Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1908-04-01
SOUTHERN PEoNAGE.
bondage in Some Respects More
Crushing than Slavery.


Crushing than Slavery.
The horrors of the peonage system
In the Southern States are graphically
portrayed by an EnglishWoman, Mary
Church Terrell, writing in the Nine
tenth Century. In the chain gangs
and convict lease camps in the south,
she says, are thousands Of cOlored peo-
ple-men, women and children-who
are enduring a bondage In some re-
spects morefcruel and more crushing
than that from which their parents
were emancipated forty years ago.
The chain gang and the convict
lease systems, as now operated in the
south, violate the law against peOn-
age, the .constitutionality of which has
been affirmed by the Supreme Court
OF the United States. Yet people are
forced into servitude by being SEN
fenced to the chain gang-people "who
are not even charged with crime, but
are accused of some petty offense, such
as walking on the grass, eXpectOrattng
upon the sidewalk, going to sleep in
depot, lettering on the streets, or other
similar misdemeanors which could not
by any stretch of the imagination be
called a crime" And this In spite Of
the fact that, according to Judge Emory
Speer, of Savannah, Ca, Congress has
power to punish those-not only the
cruel lessees, but the judges who Inn
pose the sentences thus violate
A &I10 10
against peonage. I'm spite, however"
says the writer, "of the overwhelming
weight of evidence showing that afro
cities are daily being perpetrated upon
American citizens in almost every State
of the south, with the connivance of
those who administer the law, which
are as shocking and unprintable as
these endured by the Russian Jew, in
spite of the power which the Supreme
Court asserts is possessed by Congress,
but feeble efforts are being put forth
to suppress the chain gangs and the
convict lease camps Of the south"
1t is said that the convict lease sys-
tenn was adopted by the southern
States soon after the war, because the
jails were inadequate and there was
no money with which to build larger
ones. So it came to be the usage for
those persons who needed labOrers for
farms, saw mills, brick yards, turpen-
tine distilleries, coal or phosphate
mines, or who had large contracts Of
various sorts, to lease misdemeanants
from the county Or State, which sold
(and still sells) them to the highest
bidder, and practicallyegive the lessee
the power of life and death over them.
While 1t was to the interest of the old
time slave holder to look after the ply
steal well-being of his human chattels,
1t is cheaper for the lessee of convicts
to work them to death and to renew
his supply as he uses them up. This
serves to explain the horrible condi-
tions which are reported to exist In
the convict camps.
Not only negroes, but some whites,
have been victims Of the peonage sys-
tem-the latter In larger numbers Of
late years. 1t Is even said that white
girls have been sold by their parents
into the worst kind Of slavery in the
Florida lumber camps. In some cases
convicts who had worked out their fine
at the paltry wage allowed found them
selves recommitted to slavery on new
charges trumpet up against them.