XI Crime-Slavery and Debt-Serfdom27
Montgomery, the legislative capital of Alabama, has the air of a pleasant and prosperous country town, with spacious streets, for the most part well shaded with trees. Its dignified, unpretending State House—where the Confederate Government was organized in 1861, and where Jefferson Davis took the oath as President—is admirably situated at the top of a gradually sloping hill, and commands a fine view over the rich, pleasant country. The soil in this district (and, indeed, in many parts of Alabama and Georgia) is as red as that of South Devon, and has naturally imparted its tint to the swirling Alabama river, which, when I saw it, reminded me of the rivers through which Thomas the Rhymer rode in the old ballad:
“For a’ the blude that’s shed on earth
Rins through the springs o’ that countrie.”
I was much disappointed not to find at his Alabama home Mr. Edgar G. Murphy, whose book on “The Present South” proves him not only a humane and judicious thinker, but one of the most accomplished living writers of America. I take this opportunity of expressing my great indebtedness to his admirable work.
My most interesting experience in Montgomery was a long talk with an intelligent and prosperous negro tradesman, whom I shall call Mr. Albert Millard. |A Contented Negro.| Mr. Millard did not, on the whole, express serious dissatisfaction with the condition of his race in the neighbourhood, and was inclined to take a hopeful view of the situation in general. “It’s the low classes of both races,” said he, “that keep us down and keep friction up.”
“In labour matters,” he went on, “no galling colour-line is drawn. In the building trade, for example, there is a white union and a coloured union, with a superior council representing both races. On Labour Day they parade together until they come to a certain point. Then one body turns to the right and the other to the left, and they finish the celebration each in its own park.”
“I wonder,” I said, “whether that may not be a type and model in miniature for the general solution of the question.”
But Mr. Millard’s note changed when I got him on the administration of justice.
Inter-Racial Justice.
“No,” he said, “we do not get justice in the courts. A negro’s case gets no fair hearing; and he is far more severely punished than a white man for the same offence. I’ll give you a little instance of the sort of thing that happens. A coloured man whom I know—a decent, quiet fellow—used to work in a livery stable. The boss one day fell a-cursing him so furiously that the man couldn’t stand it, and said he’d just as soon quit. He went into a room to take off his overalls; the boss followed him, and, without more ado, hit him over the head with an iron crowbar and knocked him senseless. When the man recovered he got out a warrant against the boss; but, instead of listening to his case, the Recorder said he might be thankful his master hadn’t killed him, and the next time he appeared in that court he would be sent to the farm.”
“Sent to the farm?”
“That means fined a sum he couldn’t pay, and sent to work it out either on the State farm or under some private employer. Oh, the State makes a big profit in this way! Suppose a man is fined 20 dollars and costs—say 25 dollars altogether—his labour being credited to him at 50 cents a day, it takes him fifty days to work out his fine. But his labour is worth far more than 50 cents a day. Private employers pay the State 60 or 70 cents a day for each convict labourer, and provide his food as well; but he is credited only with 50 cents all the same.”
“And what are they employed in for the most part?”
“Oh, farming in general—cotton, corn, potatoes, some sugar-cane. The State has lots of stock. And then there are the truck gardens (market-gardens) and the coal-mines.”
“And do you mean to say that all magistrates behave like the Recorder you spoke of?”
“When the regular Recorder is away, they select the hardest of the aldermen to take his place. There is only one court in which we think we get justice, and that is the Federal Court.”
This is one of the few points on which there is little conflict of evidence—the negro, in the main, does not get justice in the courts of the South.28 |An Elective Magistracy.| The tone of the courts is exemplified in the pious peroration of the lawyer who exclaimed: “God forbid that a jury should ever convict a white man for killing a nigger who knocked his teeth down his throat!” Exceptions there are, no doubt; there are districts in which the negroes themselves report that they are equitably treated. But the rule is that in criminal cases a negro’s guilt is lightly assumed, and he is much more heavily punished than a white man would be for the same offence;29 while in civil cases justice may be done between black and black, but seldom between white and black.
