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Lynne Gunn ASHFORD, CT
ystem. The profits are so great and the opprobrium ao sliest in the 8tMe, that a United States Senator was one of the largest contractors, un- til expoanre of the system and his connection therewith to the public in the Northern States compelled him to dispose of his interest in it. Slarery was equally profitable to certain daflsea ci owners, and no more deatructive of the honor and welfare of the State. A Hlaalaslppl case of costs, '« In Pontotoc county Horace Wilder (colored) wan sent to the penitentiary for eighteen montha for steal- ing a pig valaed at $1.60. He had Juat finished hiM term of service and the superintendent asked for the cost of prosecution. The circuit clerk oertifled tho amount to be the enormous sum of $74.H6— the net expense of prosecuting a colored lad for stealing a pig worth a dollar and a half. At twentT'fire cents a day he will be required to work three hundred days."— {Uomt Buk tfn the Solid South, page 6.] aystem wtlrcraal in the Soath. ^nie contract system is universal in the South ; and its barbarity might be illustrated by citations from the laws of all the States; but tt&e fnr^going will do, and is all that space can be apaoredfor. The cost of costs. 1!he ooatB of arrest and oonTiction are also ttt^icd agamat the convict, and when the pen- ally itself is comparatively light, these costs Lonnt to months of servitude, j The Texas practice. emigrant from Texas to Kansas testified before the E^dus Ck>mmittee as follows in re- g&r d to some of the causes of the desire of the colored people to leave the former State : The lawyer's fees worked In. * * When a man ^ets intoxicated or plays a {(&zxie of cards, he is tried before the county C>dge and fined, and the courts work in the ^^rjei^B fee, until the whole thing amounts vp to sixty-five, seventy-five or one hundred doUars," TIavee yean aerrltatf e for carrytnff i^ ^^^' . shooter. ' ' A man who was arrested in Milam county for carrying a six-shooter was fined sixty-five dollars ; I think the costs and lawyer's fees ttDaouDted to sixty-five dollars. <> <> o He ▼as at work all last year, and the year before l^t, and the year before that again." A quarter of a cmt a day.
"A colored woman was arrested (in Mata- gorda county) and the judge hired her out at a quarter of a cent a dav. ~ Q. To work out , kow much of a fine ? A. I Uiink thirty dollars. " WorklBff under shot-snns. "They call these people county convicts. I know some of these men who have convicts that thev hire, and thev are under the super- vision of a seigeant with a gun and nigger- hounds. * * * They hire them and put them in the same gang with the striped suits on, and if they want, the guard can bring them down with his shot-gun " [pp. 414, 415].
PART IV. . The siveeping Eianillord IJeii Eiawa— A man <»imot sell his crop hi open markel; — The Ijandlord has choice oT all prac- tical re-enslavement; of tiie colored tenants — Democ^ratlc Senatorial opinion — The lMii%'n *' appear hard on the surihee." A system of liens on the crops for rent, food and supplies, has been devised which keeps the colored men in debt, and compels them to sacrifice their crops to the landlord for whatever he chooses to allow. Cannot acU or use hia own crop. No matter how good an opportunity he may have to sell port of his crop, the tenant cannot sell a bushel of com or a roast pig* until tbi> landlord is paid, without makmg himflclt' liable to some of the special laws against him noted in the preceding chapter. He has to turn the crop over to the landlord altogether, and trust to his generosity for a remnant for his family. The South Carolina law. The landlord has a lien on one third of the crop of the renter for rent, without any con- tract, and may take a lien and all by contract. [Acts S. O., 1878, p. 411, sees. 6 and 6.] The colored tenant having been stripped by the liens of one year has not food and supplies ahead for the next, and must sign a contract giving his landlord control of all or starve. The Georgia law—Landlord takes all without the formality of a contract. Bv the Revised Statutes of 1873, page 340. landlords have a Uen on the crop, and also nil other property of the tenant for rent. By contract landlords or storekeepers have a lien on the crops and all a man s property on all articles of any kind furnished. The act, approved February 25, 1875 provides thnt "the liens of landlords shall nnse by opera- tion of law from the relation of landlord and tenant.