The Mena weekly star., 1906-09-20
MISSOURI PEONAGE TRIAL
Damaging Evidence Against Smith Family and Employees at
 Cape Girardeau.
NEGROES WORKED UNDER ARMED GUARD

Henry Stokes, Who Had Served Five fear'
 in the Ninth U. $. Cavalry. Told the
 Jury How the system of Peonage was
 Worked at Sikeston by the Defendants
 Case May Last Thvee Weeks.
 Cape Girardeau, Mo, Sept. h. Seven hours of hard work in the fed eral court Wednesday tended 10 strengthen materially the evidence against the Smith brothers and theif employees in the conspiracy case wherein they are charged with hold ing men in slavery. Charles Smith and his son, Charles M. Smith, jr., were repeatedly connected with the case by negro witnesses.
 The five foremen and guards, Lee Rogers, William Woods, Ben Stone. Ben" Fields and Floyd Woods. are, if the jury will believe the dozen ne- gro witnesses who were examined thoroughly, connected with the execu- ton of the things that the govern ment charges they conspired to do.
 James Smith and Rex Smith have so far only been connected in an In direct way by the testimony Of one white man with the abuses of tho government charges. Their interest in the land and partnership with Charles Smith may be shown, but the negroes examined up to this time dc not tell of seeing them. There is a remarkable unanimity in the testi- mony of the negroes. Some are lntel- ligent and educated, some so densely ignorant that one could hardly believe that men would know so little and be above the grade of brutes. yet they all tell of Imprisonment in the shacf s and houses, and, though they do net hear each other testify, they tell of the same circumstances and stick to their stories under the most severe cross-examination
 The fact was developed that there were two camps in which the men were kept. On the Woods place there were two shacks. On the Re gers place, where most of the work was clearing underbrush and hand ling logs, a white man with his fam fly of four children lived in two room and from eighteen to twenty-one ne groes lived in the third room in lii tie lean-to frame house of one story. The negroes were kept locked in tho room with windows barred and GOV. cred with barbed wire.
 The first witness called Wednes. day morning was Henry Stokes. a ragged Virginia negro of 45. witt scraggly beard and mustache. He ha served five years in the Ninth cava. ry and came to Missuori as a soldier at Jefferson Barracks. Stokes haC been in Memphis looking for work in April
 q saw Mir Charley Smith. the young man, in Memphis" he said, and he told me he would pay me $l 90 day and pay Saturday nights. wanted that so could send the money to my family I thought it was all right so l hired to them. There were fifteen of us when We reached Sikes- ton at l o'clock in the morning. Mir. Charles smith the oldest one, met us at the train, put us in three wa gons and took us to the farms"
 'I was locked in the shack forty eight nights, every night until l es- capped. The clothes put on at Lit. tie Rock the day before l hired to Smith at Memphis I took off OR the fifth day of June, the night after l escaped. The place was full of in. sects and by the time had been there one night I was covered with creep. mig insects"
 The negro told of two negroes, Robert Butler and another, who es-