It would seem, too, that as a rule the negro lawyer receives scant attention in the courts. Flagrant instances of this have been related to me—too flagrant, I hope, to be typical. It is pointed out, indeed, that while negro doctors are numbered by the thousand, negro lawyers (despite the argumentative and rhetorical nature of the race) are comparatively few. The reason alleged is that, though colour is no disqualification in the courts of nature, it practically disbars in the courts of men.
In the last analysis, this condition of affairs is no doubt a sort of automatic index of the state of public sentiment in the South. The average man does not greatly desire, or does not desire at all, that scrupulous justice should be done to the negro; and an elective magistracy—elected, as a rule, for short terms—simply mirrors this attitude of mind. A Recorder who held the scales even, as between the races, would quickly become unpopular with his electorate. He must record their judgments, or he will record no longer.
But there are special causes which tend to deflect the scale against the negro, and the chief of these is the system touched upon by Mr. Millard, which makes convict labour a source of profit to the State. |Profitable Crime.| No doubt white men as well as blacks are sentenced to the “chain-gang”; but it is much more natural and simple to send a negro than a white man into judicial slavery.30 Why let any pedantic rule of evidence or sentimental scruple of humanity deprive the commonwealth of a profitable serf? I find it alleged that in the year 1904 the State of Georgia made a clear profit of £45,000 out of “chain-gang” labour leased to private contractors. There is perhaps some mistake about this, since the average profit of the previous three years had been only £16,000 per annum. But even that sum is surely £16,000 too much.31
One can understand the attractions of such a system, however unreal may be the gains that accrue to the Commonwealth. It is much less easy to understand another system, expounded to me by a leading white citizen of the State of Alabama, which makes it to the interest of magistrates and other officers of the law to promote litigation, and to keep the prisons full, because of the fees it brings them—so much for issuing a warrant, so much for filing it, so much for making an arrest, so much for maintenance in prison, etc. I do not understand this system well enough to attempt to explain it; but my informant declared that on one occasion, in his own town, a temporary magistrate, who was appointed during the serious illness of the regular occupant of the bench, found the prison “stacked up” with 500 negroes. Half of them were “held” on frivolous charges, which he simply dismissed; on the other half he imposed light fines which they could pay. “These iniquities,” my friend continued, “react upon us; they cost us money, and our gaols are breeders of crime and filth and disease. But our best people see it, and they’re going to correct it.”
While such systems prevail, it is manifest that statistics of negro crime must be carefully scrutinized and largely discounted before any value can be attached to them.32 |An Outlawed Race.| At the same time there is no doubt a considerable class of criminal negroes. It is natural, and indeed inevitable, that there should be. They are largely illiterate; they are for the most part poor; their white environment does all it can to lower rather than to stimulate their self-respect; the temptations of drink and drugs (mainly cocaine) beset them in many places; and when once a negro comes in conflict with the law, everything is done, not to reclaim him, but to harden him in crime. When we consider in how many respects the race is outlawed, it seems wonderful that more of them should not fall into habits of outlawry. No one can reasonably pretend, I think, that there is in the negro any innate and peculiar bent towards crime. Give him an equal chance, and he will show himself quite as ready as the white man to respect the criminal law at all events, if not, perhaps, the precepts of current morality. I cannot believe that any deep-rooted “original sin” in the African race is a serious element in the colour problem.
Meanwhile, by treating him with consistent and systematic injustice, the South is weakening and confusing her own case against the negro. In spite of many better impulses among the more enlightened of her people, her dominant instinct is to substitute for slavery a condition of serfdom. The black race is to have no indefeasible rights, but rather revocable licences to pretend to be freemen, so long as the pretence does not seriously interfere with the convenience or profit of the white race. And specially must the strictest limits be placed to the freeman’s right to work when and where he will, and even, if it suits him, to refrain from working. The South needs the negro’s labour, and is determined to have it, not on his terms, but on hers. Far more important and wide-reaching than the crime-slavery of the “chain-gang” is the system of debt-slavery or peonage, whereby a negro, becoming hopelessly indebted to a white landlord (and store-keeper), is compelled to spend the remainder of his life in working off a claim which can never be wiped out, because, for his very subsistence, he is forced to be ever renewing it. There is all the less chance of escape as accounts are kept by the landlord or his agent, and the negro is seldom in a position to check them. Until the law comes to the relief of the “peon,” and ceases to traffic in the sweat of the convict, the South, it seems to me, cannot look the negro squarely in the face.
