The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1908-01-22
PEONAGE IN THE SOUTH.

1t is about time that steps were
taken by the federal departments of
state and justice to investigate the
complete breakdown or peonage
prosecutions in Mississippi and other
parts of the south, as is indicated in
the news dispatches from Washing
ton.
Several indictments were secured
in the early stages of the investiga-
ton, but since then Mississippi grand
juries have declined to consider any
cases of this kind to the extent of re-
turning true bills. The state depart
ment, 1t appears, has already heard
from the Italian government and the
chances are that in the near future
immigrants from that country will be
warned not to go to southern states
until the present labor conditions
there are materially altered.
This is an extremely unfortunate
condition of affairs for the south.
through period of extraordinary
| development since the civil war.
Iron mines. great forests of valuable
lumber producing trees, new methods
of growing cotton and sugar, the in
VI COIIl, POullTy, ana OtneF
staples, which long had been neglect
ed in the south, including great de-
velopment in the cultivation of rice,
have created a great demand for la
Dor.
When the cotton mills, lumber
camps, iron mines and mills and 9TH
er industrial enterprises which are
creating a new south began to call
| for labor, there was an immediate
suction from the agricultural dis
tricts. But the negro did not prove
entirely a success in the cotton mills.
or, in fact, anywhere else, because
his training had been entirely agri-
cultural. So there has been a phe-
nomenal demand of late for labor
and proportion Of the tide of immi-
grants coming to this country has
| been diverted to the south because of
the attractive inducements offered
But unfortunately, the southern
people, in spite of their anxiety to
secure the labor supply which was so
necessary to their material progress,
were unable to comprehend the i'm
portant fact that these white Euro
peans could not be treated as they
had been accustomed to treat the ne
groes. Laws were passed by some
states permitting employers of this
foreign labor to put their hirelings in
chain gangs if they violated their con-
tracts. Some planters and employ
ers have shown themselves to be good
and their plantations and factories
were desirable places to work.
| Other employers have been had and
| employment under them has been
cruel and unusual. In many cases life
| in the turpentine camps has been
shocking in the extreme. The old
fashioned laws of the south and the
new ones enacted for the express pur-
pose of coercing immigrants have
been brought into play by wicked
employers Employees who have fail
| ed to pay what they owed were SEN
| fenced to labor in chain gangs and
| they were white slaves to all intents
and purposes.
This is a condition of affairs which
was intolerable and inasmuch as JUS
| tice has been sort of laughed to scorn
| in extending to the foreigners their
rights and decent treatment, 1t is not
to be wondered at that foreign gov
| ernments propose to divert immigra-
| ton away from the south again
And the dream of a new south, made
| by the assistance of European labor is
at an end. for the time being at least.