The Jackson standard. [volume] (Jackson C.H., Ohio) 1847-1888, 1874-12-24
Why the Southern States are Poor.

| A Gulf State correspondent of the New
| York Witness enumerates among the
causes of the poverty of the Southern
people, the fact that the necessaries of
life are brought from a distance; the i'm
providence, intemperance,s social disorder,
and laziness of the whites. Added to
these, the cheating of the industrious
blacks. On the last point the writer
says: "The working people of this sec
| ton are the former slaves. Nearly all
manuel labor is done by their hands
They are the carpenters. the bricl<layers,
the draymen, the porters, the market
men, housekeepers, etc. They would be
in much better circumstances if they re-
| ceived the wages of their honest toll
but they do not Once they wrought
without even nominal pay, and many of
their present employers are determined
they shall do SO now. They are cheated
and wronged in numberless ways. Their
former masters, the landowners, in many
places, refuse to sell them land so that
they may become householders and work
for themselves. They must have work,
so the landowner forces them to work
for him. He rents to the freedman a
plot of ground for which the rental is
one-third of the cotton and onefourth Of
the corn which 1T brings forth. He fur
nishes them provisions, and they have
no credit elsewhere. He. keeps the ac-
count, which they, having no knowledge
of figures, are not able to dispute. He
charges them whatever prices he will,
and when the time of settlement comes
round, he usually makes them out to be
in his debt: A young man of color,
school teacher in Georgia, speaking of
this very thing said: 81 have known
this injustice to be done in many cases,
Of I n to
tions in false accounts. If l tell col
ored man that his account is not reckon
ed correctly, and he demurs to his land
lord, the landlord says: Who told you
thisY and if he says that the teacher
told him, l get a message that | had bet
ter mind my own business, which means
keep still or die. For where the word
of the landlord does not convince his
blows must, and there is no reparation
for blow struck by white man upon
negro" A lady of our acquaintance
knew a respectable family that went to
Florida, in the employ of a land-holder,
with whom they remained for year AT
the end of this time they came back to
their former home without dollar. As
their poverty became known to this lady,
she asked them, "How is it that though
you have been at work all the season,
you now have nothing?' They replied,
''We worked all the year, and when we
came to settle the master said that we
had taken up all our wages and he owed
US nothing" Did you keep an account?'
she inquired. eyes, he kept it in book,
which L have here" Let me see it,"
said the lady. So the book was pro-
duced, carefully preserved in a cloth
wrapper, and iol it was entirely blank
He had torn out every mark that it con-
tanned. Such shames are common, and
as l have already said, there is no repara-
ton for the colored man. Public senti-
ment does not demand that he shall be
paid for his work, neither do the courts
of law. No equity is shown to freedmen
in the courts.
In Macon, Georgia, short time since
as l was informed by a Christian man
who knew the facts, a colored man being
on trial before jury, one of the jurors
was called from the jury-bench to the
witness-stand, and, after giving his testi-
mony against the prisoner, resumed his
seat among the jurors, to note and weigh
as an impartial (?) tribune the case of
the accused. This is representative
case, for though the form of the injustice
may vary, every colored man knows that
to go before a court is to go to certain
condemnation, while the clearest cases
of fraud and violence on the part of the
whites rarely result otherwise than in
the aequittal of the guilty party.