Elmore County Republican. [volume] (Mountain Home, Idaho) 1910-1915, 1913-01-25
Convict Leasing
System Given
a Hard Jolt
CONTINUED from page one

: under the gulSe OF accomplishing un
q versal good. The South was sick fror
a its long period of deprivations. Grim
: was increasing, for the crafty wer
t quick to take advantage of conditions
: The new problem of the negro stare
them in the face, ignorance, supersti
| ton. hatred of the whites and a mis-
| guided notion of his new position hav
, ing started the erstwhile slave on
series of crimes and misdemeanOrs tina
threatened another great war-one il
which the pentup passions of race ha
tired would find full sway. The Soutf
was bankrupt and crime was never be
fore so rampant. SO when the sugges
ton of new servitude for the Grim
inal negro was presented, the South
seized upon it and the convict leasing
system was established.
The condition thus imposed upon the
negro was, in many respects, worse
than slavery. His master was, as rule,
of the type who represented the worst
of the former slave owners. He looked
to the business end of the transaction.
1t was cheap labor he secured for the
plantations and turpentne camps. He
paid the state from 500 to $500 per
year for each prisoner and the state
cared little what became of him. The
prisoner was taken far into the will
derness, was chained to his fellow,
made to work from fourteen to twenty
hours a day and then prepare his own
supper at night. Doctors were expen-
sive and convicts were cheap. So it
was cheaper to let the sick convict die
than to secure medical assistance and
save him. 1t was cheaper to make
him sleep in his chains in stuffy
room without windows than to hire a
guard to keep him from running away
at night. 1t was cheaper to make him
fry his own scant piece of bacon over
smouldering log in the chill night
wind than to provide cook and
comfortable shelter.
AS time went on and the system was
perfected, sheriffs, justices and juries
became part and parcel of it. When
the five-year contract was made in
Georgia in 1904, by the terms of which
hundreds of prisoners were turned over
to contractors, the newspapers flared
before the public eye the intelligence
that the state would be the richer by
a net profit of $225,000. Vain hope!
A review of the history of the system
shows that in later years the state re-
ceived very little of the amount paid
by the contractor. The county got no
money until the sheriff, deputy sher-
iff, county solicitor, bailiff, court clerk,
Justice, constable and other officers
had each received his share. All the
political machinery stood in with the
contractors, who were, in some cases,
members of the Legislature And this
with the knowledge that the money
was nothing less than blood money ex-
torted at the expense of the helpless
convict. Sorry fate! Out of those
leased to contractors for five> years
many never came back. In some of
the camps one out of every four per-
by the heavy toll, by the
fever of the swamp or by the cruelty
of heartless masters. The death rate
in private camps was double that in the
county gangs. And in the face of
these facts, the perpetrators were
shielded and saved from indictment by
a machinery that knew nothing of jus
tce but to pervert it.
In some of the counties of the South
ern states, justices could sentence men
convicted of misdemeanor to hard
labor for period not exceeding twelve
In many of these courts the
charge was never proven. Poor, il
literate, withut knowledge of the work
ings of the courts, without the means
to employ counsel, the unfortunate ne
gro was at the mercy of the system
He went out to fate worse than
death, for, in all probability, there
WUulu DC no Gnu W HIS stHJcHce. ouCu |
was the outrage of justice committed
in these courts that the offender might |
well imagine the sign above the door:
CAN hope abandon, We who enter
here.' He left the court bound for
a place beside which Dante's Inferno
was paradise. When his time of pun
ishment was up, his employer provoked
a fight between him and brother con
Wet and both were Immediately hauled
before the justice and meted out new
twelve-mOnth sentence Thus the law
was satisfied, the public protected, the
contractor and the state enriched.
Again, planters needed help. 1t was
a simple matter to go out and capture
a pair of burly negroes, haul them be-
fore the justice and register the charge
of debt against them. What chance
had the negrof The practice was COM
mon among planters and it was sim
pie matter to retain the services of the
captive, for as soon as his fine had
been worked out new charge was
brought against him, witnesses were
produced to prove his guilt, the sen
tence was repeated and the unfortunate
negro expiated his imaginary crime to
the profit of the planter. A fine of
$50 was often imposed for trivial of