San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1890-02-11
WHO ARE HIS FRIENDS.

of the arena of public problems that
thrust themselves so persistently into
the eye and face of everyday things
that they cannot be denied solution
1t is perpetually coming up in some
form or another. Some shooting, or
lynching, or court decision brings the
subject before the reading public and
the newspapers have no option but to
consider it. Running through the
great diversity of presentation of this
subject there has always been q uni
formity in the claims set up by the
south, and in nothing has this uniform
ity been more marked than in it's
declarations of real interest in the
colOred mans welfare. The south has
harped everlastingly on this theme,
and arrOgated to itself an acquaint-
ance with the character and habits
and real needs of the colOred
brother which it was impossible the
north could possess. Was the South
not the home of the cOlored man, was
not his master of old his friend now,
and is not this feeling of friendship
between them a real bond stronger
than ali mere political considerations
All this and more we have been told
and the changes have been rung on
the sentimentalities of the case, and
the cid colored nanny and her white
foster child have been introduced into
the drama until one would think that
the sole reason for which the white
southerner was brought into the
world was to defend the poor colOred
man from his sworn foe and implac-
able enemy, the republican. Every
massacre of the colored people was
for his good, or it was instigated by
the radical republican, the Yankee
who had no use for a cOlOred man but
t0 cheat him into political partner
ship for the white mans good only.
The southern democrat has invariably
represented himself the best friend
that colored man can have in all
that pertains to his industrial
welfare and educational privileges.
In this view of the race problem
how comes it that a South Carolina
court, composed Of white democrats,
has Just sentenced poor colOred
man to hard labor in the penitentiary
because he broke a labor con tract
with his employer in order to better
his condition. His contract called
for S95 pay for 3l2 working days, less
than 81 cents per day. The man didn't
the loving kindness which
waited OH such remuneration
and quit. He was arrested and SEN
fenced to the peDitentiary. The case
was taken to the supreme court Of
the state Oh a writ of habeas corpus,
and the supreme court of the great
state of South Carolina decreed that
the poor cOlored man, over whose i'll
dustrial welfare the bowls OfsOuthern
companion yearn so un-
ceasingly, should go to prison.
Now if this is the southern mans
care for his colOred foster brother
is it any wonder that his old
slave feels that the days OF his servi-
tude are not clean gone and turns to
his 1861 G5 deliverer for still greater
freedom? There is no politics in this
case. 1t is case, pure and simple,
of the OVerreaching of the ignorant
and weak by the wiser and stronger.
1t is a disgrace to the state of South
Carolina that her statute books per-
nit such injustices in theS sacred
name of law. When state so I'M
compromising democratic as that of
South Carolina sends a colOred man
to Jail because he is unwilling to
work for thirty cents day under a
contract which he was too ignorant to
underst and, it is time to question the
disinterestedness of the interest
which southern democrats assert
that they feel in the cOlOred people,
formerly their slaves. The old habit
is still strong, and the colored man
continues to find, despite all the pro-
testatiOns of his former masters, that
his interests are not any safer in such
hands now than they were before the
war.