The Jackson standard. [volume] (Jackson C.H., Ohio) 1847-1888, 1880-02-12
lCincinnati Commercial.1
The COlNrpd Citizen,


from Monday morning till
Saturday night, he walks up to the
office and gets his pay. Wages vary,
according to the value Of services rem
dered. If the service is poor and I'M
profitable, the laborer is paid for what
he has done, and discharged Such
are the recognized relations between
employers and employed in all civil
lied countries. It is, however, within
our recollection that different sys-
tenn prevailed in part Of these United
States.
Over thirty years ago, seated on the
deck Of the fine old steamer George
town." we were journeying down the
Mississippi to New Orleans. We we're
below Baton Rouge; the evening was
delightful; it was in the month of
March; the perfume of orange bios
SONS, under light westwardly breeze,
was waited across the water into the
open doors of the steamers cabin.
The finely cultivated corn-felds, mas
sive sugar-mills and princely residenc-
es, embowered in orange groves, live
oaks and China trees, in the bright
moonlight presented a picture not ca
silly forgotten.
"This, SIR" said my companion-a
New Orleans merchants the Gar
den Of America"
could but reply, 1T really is the
finest | have ever seen; but what noise
is that hear? It sounds like cries of
distress
"Oh that! It is Saturday night
the niggers pay night"
please explain; is he getting pay
for his weeks work?"
Not that, exactly, but pay for the
work he hasn't done. You see these
plantations work all the way from
200 to /, 200 niggers each. They have
to keep regular accounts with every
nigger. Every one has their task for
each day, and when night comes those
who have not completed it are charged
a certain number Of lashes proportion
ated to the unfinished task, to be paid
on Saturday night.
But [ hear the screams of a wom-
an"
''Oh, yes, the women and children
will yelp right smart under the tick
ler; but the old bucks don't mind it
they are used to it. y
My experience in later years war
rants the assertion, that at no time on
Saturday night, between and 10
o'clock, anywhere on that coast, could
the traveller get out Of hearing of the
lash and the cries of the tortured
slave
The negroes pay night" robbed
the Garden of America of all its
beauty. The soil was rich; it had
drank the life-blood of 100000 slaves.
Eternal right, the sure avenger of
wrong, began it's work eighteen years
ago,-and completed it? Not yet.
The ''oppressors pay night has come.
Justice and liberty entered his man.
sion clad in steel armor. He cried for
mercy. They pitied him and let him
go. He had accepted the situation,
and sacredly promised the lately en-
franchised colored man the free en-
ioyment of his rights guaranteed by
act Of Congress. Among them was
the right Of representation in the Ma
tional Legislature. In place of going
home to thank God for sparing their
miserable forfeited lives, they drive the
black man from the polls with shot
guns, hunt him with bloodhounds,
enact chain-gang laws and whip him
to death, and. in every other mean
and contemplate manner known to
the most brutal Of savages, thrust him
down to depth of degradation great
er than he ever knew in the days Of
slavery. They have not only deprived
him of the right to vote as he pleases,
they have stolen his thirty representa-
tives in Congress, and are making use
of them to menace the life of the Ma
ton, upon the same issue they raised
in 1861. And all this, forsooth, is
high-toned Southern chivalrym Such
honorable dealing would forever dis
grace a Ute Indian.
If there is another Nation on the
face of the earth that will allow a
million of its citizens to be thus rob-
bed, we neither wish to know or fra
ternize with them. Mr.. Hayes has
long told us that the laws shall be
faithfully executed in the South. We
have waited-the laws are still violat-
ed. while its officers are all that is ''ex-
ecuted." If the enfranchised negro
goes to England, France, Prussia, Rus
sia, China or Japan and meets with a
tithe of the indignity which he here
suffers daily beneath the Stars and
Stripes" reparation would be demand
ed at the mouth of the cannon. That
=, &c nt hxv,O 10,
by profession 1t was the United
States which guaranteed the negro his
rights. It was to the United States
those rights were conceded by con-
quered rebels. And the ''Commander-
in-chief of the Army and Navy Of the
United States can't help it. Can
John Sherman or James G. Blaine do
any better? If so. then let US pray
Fly swiftly round We wheels oft,me
And bring the welcome day.
If the Federal Government had the
pluck of ''Old Hickory" or of COM
mon ten-ounce bantam rooster, they
would need no other committee to de-
wise ways and means to give the negro
the rights granted to him by Con-
gress.
Let us make suppositious case, in
order to ascertain with fair prdbabili-
ty whether the hand of Federal au-
thority, in the supposed emergency,
would fall more heavily upon the op-
pressor than the oppressed. Mr.. Cling
mans district in Mississippi has three
times as many colored voters as there
are white ones. Suppose a conven-
ton is called to nominate Mr. Cling
mans successor in Congress, and all
the voters attend. 1t is but fair that
the majority should organize the con-