The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1914-10-27

il he will be glad to do it for him.
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. Happily,
for him. that burden has been also
shifted to the white man, and the
roads of Mississippi are now being
worked by taxation, and all he mas
to do is to pack them down after
they are constructed.
Neither does the levee or the want
of alevee bother him. That is more
of the white mans trouble. II sc
have an overflow or if we do not. nave
one it is all right with him, If we
DO have one he is the frs. to have a
boat and get out into It and paddle
around from morning " night, with
the blessed assurance that there will
be no more work done while it lasts
and that he will draw his rations
from his landlord or from the gov
rnment-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
man S cook, and with his living thus
assured, opens a cleaning and press
ing establishment. He then gets up
Monday morning and gathers in the
Sunday clothes of the white clerks Of
the town. After wearing them him
self every night during the week he
gets up Saturday morning and treats
them to a gasoline BATH fattens
them out with a red-hot iron and
rushes them home to their owners
so they may wear them on Sunday,
collects $3.50 for his services and
goes on his way rejoicing. But should
there be any special occasion in town
on Saturday night which he wishes
to attend he holds back the best suit
that he happens to have on hand and
wears it himself, and carries it home
Sunday morning, if he happens to
wake up in time; otherwise its own
er 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 himself a
gasoline stove and other parapher-
MALTA wherewith to defeat the va
grant statute and sets up 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 spir-
its of fermentation on the side. But
should neither of these Vocations APP
peal to him he usually opens a col
ored barbershop with a pool room
and crap table in the rear.
AS soon as the city authorities be-
come obnoxious to him, however, he
goes back to the quiet country life
usually right after the Christmas hOl-
idays-and joins himself to a cotton
planter and by his written contract,
duly executed in triplicate, obligates
and binds himself to cultivate and
gather a crop of cotton on the land
therein described, and on the
strength thereof proceeds to eat up
anywhere from s. to $500 worth of
grub while he is waiting for the
ground to get in shape to plOw; but
it very frequently happens that when
the trees begin to bud and the birds
begin to sing Mr.. Negro is seized
with a wanderlust and suddenly dis
appears, and the people who once
knew him know him no more for
ever. Every Mississippi town also
has its 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 wonderfully
and fearfully made, and his ways are
past finding out.