The late 1800s and early 1900s exploited this on behalf of White Supremacy. All of the Jim Crow states had laws against vagrancy which were only enforced against "colored" people. If you failed to have a job, local law enforcement would arrest you for "vagrancy" and the prison would rent your body out to work on the "chain gang". Prisoners got paid nothing. The politically connected "good old boys" would get paid for renting out the prisoners.