William R. Day

“ The convict, instead of being committed to work and labor as the statute provides for the state, when his fines and costs are unpaid, comes into court with a surety, and confesses judgment in the amount of fine and costs, and agrees with the surety, in consideration of the payment of that fine and costs, to perform service for the surety after he is released because of the confession of judgment. ”

“ Applying this definition to the facts here shown, we must determine whether the convict was in reality working for a debt which he owed the surety, and whether the labor was performed under such coercion as to become a compulsory service for the discharge of a debt. If so, it amounts to peonage, within the prohibition of the Federal statutes. ”

“ Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
'Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.'
It was under the authority herein conferred, to enforce the provisions of this amendment by appropriate legislation, that Congress passed the sections of the Revised Statutes here under consideration. Clyatt v. United States, 197 U.S. 207, 49 L. ed. 726, 25 Sup. Ct. Rep. 429 ”

“ In that case it was held that a money penalty imposed for embezzlement which went to the creditor, and not into the Treasury, under the Penal Code of the Philippine Islands, did not make imprisonment for the nonpayment of such penalty equivalent to imprisonment for debt. ”