Lafayette M. Hershaw

“ The real foundation of peonage, after all, as it relates to the Negro is the refusal to regard him as a man having rights as other men have them. So far has wrong, and injustice, and oppression gone that not only is the Negro outside of the consideration of the law of the land, but practically outside of the humane and kindly regard of a majority of the white race in the United States. Not only are laws perverted and given a special twist and interpretation in cases where the Negro is a party to litigation, but even words in ordinary use lose their accepted meaning when applied to him. ”

“ The contest for the future must be a constant effort to educate public opinion to the point where it will concede to the Negro inalienable rights: The right to vote, the right to an education in all that the term implies, the right to employment in all occupations, the right to make of himself and of his people and of his neighbors all that they may become under the most favored conditions. ”

“ In many of the Southern States the vagrancy laws are exceedingly drastic, and under their enforcement by the courts almost any person may be convicted as a vagrant, and being unable to pay his fine or to give surety for his future good conduct may enter into a contract, with one who does pay his fine or become his surety, to work for him, and if he does not perform the labor may be prosecuted for violating this contract, and for the second offense may enter into a contract for additional service for an extended period, and thus the restraint of his liberty may be almost interminable. ”

“ The right to hold property and live in it wherever he may purchase it is denied and restricted. The right to work at whatever occupation he may be fitted is denied, and his opportunities for earning a living are confined to narrower and narrower limits each year. Even the fundamental right of a slave to petition when the yoke is galling is denied him, and when he would assemble to formulate just complaints in a way protected by the law of the land, he is accused of whining and of stirring up bad feeling between the races, and so the list might be extended indefinitely. ”

“ While the principal sources of the practice of peonage are the laws just referred to, yet it has existed and does exist without law. The condition of the colored man in this country is practically that of an outlaw. He is scarcely thought of as having rights. He is distinctly told not to insist upon his rights, but to do his duty; that rights will come as the result of duty well performed. This is in effect to say the laws, the customs, the institutions, which protect and defend other men are not to be invoked by the Negro when in his opinion he needs them. ”

“ Therefore, wherever we have compulsory service for debt, we have peonage, it matters not by what method the result is attained. There are to-day in certainly six states, and probably in ten, in which the institution of slavery formerly existed, laws which make it possible to compel men to render service against their will, and that too when they have committed no act which, outside of those States would be held to be a crime in any English-speaking community. ”

“ Slavery and involuntary servitude according to the construction of the Court consist only in compelling one to work against his will and does not relate to the thousand and one facts of the human life by which one man might, though free in theory, be made subservient to another man. For instance, this same Court decided, in a case brought up from Arkansas where a Negro had, through the conspiracy of a number of white men been prevented from pursuing his occupation as a lumberman in a lumber district of that State, that it had no jurisdiction in the premises ”

“ Taking counsel of this decision employers who make contracts with laborers are cautious that there shall be present at the time of making the contract only the employer and the employee. When the contract is made, the employer advances the laborer a sum of money, or goods, or supplies, which become the consideration for the contract, and the laborer agrees to work for such person for a fixed period at a certain sum per month or per year. In a case which went through all the courts, State and Federal, the laborer agreed to work for a year at twelve dollars per month. ”

“ The Alabama law, which has recently been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States, may serve as an example. It provides, in short, that any person who enters into a contract in writing to perform any service for another and thereby obtains money or other personal property from such person with intent to defraud the person, and who leaves his service without performing the act or refunding the money or goods, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor ”

“ Sometimes we feel confident that our pounding away for nearly two years has frightened into inactivity those who were practicing peonage in the same State with the persons convicted and sentenced. We hear now and then of workmen being turned loose to the right and to the left of us when prosecutions are going on, but while it would be discouraging to think that we have not thus reduced the evil to much smaller dimensions, I regret to say that cases are still being discovered or reported in various directions. ”

“ From the usual condition of the great mass of laboring men where these laws are enforced, to peonage is but a step at most. In fact, it is difficult to draw a distinction between the condition of a man who remains in service against his will, because the State has passed a certain law under which he can be arrested and returned to work, and the condition of a man on a nearby farm who is actually made to stay at work by arrest and actual threats of force under the same law. ”

“ The actual spoken threat of an individual employer who makes his laborer stay at work against his will by fear of the chain gang, and the threat of the State to send him to the chain gang whenever his employer chooses to have him arrested, are the same in result and do not seem to me very different in any other way. ”

“ The counterfeiter has before him the task of making false money to look as much like genuine money as possible. The maker of laws violative of fundamental rights has before him the task of doing the forbidden thing in a way which will as nearly as possible conceal the fact that it has been done. What peonage is, has been defined by the United States Supreme Court. ”

“ We have discovered cases of peonage and others have been brought to our attention, we have examined into many and obtained indictments and convictions, but how many cases are in existence is the same kind of a question as though the crime were pension fraud, or counterfeiting, or public land fraud, or fraud on the revenue. ”

“ In addition to these, other laws, perfectly proper on their face, are perverted to reduce persons to a condition of peonage, among which are false pretense or false promise laws, absconding debtor laws, board-bill laws, and in fact every ordinance, regulation, or statute defining a misdemeanor or crime. It can readily be seen that if the States may by legislative enactment define any act to be a crime the thirteenth amendment may become in time a mere nullity. ”

“ Carrying on the occupation of immigrant agent without a license is a misdemeanor, the penalty for which is a fine from five hundred to five thousand dollars, and imprisonment for a period of not exceeding one year. ”

“ To meet his greedy quest, it was then necessary to look elsewhere to find the man who was feeble enough in will and strong enough in body to meet the conditions which then presented themselves. The African was that man. ”

“ Therefore, it is not unusual to find that, without any law at all, large numbers of laborers are restrained of their liberty in quarters and in stockades, guarded by men who carry guns and deadly weapons, and though having been convicted of no wrongdoing, are kept in the condition of ordinary criminals. The report of the Attorney General for the year 1907 contains a list of eighty-three complaints of peonage pending in the Department of Justice. ”

“ It may be defined as a status or condition of compulsory service based upon the indebtedness of the peon to the master. The basal fact is indebtedness. One fact exists universally, all were indebted to their masters. ”