature incorporated the Perpetual Emigrating Company in order to manage the assets of the Perpetual Emigrating Fund, or PEF. This fund was created to help defray travel costs for poor Mormons going to Utah. There was little hope that these immigrants would be able to repay the donations in cash, and consequently the law provided that they might “reimburse the same in labor or otherwise, as soon as their circumstances will admit.” Participants were expected to sign contracts to that effect, further stipulating that they would obey PEF agents during transport. In practice, this created a form of indentured servitude. Immigrants who received funds from the PEF after voluntarily entering a contract could be compelled to labor until their debt was paid off. Whether formal legal action was ever taken to force such debtors to satisfy their debts through labor is an open question. But on at least one occasion, Brigham Young urged bishops not to allow people who were still indebted to the PEF to leave Utah Territory without repayment, presumably through cash or work. This may help explain the experience of at least some individuals who later claimed that they were forced to remain in Utah against their will.

While Section 2 of the service bill conformed to the basic ideas outlined by Smith in his speech, it was sparse on detail. In fact, it seems likely that Spencer and Smith purposely drafted Section 2 loosely to provide maximum flexibility to lenders and debtors. According to the draft, satisfactory evidence of these agreements might include anything from a written indenture to testimony of an oral contract. Unlike traditional forms of indentured servitude, there was no set form for this kind of agreement, nor did the bill establish any maximum term of service. The only legal restriction was that a servant must have received “reasonable compensation” for his or her service. PEF contracts were vague and specified that once an immigrant arrived in Utah, he must hold his time and labor “subject to the appropriation of the PEF company,” until the “full cost” of the journey was paid. Moreover, the PEF Company could charge an unspecified amount of interest if it so chose. Apparently, the details of repayment had to be worked out once an immigrant arrived in Utah. Contracts with private lenders may have been similar.

Section 2 indentures could last for any period of time and take virtually any form as long as a probate judge determined that the individual arrangement was “reasonable” in comparison to the debt. Consider the PEF. Although ostensibly a private organization, debts owed to the fund were sometimes paid off through periodic labor on the public works (but sometimes not paid off at all). Under this practice, a portion of the laborer’s daily salary was held back and used to satisfy the debt. This procedure more closely resembled “contract labor” than indentured servitude, and individual lenders may have relied on similar arrangements. Yet based on the provisions of the law, it is possible that some debtors labored in a true indentured status for a specified time. In any event, a judge had the power to order an insolvent and otherwise recalcitrant debtor to labor for his or her benefactor until the debt was fully discharged. In the absence of specific language in the text of the bill, it was entirely up to the parties and a judge to determine what was fair.

What is more, the bill actually made these contracts heritable. If a debtor died still owing money, his heirs could be compelled to labor until the debt was repaid. This provision proved highly controversial in the legislature. Pennsylvania and Maryland had abolished such practices over three decades before. Even New Mexico ostensibly banned heritable debt servitude in 1851, although it continued in practice. Hosea Stout, a Kentucky-born lawyer, believed it was inconceivable that a parent could bind his child to labor beyond the age of majority. “At the age [of] 21 I shall be clear of all contracts my father made,” he argued. “I cannot see how to make a law to bind a child to pay the debts of [a] father after he is 21.” In fact, the law the Utah legislature passed concerning apprenticeship stipulated that these relationships could only last until the “age of legal majority,” that is, twenty-one for males and eighteen for females. George A. Smith answered Stout’s concerns with a hypothetical. “I suppose myself to be in England with half dozen boys big and small. I pledge myself to Mr. Stout that I [will] pay [if he takes me to America]. [If] I die on the road shall my children kick up their heels and say my daddy [is] dead [and] I shall not pay?”

For Smith, once a debt was contracted it must be paid, even by those who were not actual parties to the agreement. His position made sense as a way to incentivize cash-poor Mormons to continue to finance the immigration of European converts. Lenders were guaranteed repayment in labor even if the contracting party happened to die. It was a concept far closer to debt peonage than to contemporary American practices. Nevertheless, this hereditary servitude could not last forever. The bill specified that no contract could “bind the heirs of the servant or servants to service for a longer period than will satisfy the debt due his, her, or their master or mistress.” Once the debt was paid, the indenture was at an end.

In contrast, Section 3 indentures were designed to recognize the established interest that Southern Mormons held in the labor of their enslaved workers. Spencer and Smith’s bill made the evidentiary requirements for this mode of servitude both more and less exacting than those for European immigrants. It first required a sealed court certificate attesting that the master was entitled to the labor of his servant. But no further proof of consideration or contract was necessary as long as it “appeared” that the servant came to Utah voluntarily. This prerequisite was not merely cosmetic. The principle of consent was at the heart of the law. However, the bill did not specify how consent was to be proven. Instead, the law gave probate judges the exclusive responsibility to determine whether an enslaved person had come to Utah voluntarily or not.

The greatest difference between Section 2 and 3 indentures involved the term of service. While labor contracts for European immigrants were limited to the repayment of an established debt, Spencer and Smith proposed that enslaved African Americans and their children could lawfully be held in servitude until “the curse of servitude is taken from the descendants of Canaan.” It is not entirely clear from the text of the bill if this applied to the children of slaves who were born in Utah. A reasonable case could be made either way, and the legislative debates shed no light on the matter. But it is clear that an enslaved person who “voluntarily” entered the territory with his or her master could be held in servitude for life.