The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-09-12

land misery presented itselG The eye inYoluntarily turned for some relief from the horrible picture of human sufz fering which this living sepuIehre af- forded. Mir. - inquired If there were any shoemakers on board. The cap- tain advanced: his appearance bespoke
 his oce; he is an American tail. deter mined, and with an eye that flashes with AIgerine cruelty. He eaIleI in the Dutch language for shOemakers, and slevs- tan I forget the scane which fol- lowed. The poor fellows came running
 up with unspeakable delight, no doubt |anticipating a relief from their Ioath- some dungeon. Some were with
 out shirts, others had this article of
 dress. but of a quality as coarse as the
 worst packing cloth. inquired of sev-
 eral If they could speak English. They smiled and gabbled. No. Engly, no En- gly-one Engly talk ship" Such Is the mercenary barbarity of the
 Americans who are engaged in this
 trade that they crammed into one of
 those vessels five hundred passengers.
 eighty of whom died on the passage.
 The price for women is about seventy
 dollars, men eighty dollars, boys sixty
 dollars. When they saw at our depar-
 ture that we had not purchased, their lcountenances fell to that standard of stupid gloom which seemed to place them a. link below rational beings.
 From my heart execrated the Euro pean cause of their removal, which is
 thus daily compelling men to quit the land of their fathers, to become volun- tary exiles in a foreign clime.'
 Next to the redemptioners, in order of appeal to the sympathy, come the victims of kidnappers. 5s.-....,
 Besides redemptioners and the vic tims of kidnappers there were among the white slaves regularly indentured servants and eonvicts. But these con- victs were, in many instances, far from being criminals as we understand the term to-day There was at that time in England a long list of so-calIed crimes for which capital punishment might be inflicted, and many a con demned man had committed only some minor offence. Transportation com pared favorably with hanging in the minds of those who knew nothing about it. The voyage to this new and wild land, as contemporary writer calls it, in a vessel of three hundred tons bur den, carrying seven or eight hundred passengers, took from eight to twelve weeks A diet of sharply salted food and undrinkable water or an epidemic of contagious disease was liable before the longed-for shore was reached, to produce the same effect as the hanging that had been escaped.
 Far exceeding the convicts in num- Der were the regularly indentured ser- wants, who set out with terms of con- tract already drawn up. Boys were sent in preference to men, because they could do almost as much work and their terms were longer. Moreover they were easier to get, since they were bound out as apprentices.
 ''The white slave, unlike the negro might look forward tosthe day of free- dom. When it came, however, it found him veryslow in tl1gq social scale, and most of the indentured servants in the south became poor whites. despised even by negroes. The day of freedom was often delayed until the heart grew sick Punishment for insubordination, however slight, or for escape, was an increase of the term of servitude. A runaway who had been gone one day had to serve for it one week: for one week of absence he served a month; for a month, six months At seasons when there was special demand for labor these periods of expiation were very much heightened. This system of white slavery lasted at least two hundred years, since 1t existed sin 1919 and con- tinued until 1S17.". 5.,. ,y M