poor or he won’t work.”

[Pg 98]

This employer actually voted sixty of his Negroes against prohibition, but the excitement was so great that he dared vote no more—and prohibition carried.

A step further brings the Negro to the chain-gang. If there is no white man to pay him out, or if his crime is too serious to be paid out, he goes to the chain-gang—and in several states he is then hired out to private contractors. The private employer thus gets him sooner or later. Some of the largest farms in the South are operated by chain-gang labour. The demand for more convicts by white employers is exceedingly strong. In the Montgomery Advertiser for April 10, 1907, I find an account of the sentencing of fifty-four prisoners in the city court, fifty-two of whom were Negroes. The Advertiser says:

The demand for their labour is probably greater now than it ever has been before. Numerous labour agents of companies employing convict labour reached Montgomery yesterday, and were busily engaged in manœuvring to secure part or even all of the convicts for their respective companies. The competition for labour of all kinds, it seems, is keener than ever before known.

The natural tendency of this demand, and from the further fact that the convict system makes yearly a huge profit for the State, is to convict as many Negroes as possible, and to punish the offences charged as severely as possible. From the Atlanta Constitution of October 13, 1906, I have this clipping:

SIX MONTHS FOR POTATO THEFT

Columbus, Ga., October 12 (Special)

Columbus, Ga.

In the city court yesterday Charley Carter, a Negro, was sentenced to six months on the chain-gang or to pay a fine of $25 for stealing a potato valued at 5 cents.

Serious crimes are sometimes compromised. In a newspaper dispatch, October 6, 1906, from Eaton Ga., I find a [Pg 99]report of the trial of six Negroes charged with assault with the intent to kill. All were found guilty, but upon a recommendation of mercy they were sentenced as having committed misdemeanours rather than felonies. They could therefore have their fines paid, and five were immediately released by farmers who wanted their labour. The report says that of thirty-one misdemeanours during the month it is expected that “none will reach the chain-gang,” since there are “three farmers to every 

 Prev. P 90/279 next