New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1877-04-06
THE NEGRO AS A CITIZEN.
HIS CONDITION IN SOUTH CAROLINA.

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COST AND MANAGEMENT OF CRIMINALS
IRON A STAFF CORRESPONDENT THE TRTBUSE.l
CHARLESTON. April Let me not do injustice TO
the negro in discussing the condition of the South.
As politician he has proved failure and the COM
munites which have fallen under his rule have been
sorely afflicted but he is the w0rkingman every
where in the Southern States III there is dignity In
labor, then he ought to be more dgnified than his
white brother. The Southern white man has
horror Of manual labor, and especially OF farm
work. In the whole journey from Richmond
to Charleston l did not q single white
man at work in the fields. Everywhere
it was the negro who was blowing and
planting. So in the towns it is the negro Who drives
the carts, handles the goods and farm products,
makes the gardens, does the work IN the streets, and
fetches and carries generally He shares the trades
with foreigners and NOrtherners. The white man
will keep store practice profession. but that
is about all he appears willing to do. If he own
land he expects to live by it. while the negro per-
FORMS the labor of cultvatng the SOIL Forgetful of
Poor Richards prOverb, he wants to thrive by the
pillow, but will neither hold not drive. am at loss
to know how the white men make living in this
State. In the northern counties, at the foot of the
Blue Ridge. remember to have seen white farmers
tng the fields, but that region belongs only geo.
graphically to the South. 1t is country of small,
hilly farms, where Northern crops cultivated in
Northern ways with only the help of a small negro
population In all other parts of the State il is the
rarest thing to see white man engaged in anything
that requires the use of his muscles.
No wonder the country is poor when the portion
of its population that ought to join to strength the
skill and energy that comes of intelligence refuses
to take part in the all-mportant work of essen
TALLY agricultural community. Here in Charleston
the blacks are not only the domestic servants, cart
ers, porters and stevedores, but they also the
market gardeners, fishermen butchers, marketnen.
and to considerable extent the skilled mechanics.
With the unfailiDg capital Of his sinewy arms the
negro ought. if he did nothing to balk the laws OF
political economy, TO possess the land aud Its riches
in "a few generations, but he does not seem to be
making much progress in accommodating wealth. L
cannot learn that as rule the coored people in this
State are much better Off than they eight
years ago. OF course there are exceptions; here
and there individually with an admixture of
white blood-accumulates little property; but as
a class the blacks appear from all that | see and
hear to have halted at the stage of progress they
reached four five years after the close of the war;
The stimulus of freedom spurred them on for time.
but when working for themselves ceased to be
novelty they fell back into the thrftess careless
habits bred in slavery. In travelling through the
country one seldom a new cabin, or an old one
that bears any marks of repair. The dwelling OF
the country negro is the old plantation howell of
single room, built of logs rough boards, which
erected in the days of slavery, and he seems to
have no ambition to increase his comforts by adding
an extra room, building porch over the door,
planting shade tree, or evon stopping up the
chinks in the walls Most of these cabins have no
SASH the windows being closed with board shutters.
In the towns the blacks crowd into the little dirty
one-story houses formerly used as quarters for the
domestic servants of the whites, or occupy similar
structures in the suburbs The outskirts of South
em city are usually dotted with rough, Imprinted
cabins without dOOr-yards shade, or Out-buildings,
where the negroes live in the rudest possible way.
The discOuraging thing in their condition is their
absence Of desire to improve it. Apparently they
don't care for better houses, better furniture better
clothes or better food. What then, do they do with
their earningsf They do not earn so much as might
be pected from the fact that they are everywhere
the Iaborers of the community where they live, aud
this is because they will not work steadily No
peopein the world are as fond of holidays and merry
markings. Wherever one goes he finds idle negro men
lounpng about the towns and railway stations, and
sees idle women sitting the steps of their novels
or gossiping with each other. The average negro
p"N''
sured himself of and bacon enough for his family
TO eat and nobody enjoys than he the pleasure
of sitting on fence-rail dry-gOOds box. 1t Is
hardly to be expected however, that he will be
steady laborer until the white man sets him the ex-
ample and forces him by sharp competition out OF
his thriftless, easy-gOing habits.
IL the negro is the wOrkngman of the South, it
must be admitted that he is also the criminal.
visited the State Prison at Columbia the other day
and found that it contained over 400 colored con-
yicts and only 80 whites. Ii should be remembered
that thus is State where there is usually majority
of negroes on a jury, and where the judges owe
their positions to the votes of colorcd members OF
the Legislature. Evidently this great disparity in
the number of criminals furnished by the two races
cannot be accounted for by any unfrendllness to-
ward the blacks the part of the courts. The
prison itself is a monument to carpet-bag mlsrule
1t is little more than a huge unfinished stone
wall pierced Oh each side with four tiers of cells.
The building that was TO roof and lnclose these
cells was never built, and the poor cOnvicts have
fires in Winter and no protection against storms
and cold save what they can get by standing
pieces of plank against the iron bars of their cell
doors. A brick wall runs for a few hundred feet
along the front of the yard, and then ends abruptly,
all the rest of the grounds being without Enclosure
except for a short distance, where tumble-down
hoard fence proongs the wall -Four or five
guards placed in towers, are all the barrier
between this army of criminals and the open fields
along the Congaree River and vet escapes are very
rare. The warden, Col. Parmelee, was appointed
few months ago to reform the abuses and eXtrava-
gance that grew out of political management of the
prison, and with the small means at his command
has done a remarkable work in establishing disci-
pine cleanliness and industry He told Inc that the
negro prisoners were very tractable. Nearly all
were committed for crimes against property, while
the whites. as a rule were guilty of crimes against
fine pcrson Il must be SAID to the credit of the
lower classes of South Carolina whites" remarked