The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-02-25
THE STATE OF LABOR IN THE
 

SOUTH.
 A serious condition of attalrs pfeValls in most of the states of the south ill this important matter of the treatment ot the laboring people, who are regarded in most instances as bound to service for a term of months, usually twelve months by the conditions of the con tract they sign at the beginning ot the year. but which frequently never terInl- mates, because the planter usually gets the control over the actions OF the la borer through the operations of the credit system. or other device. In most of the southern states the laws are so framed as to protect the farmer ana contractor and storekeeper as agalnst the laborer. No appeal to the courts avails him anything, except to tighten the hold of the employer upon his time and movements. This is very generally known among the laborers and they wisely refrain from appealing to the courts for redress of their grievances. In many districts of South Carolina, Louisiana and Mississippi a virtual condition of slavery has been hitched upon the laborers under the operation of the Jaws made to accomplish that purpose, and contrary to the proVlslofls of the federal constitution. That there is substantial truth in this view of the matter was made manifest in horrible manner in the findings of the grand jury in a South Carolina county very short time ago. It has also been shown in many instances that convicts whose time has expired have been held to ser vice long after by the contractors, be- cause of the laxity of oversight Of the matter by the state authorities having charge and oversight of the penal sys- tenn. But it is with the question of free and not prison labor that we wish here to deal
 We believe that the tendency of the Afro Americans of the southern states to leave those states for the states of the north and west will increase rather than diminish in force during the pres ent decade. All the industrial and civil conditions prevailing in the southern states point to that outcome of the mat ter, while the dominant race in the southern states show no disposition to relax the severity of their laws or to moderate the offensiyeness of their con- duct toward the Afro-American people. On the contrary, the tendency is dis tinctly toward greater severity in the law and more offensiveness in the con duct of the white race. The younger generation of Afro- Amerirans will not stand for this sort of conditions when they can so easily change It by days
 
 The farmers of the south should take warning from the labor famine condl- tion gradually developing in North Car olina, Louisiana and Mississippi. While they have chance to do so they should seek to change the odious state of af- fairs which is surely deprivlng them of the best labor force in the world fitted for their purposes. What Is now only a tendency will In short time become a manifestation with which they cannot cope. We believe all the evidence in the case points to the conclusion we have reached here. The southern farm- CTS and other employers of labor, can not afford to lose their Afro American labor, because they cannot replace it. Neither the Italian nor the Chinaman is adapted to the peculiarities of southern labor requirements; neither of them could ever hope to understand or to master the mule, for instance the most essential spoke in the wheel of southern industrialism after the Afro American laborer. We think it fair conclusion that the Afro American laborer of the south cannot be replaced to advantage, and that by pursuing policy of op- pressive restrictions and eXtorton, with offensive legislation covering the Afro American people in all the relation of life, the southern farmers, and those they control, the politicians, stand in their own light, and in the end will have to pay dearly for it in the loss of cold cash.-New York Age.