Other duties devolving upon the master were to teach the apprentice the business of husbandry or some other useful trade or business specified in the contract; to furnish him wholesome food and suitable clothing; to teach him habits of industry, honesty, and morality; to govern and treat him with humanity; and if there was a colored school within convenient distance, to send him to school as much as six weeks of each year after he was ten years of age. The teacher of such school must have the license of the district judge to establish it.
The master could inflict moderate chastisement, impose reasonable restraint on the apprentice, and bring him back if he ran away. If the master neglected his duty or subjected the apprentice to the danger of moral contamination, the district judge might dissolve the relation of master and apprentice. All cases of dispute between master and apprentice were to be tried before a magistrate, who had the power to punish the party found to be at fault. If the judge ordered the apprentice discharged for immoderate correction or unlawful restraint, the master might be indicted and punished by a fine of not over fifty dollars or imprisonment of thirty days. In addition, the apprentice had an action for damages.
After the expiration of the term of service, the apprentice was entitled to not over sixty dollars from his master. To the apprentice also applied the provisions for the servant under contract, which have been considered, except that the master was bound to furnish him medical aid, as he did not have to do in the case of the servant. And for apprentices also, as in the case of servants, there was a regular form of contract which was understood to contain all the above stipulations.
In Delaware,[[111]] not a Southern State, but much like the Southern States in its dealings with the Negro, in its code of 1852 as amended in 1893, is this belated statute: “Any two justices of the peace, on receiving information of any Negro or mulatto child in their county, having no parents in this State, or who, being under the age of fifteen years, have no parent able to maintain them, or who do not bring them up to industry and stable employment, shall issue process to a constable commanding him to bring such child before them at a specified time and place, and to give notice thereof to the parents, if any, and shall thereupon inquire into their circumstances; and if it appear to be a proper case for binding such child, they shall proceed to bind said child as a servant, unless they shall deem the binding, under the circumstances, to be inexpedient.”
The constitutionality of these apprentice laws was tested as early as 1867.[[112]] A Negro girl, who had been a slave in Maryland and had been freed by the Constitution of that State, November 1, 1864, was, two days later, apprenticed by her mother to her former master. The laws governing Negro apprentices differed from those governing white apprentices in that the master did not obligate himself to teach the Negro apprentice reading, writing, and arithmetic, and retained the right to transmit the apprentice anywhere in the county. Upon a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, the Federal court held that the Maryland law resulted in practical slavery and, hence, violated the Thirteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Bill of 1866.
The other Southern States had apprentice laws, possibly as detailed as the ones here considered, but they cannot be treated of here because they applied to white and colored children alike.
VAGRANCY LAWS
The present vagrancy laws of the South have been much criticised for the reason, as it is alleged, that they are used to get recruits for chain gangs and convict camps, and that Negro vagrants are taken up while white vagrants go scotfree. Be that as it may, the fault lies with the officers, not with the law, for the law, on its face, applies to both races equally. But the first years after the War did witness the enactment of vagrancy laws which had special application to Negroes. Some States passed vagrancy laws which made no race distinction, but, as in the case of apprentices, it is beyond dispute that they were aimed especially at the Negro.
The following persons South Carolina[[113]] classed as vagrants: (1) all persons who have not some fixed and known place of abode, and some lawful and reputable employment; (2) those who have not some visible and known means of a fair, honest, and reputable livelihood; (3) all common prostitutes; (4) those who are found wandering from place to place, vending, bartering, or peddling any articles or commodities without a license; (5) all common gamblers; (6) persons who lead idle or disorderly lives, or keep or frequent disorderly or disreputable houses or places; (7) those who, not having sufficient means of support, are able to work and do not work; (8) those who (whether or not they own lands, or are lessees or mechanics) do not provide a reasonable and proper maintenance for themselves and families; (9) those who are engaged in representing publicly or privately, for fee or reward, without license, any tragedy, interlude, comedy, farce, play, or other similar entertainment, exhibition of the circus, sleight-of-hand, waxworks, or the like; (10) those who, for private gain, without license, give any concert or musical entertainment, of any description; (11) fortune tellers; (12) sturdy beggars; (13) common drunkards; (14) those who hunt game of any description, or fish on the land of others or frequent the premises, contrary to the will of the occupants. That the South Carolina legislature had the Negro primarily in mind is shown by the fact that this section is included in the act “to establish and regulate the domestic relations of persons of color and to amend the law in relation to paupers and vagrancy.”
Mississippi[[114]] had a vagrancy list almost as extensive as that above with the addition that any freedmen, free Negroes, or mulattoes over eighteen years of age, found on the second Monday in January, 1866, or thereafter, with no lawful employment or business, or found unlawfully assembling themselves together in the day or night time, and white persons “so assembling with freedmen, free Negroes, or mulattoes ... on terms of equality, or living in adultery or fornication with a freedwoman, free Negro, or mulatto,” should be considered vagrants. The white man so convicted was punishable by a fine of two hundred dollars and imprisonment for not more than six months; the Negro, by a fine of fifty dollars and imprisonment for not over ten days. A Negro unable to pay his fine might be hired out for the purpose, but no such provision applied to whites.