The Idaho Republican. [volume] (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1904-1932, 1908-01-24

Negro loves nothing better than tc
sit and watch the proceedings of a
court. Judge Broyles Briles," the
Negroes call him-kindly invited me
to seat on the platform at his side
where looked into the faces of the
prisoners and hear all that was said.
''In Southern Police Court
1t was profoundly interesting and
significant spectacle. In the first
place the very numbers of cases was
staggering The docket that morn
ing carried over one hundred names
men, women and children, white
and black; the court worked hard,
| but it was nearly two O'Clock in the
afternoon before the room was clear
ed. Atlanta, as | showed in former
article, has the largest number num-
Der of arrests, considering the popul-
alton, of any important city in the
United States. / found that 1851
of the total of 21,702 persons ar
sixty-two per cent, whereas the col
| ored population of the city Is only
forty per cent of the total.
A very large portion of the arrests
that Monday morning were Negroes,
with surprising proportion of wo-
men and mere children. Last year
3,194 Negro women were arrested in
Atlanta. 1t was altogether pitiful
and disheartening exhibition, a spec
tacle of sodden ignorance, reckless
vice, dissipation. Most of the cases,
raveled out, led back to the saloon.
Where's your homer the Judge
would ask, and in a number of cases
the answer was:
i come here fun de country
Over and over again 1t was the
story of the country Negro, or the
Negro who had been working on the
railroad, in the cotton fields or in
the saw mills, who had entered upon
the more complex life of the city.
Most of the country districts of the
South prohibit the sale of liquor;
and Negroes, especially, have compar-
atiyely little temptation of this ma
ture, nor are they subjected to many
other glittering pitfalls of city life.
But of late years the opportunities
OF the city have attracted the black
people, just as they have the whites,
in large numbers. Atlanta has many
saloons and other places of vice; and
the results are to be seen in Judge
Broyle's court any morning. And
not only Negroes, but the poor
whites" who have come in from the
mountains and the small farms to
work in the mills: they, too, suffer
fully as much as the Negroes.
Negro Cocaine Victims.
+" Not few of the cases both
black and white showed evidence of
cocaine or morphine poisoning-the
blear eyes, the unsteady nerves.
What's the trouble here?' asked
the Judge.
Coke, said the officer.
'Ten-seventy-fye, said the judge
naming the amount of the fine.
They buy tie coke in the form of
a powder and snuf it up their nose
certain patent catarrh medicine
which is nearly all cocaine is some
times used ten cents will purchase
enough to make a man wholly ir-
responsible for his acts, and capable
of any crime. The cocaine habit,
which seems to be spreading, for
, there are always druggists who will
break the law, has been a curse to
the Negro and has resulted, directly,
as the police told me, in much crime.
| was told of two cases in particular,
Of offense against women, in which
the Negro was a victim of the drug
habit
so society, in the pursuit of
wealth South and North, preys upon
the ignorant and weak--and then
wonders why crime is prevalent.
Il tried to see as much Of the
worthless Negro, who is about the
lowest stratum of humanity, 1t seems
to me, of any in our American life
He is usually densely ignorant, often
wanderer, working today with
railroad gang, tomorrow on some
city works, the next day picking cot
ton. He has lost his white friends
his white folks, as he calls them
and he has not attained the training
or self-direction &c stand alone. He
works only when he Is hungry, and
he Is as much a criminal as he dares
70 be. Many such Negroes are sup
Hocted by their wives or by women
With whom they live--:or morality
and the home virtues among this
class are unknown. A woman who
r~,lr. IL,