The Bamberg herald. [volume] (Bamberg, S.C.) 1891-1972, 1913-12-18

! things are the white mans trouble.
But if the white folks want to whil
Mexico or anybody else, for any
| cause, or without any cause for that
matter, and will furnish him with
the arms and ammunition, and will
back him up in it, he will be glad
to do it for him.
His One Great Trouble.
The road question is the only ques-
ton that ever gave the negro any
real trouble. but that was when he
was subject to road duty, and happily
for him. that burden has also been
shifted to the white man, and the
roads of the Delta are now being
worked by taxation. and all he has
to do is to pack them down after they
are constructed.
Neither does the levee or the want
of a levee bother him. That is some
more of the white folks trouble. If
we have an overflow, or do not have
one, it is all right with him. If we
90 have one, he is the first to have a
boat and get out into it and paddle
around from morning until night
with the blessed assurance that there
will be no more work done while it
lasts, and that he will draw his ra-
tions from his landlord or from
the Government, and sometimes both,
until it subsidies.
| Whenever a negro tires of country
life he moves to town, acquires a
| charcoal bucket and a tailor's goose,
forms an alliance with some white
mans cook, and with his living thus
assured, opens a cleaning and press
| ing establishment. He then gets out
Monday morning and gathers in the
| Sunday clothes of the white clerks
of the town. and after wearing them
himself every night during the week,
he gets up early Saturday morning
and treats them to gasoline bath,
flattens them out with red-hot iron
and rushes them home to their own
ers, so that they may wear them
| Sunday, collects $3.50 for his SER
vices in their behalf and goes on his
way rejoicing. But should there be
any special occasion in town on Satur-
day night which he wishes to attend
he holds back the best suit that he
happens to have on hand and wears
it to that, and carries it home Sun
day morning, if he happens to wake
up in time; otherwise its owner can
lay in bed over Sunday, and he will
bring it back some time the following
Monday.
If perchance his fancy does not
run to cleaning clothes, he gets him
self a gasoline stove and other para
phernalia wherewith to defeat the
vagrant statute, and sets up a lunch
counter, where he serves all such as
care to come his way, irrespective of
race, color or previous condition of
servitude, with hamburgers, hot cat
fish and beef sausage and some sweet
spirits of fermenti on the side. But
should neither of the vocations ap-
peal to him, he usually opens a col
ored barber shop with a pool room
and crap table in the rear.
Back, But Not to Stay.
AS soon as the city authorities be-
come obnoxious to him, however, he
again goes back to the quiet country
life, usually right after the Christmas
holidays, and joins himself to a cot
ton planter, and by his certain writ
ten contract, duly executed in du-
plicate, obligates and binds himself
to cultivate and gather a crop of cot
ton on the land therein described
and on the strength thereof, proceeds
to eat up anywhere from IS to $500
worth of grub while he is waiting for
the ground to get in shape to plough,
and it very frequently happens that
when the trees begin to bud and
when the birds begin to sing, Mr.
Negro is seized with wanderlust, and
suddenly disappears, and the people
who once knew him know him no
more forever. Every Delta town also
has it full quota of negro women,
who, like the lily, toll not, neither
do they spin, yet the Queen of Sheba,
in all her glory was never clad like
unto one of them.
Surely the negro is fearfully and
wonderfully made, and his ways are
past finding out.
Three White Slavers Sentenced.