The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-06-29
Nothing to Do With 4reOnage."

Bigoted persons and newspapers and alert to misrepresent the South on any and all pretexts have hastened to interpret the recent ad- Indication by Judge William H. Brawley that the labor contract of South Carolina is unconstitutional, as the abolition of form of peonage. Such an interpretation is wholly false, the decision containing no such e&- pression and justifying no such infer ence, the law itself devising no form of statutory peonage, whether or not it may have provided imprisonment for breach of contract. ''Peonage," Ii it means anything, means kind or slavery, and breach of labor con tract, while it made man punlshaDle for a nlisdemeanor and subjected hlm la slave more than does the commls- sion of petty larceny or ordinary as sault and battery.
 The laborer who broke his agricul- tural contract was arrested, tried and sentenced to Imprisonment, usually with hard labor, on the public works or to pay a fine or both. Similar pun lishments are imposed for numerous minor offences. Sometimes the land lord paid the convicts fine, under the promise that the latter would enter his employ and work for him until the debt was paid. Identically the same thing may be done by an employer for convict who is serving time for as- sault and battery, gambling, larceny, disorderly conduct on the streets, the convict when he is released working as a free man on precisely the same terms, with the same hours, and with the same liberty, that other laborers observe and enjoy. Punishment for breach of farm labor contract was the same in it's nature and in its re- suit as is the punishment for any pet ty infraction of the laws. It fre- quently ocurs that an employing far mer pays his hand who has been too free with a razor out of jail in orr der that his services may not be lost | from the farm.
 The labor contract law may or may not have been wise, it may or may not have been constitutional we are not here discussing the merits of Judge Brawley's decision, which may or may lnot be sustained by the higher courts, but it had it's origin in the South Car olina Legislature out of the knowledge that the large majority of negro la
 borers are, from 8 contractual point of view, wholly irresponsible, that the Iemployer who advances the improvid-
 ent negro and his family money and provisions for their subsistence during
 the winter months and while the crop
 is under cultivation has no remedy in the civil courts for his failure to meet
 his obligations, and that the infiction
 of a physical penalty was therefore,
 the sole method offering to insure the
 employer aginst loss We hope that | the future will disclose that the law
 was iriexpedient and unnecessary and that the Legislature overestimated the
 demand for it, but we protest against | the unctuous assumption of persons eager to believe that the South is bent
 upon enslaving men In violation of the
 Federal Constitution, that the labor 1contract law created a system of lpeonage or anything akin to it in South Carolian. Tn exceptional cases this. law was abused and converted
 into an instrument of oppression, but If that possibility is to be avoided 1t
 will be necessary to wipe out practi- lcally all the statutory punishments for misdemeanors found in the South ICarolina code of laws.
 Moreover, the suggestion that peon- age has been general or common, with Ior without the contract labor law, in
 South Carolina is gratuitous islander and without any substance in fact proceeding from an ignorant and reck. less animosity felt in certain quarters towards the South.--C Charleston News land Courier,