** [Laws of Georgia, 1875, page 20.] The tendency of these laws is to keep the I)Oor colored people, who are dependent upon the landowners for supplies, to raise a crop in a state of constant peonnge. This is one of the most common reasons assigned tor the exodus by those seeking homes inI ' 132 THE LABOR QUB6TIOK. the North; While they do the work the land- lord takes the crop, Profnresslon In eTil. The foregoing are fair samples of the tenant laws in all the Southern States. As the conser- vatives became assured that their control of the le^^islat^e. was permanent, they regularly eliminated aU the just and merciful features of the laws, until they have reached their pres- ent tyrannical form and made universal the l)arbarous practioes which are making the States, nbm&^ly free, really slave. Ontraffeous prices nuacted. Under the operation of ^e law the .most outrageous eltortions are practised' -on the colot«d people. They are eliarged an annuid reButal <n from i.Vie to. teadoUns ati acto— oft^n more than the land itself will bring if sold in fee simple. They are charged double forbran, com, meat &c., ^at the same may be bact for frotti ^e stOMkeeper wbo wotdd also pay thehi a fair price for their produce. But with the landlord's lien covering every- thing, they can neither sell nor buy except at his pleasure a^d to his profit **Oiil7 hard on tlie surface." Senators Voorhees, Vance, and Pendleton, in their report to the Senate on the recent ezodns tern the South, admit that *' the land- lord claa< for their own protection, procured the passage of the laws giving them a lien upon the crop made by the tenant,** and that **upon the turface thete laws appeared to be hard'* Yet the committee thought them among the most beneficent of provisions for the blade. The thousands of colored people striving to get away from their operation seem to tbink differently — that the laws are hard to the core. Bad men In spite of such ffood laws. '* Your committee regret to say that tliej found it to be frequently the case that design- ing men, or bad and dishonest men, wonld take advantage of the ignorance or neoesdtj of the negroes." [ P. 6, JSenaUMepoii, 693, 1880.] The committee then proceeds to argue that bad men exist everywhere, but i^ores the fact that bad men elsewhere are bad in vitk- turn of law, while in the case under considera- tion the law ^ems tohava Immimaiifvr badmen; to give them' greater facilities for inhumanity. The system hreeda had men. Before the war all the cruelties of slaTery were laid on bad men and the overseen. Slavery made these classes^ and all its laws were made to protect them in villainy by the good men who reaped the greater part of the profit. So at the present time the lien lews of Uie South are made to enable the bad men to inaugurate. and perpetuate practises which will make the good men's plantations equally profitable. The profit and abominatian is universal, and the solid South must endure the indignation of the civilized world. CHAPTEE XIV. Tbe Labor Question. "Th«I>et»oeratteparty is (he jyiend<if lector and the tabprin^num, a^d pkigt* Uaelf io prolect liitn a ike agamittheoonnorant and ft«oommuii«;"— DeUration 13, Democratic Bational Plaiioim, 18S0. PAKT I. Tlie Lisborftue^tton— democratic Elforts to Hesrade and Ifiruia,!- ize I^bor^The Itepubllcan Party the True liabor Party, What does the workingman want that the Bepublican party is not pledged by every tra- dition and measure to do for him? That party was absolutely bom in a fight with the slave powers— the power of owned lahoT, owned by Democrats. Aiid throughout its existence it has ever frowned down and legislated against any and all movements to degrade la- bor and make it servile. The Democratic party, on the other hand» has not had a thought for the past forty*five years beyond the preservation of the accursed systems fif slavery and servile labor. For the right to own slave labor instead of paying "a fair day's wage for a fair day's work," that partjr plunged the nation into a terrible four-years sectional war. For the right to ovm labor under a system of peonage (quite as degrading as the old system of slavery), instead of payinff **a feir day's wage for a fair day's work," that party, in the event of a close electoral majority fi>r Garfield and Arthur, will not hes- itate to plunge this nation into all the horrors of a civil war. Out of that threatening civU war the Democratic party, coiitrolled oy the South, believes it will come bloodily triumph- ant, with the old labor ideas of the South dominant over all of the United States. Nothing can be more instructive to the laborer of the Korth than a brief review of theSoiitb- em "idea" of labor— an "idea," which, though chanp^ in its practical expression» from slavery in the past to the peonage of the present and future, survives the war, and
"Tripterygium wilfordii Hook.f., known as Leigongteng (Thunder God Vine) in traditional Chinese medicine, has attracted much attention for its applications in relieving autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis andsystemic lupus erythematosus, and for treating cancer. Molecular analyses of the ITS and 5S rDNA sequences indicate that T. hypoglaucum and T. doianum are not distinct from T. wilfordii, while T. regelii should be recognized as a separate species. The results also demonstrate potential value of rDNA sequence data in forensic detection of adulterants derived from Celastrus angulatus in commercial samples of Leigongteng."[2]