cannot spare the Negro and will not give him up until a substitute is found. His labour is worth millions upon millions. In Georgia we now make it a crime for anyone to solicit emigrants without taking out a licence, and then we make the licence as nearly prohibitive as possible. One of the most dangerous occupations for any one to follow in this state would be that of an emigrant agent—as some have found by experience.”

[Pg 80]

In this connection I have an account published in April, 1907, in an Augusta newspaper of just such a case:

The heaviest fine given in the city court of Richmond County within the last two years was imposed upon E. F. Arnett yesterday morning. He was sentenced to pay a fine of one thousand dollars or serve six months in the county jail.

Arnett was convicted of violating the state emigration laws regarding the carrying of labour out of the state. He was alleged to have employed thirteen Negroes to work on the Georgia and Atlantic Railroad, which operates in this state and Alabama. The jury on the case returned a verdict of guilty when court convened yesterday, although it had been reported that a mistrial was probable.

“Peg Leg” Williams

A famous railroad emigration agent called “Peg Leg” Williams, who promoted Negro emigration from Georgia to Mississippi and Texas a few years ago, was repeatedly prosecuted and finally driven out of business. In a letter which he wrote some time ago to the Atlanta Constitution he said:

I know of several counties not a hundred miles from Atlanta where it’s more than a man’s life is worth to go in to get Negroes to move to some other state. There are farmers that would not hesitate to shoot their brother were he to come from Mississippi to get “his niggers,” as he calls them, even though he had no contract with them. I know personally numbers of Negro men who have moved West and after accumulating a little, return to get a brother, sister, or an old father or mother, and they were compelled to return without them, their lives being imperilled; they had to leave and leave quick.

In view of such a feeling it may be imagined how futile is the talk of the deportation of the Negro race. What the Southern planter wants to-day is not fewer Negroes but more Negroes—Negroes who will “keep their place.”

Laws to Make the Negro Work

Many 

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