RAH, "Logic of Empire" (1941)

https://knigorub.com/116529-logic-of-empire/page-1.html

>Decades later, while there is still an abundance of land [& chatbots], this [IT serf] market remains because the colony itself has quotas to meet and debts to repay and cannot spare the resources to develop local industries to make the machines itself, yet free labor still then does not have to bid its price down enough to out-compete [serf] labor.