Many Southerners, even the not unthoughtful or inhuman, make it the first and last word of their philosophy that “the nigger must be taught to know his place.” This means, on analysis, simply that he must accept his position as a serf. But no more than slavery, I take it, is serfdom permanently possible in a modern democratic State; and in so far as she fails to recognize this, the South is once more trying to put back the hands of Time.
Notes
27. “Two systems of controlling human labour which still flourish in the South are the direct children of slavery. These are the crop-lien system and the convict-lease system. The crop-lien system is an arrangement of chattel mortgages, so fixed that the housing, labour, kind of agriculture and, to some extent, the personal liberty of the free black labourer is put into the hands of the landowner and merchant. It is absentee landlordism and the ‘company-store’ systems united. The convict-lease system is the slavery in private hands of persons convicted of crimes and misdemeanors in the courts.”—Atlanta University Publications, No. IX. p. 2.
28. On the other hand, Mr. A. H. Stone (“The American Race Problem,” p. 73) cites several cases of even-handed justice as between the two races, and adds: “There is not a community in the South where such things as these do not constantly occur, but their record is buried in the musty documents of courts, instead of being trumpeted abroad.” Mr. Stone also quotes a remark by Mr. Booker Washington to the same effect.
29. It appears, however, that in many cases the great demand for negro labour operates in favour of the negro who has been guilty of serious crime—he escapes with a fine which is paid by his white employer, and has to be worked off. Here, for instance, is a report from the township of Prendergrass, Georgia: “The Negroes in general are in a bad shape here. There are about eighty criminals here out on bond, some for murder, some for selling whisky, some for gambling, some for carrying concealed weapons, some for shooting, and most of them are guilty, too; but their captain (i.e. employer) takes their part in court. They generally pay about $25 and work the Negro from one and a half to two years, and the Negro never knows what it cost.”—Atlanta University Publications, No. IX. p. 47.
30. “Besides the penitentiary convicts there were in Georgia in 1902, 2221 misdemeanour convicts undergoing punishment in county chain-gangs, of whom 103 were white males, 5 white females, 2010 coloured males, and 103 coloured females.”—Atlanta University Publications, No. IX. p. 35.
“I have seen twelve-year-old boys working in chains on the public streets of Atlanta, directly in front of the schools, in company with old and hardened criminals; and this indiscriminate mingling of men, women and children makes the chain-gangs perfect schools of crime and debauchery.”—W. E. B. Du Bois: “The Souls of Black Folk,” p. 180.
31. Since writing this I have seen an apparently authentic statement that in 1907 the profits from the Georgia chain-gangs had gone up to $354,853, or nearly £71,000.
32. “According to the census of 1890,” says Mr. Kelly Miller (“Race Adjustment,” p. 97), “the negro constituted only 12 per cent. of the population, and contributed 30 per cent. of the criminals.” But he goes on to say, “No person of knowledge or candour will deny that the negro in the South is more readily apprehended and convicted on any charge than the white offender. The negro constitutes the lower stratum of society, where the bulk of actionable crime is committed all the world over.” On the other hand, Mr. E. G. Murphy (“The Present South,” p. 176) says: “Petty crimes are often forgiven him, and in countless instances the small offences for which white men are quickly apprehended are, in the negro, habitually ignored.” A negro study of negro crime (Atlanta University Publications, No. IX.) says, “It seems fair to conclude that the negroes of the United States, forming about one-eighth of the population, were responsible in 1890 for about one-fifth of the crime.” This purports to be a correction of the estimate above quoted by Mr. Kelly Miller. Complete statistics of a later date do not seem to be available; but according to the same publication, negro crime reached its maximum about 1895, when negro convicts numbered 2·33 per thousand of the whole negro population. Since then the percentage has notably decreased. In 1904 it stood at 1·78 per thousand.