The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1899-09-03


Force Them out of politics, establish the
whipping post and enforce the vagrant
law ana IN five years there will be no
outrages, no lynchings and tine number
of colyicts will be reduced 80 per cent.
| betleve this. If the enforcement of
these laws reached some bad white men
let them suffer the penalties. The time
has come when we must purge and puri-
fy the ballot box just as we now purge
the jury box. In some of the States
the ballot is hedged around with a
property qualification of $500 and the
ability to read and write. 1t should go
farther and require a good moral char
acter just as the jury box does. We all
know many good negroes who should be
allowed to vote and some bad Write men
who should not. The devil is not dead.
Not very long ago | troubled myself and
spent some money in getting white
man pardoned out of the chaingang be-
cause his poor wife impOrtuned me. He
hadn't been out q month before he got
into another row and was put in the
calaboose. There were two cows in the
pound near the calaboose and next
morning when the marshal went after
Pat to take him before the mayor Pat
was not in, but the cows We're. The
deyilish rascal had got skeleton key
and unlocked himself out and locked the
cows in and now my friends joke me
about Pat and call him my pet and
am out of the pardon business. Well,
now that man is not fit to vote, for he
has deserted his family and won't work.
The negro paper says that Richard
ppiQ A faif ri
body servant stole the governors gold
watch the day he died and now Ian
guishes in Newman jail. Don't that cap
the climax? A good old negro by the
name of Moody died here few days
ago and was buried with great cere-
mony. His sons came from abroad to
attend the funeral, and one of them was
so overcome with grief that he declared
he could not bear to see his dear old
father put down in the cold, cold grave
and so he staid at the house TO weep
and mourn. But when the family re-
turned he had stolen the old mans best
clothes and everything else Of value and
gone off on the train.
Well don't think that his sort should
be allowed to vote, do you?
One table in this prison report sur
prises me and that is the great increase
of burglaries over simple larceny by the
negroes. Seven hundred and ninety-two
couvicts are in for burglary and only
30 for larceny. | suppose the explana-
tion Is that for small stealing they are
sent to the county chaingangs and put to
work on the public roads. For the un-
mentionable crime or its attempt there
are 1TS conyicts. Judge Lynch does not
get them all by a long shot.
The prison report is interesting and
instructive reading and shows the most
careful and humane treatment Of the
conyicts. The commission with General
Evans ut its head, are all kind, Chris
tian gentlemen. and no State in the
Union can show better record of its
prisoners, both male and female.
But it is impossible to keep up with
the lies and SANDERS that are circulated
by Northern politicians and Southern
negro editors and educators. 1t is all
scheme to get money from the North
ern dupes Even as notable a woman
as the wife of Booker Washington, who
is chairman of the executive committee
Of the National Association of Colored
Women, says in her published address,
1.-The white people preach and point to
the immortality of young colored girls
and yet the white people themselves are
to blame for this condition of affairs,
for in this convict lease system the girls
and women are not only worked in the
field with men, but are shut up at night
in the same cells with them. Can you
expect a poor, ignorant colored girl to
be pure and virtuous when she is shut
in night after night with a man?'
General Evans writes me that no such
condition exists in Georgia, nor has ever
existed, and that for ten years past
the female conyicts have not even been
worked on farms with the men, but
have been leased to separate contractors
who work none but the women on a
farm. The women tabout sixty in num-
ber) work together, eat together, sleep
together and are absolutely separated
from men and boys and are on entirely
different farms. These women are not
confined in cells at all, but live in a
house far more comfortable than they
lived in before their conviction. The
men and women do not meet at all at
any time or anywhere.
How is that? What explanation can
that woman make? What can Booker
Washington say about it? He had bet
ter say something about it, for he has
had the support and encoura cement or
the Southern people and he will be held
responsible for such malignant slanders.
This prison report shows that 40 per
cent of the conyicts can read and write.
That 40 per cent are married.
That 30 per cent are between the ages
of seventeen and twenty
That only forty were in slavery before
the war and only eighteen are old enough
to remember what slavery was.
This reports shows over 1000 coIored
convicts, including the county chain
gangs, and 600 of these are from Fulton
county. Atlanta seems to be a good
nursery for crime.
Another singular table in the report
rs called the table of ''recidivists,"
which means, / suppose, the return
ers." There are 269 serving a second
term: AZ a third term; 6 fourth term
and 9 a fifth term. They seem to like
the business. A good whipping or two
or three good whippings would have
stopped all those recidivists. If a man
likes one kind OF punishment so well as
to go back to it, it would be well to
change it and let him try another.
But let us keep on agitating and dis
cussing and let no man boast that he
knows it all, for he doesn't.