Twenty years a fakir

by S. James Weldon

Every man who has traveled on the road has probably had more or less trouble about license; and the time arrived when I was to get my experience. I was arrested while soliciting in the portrait business, and was fined fifty dollars in a city court.

I was always rather a good fighter, anyway. I had what I thought at that time plenty of money, and my business life seemed to be at stake. Instead of paying that fine and letting the matter drop I took an appeal and vowed to follow the matter up. When, finally, the state supreme court affirmed the decision of the city court, and I still refused to pay, I found myself tight in jail, with a suspicion that I had to knuckle or remain there indefinitely.

I still had money to talk, and, as the frames were made in one state, I was traveling in a second, and was a resident of a third, there was little trouble in getting the case before the supreme court of the United States, though it did seem to me it took a terrible long time for that court to come to a decision on a very simple case.

When their opinion did come, however, it was in my favor, and reversed all the lower courts.

The justices held, in effect, that a man could not be taxed for simply making a living; that the license demanded from me had been an attempted piece of extortion, which was an usurpation of power for the officers to have sought to collect, when it was their duty to see that law and justice were secured to all.

It was further held that no state nor city could levy a tax on interstate commerce, in any form or guise, or on receipts derived from that transportation, or on the occupation or business of carrying it on.

Of course, this was a great victory for me—when it came—but it did not prevent me having some very uncomfortable months and a course of treatment which might have meant ruin to some.

Perhaps they mistook their man. Certainly the authorities only considered me as a thief and a vagabond from the very start, and were determined to show me that a fakir had no rights which they were bound to respect. I was arrested in the very harshest manner, and though a couple of citizens temporarily signed as my security, it was not long before I found myself in jail, where on entering I was stripped of my diamonds and all the loose money I had in my pockets, which last was quite a little sum. They appeared to want to make sure of the fifty dollars fine and costs, and if possible to prevent my having any money with which to fight the city in the courts and to make my stay in that jail as uncomfortable as possible. My treatment there was simply vile, and when I took a severe cold in an infernally bad cell, and through lack of attention the cold drifted into pneumonia, I began to believe there was a conspiracy to murder me. I think I would have died had it not been for some good ladies, who at that very moment were being sneered at for attempting to inaugurate practical Christianity by visiting those who were sick and in prison. They managed to see that I was nursed through to semi-convalescence, and made an effort to have my fine remitted and a discharge granted. The county attorney appeared against them, however, and as they were represented by a young man of more goodness than knowledge of law or eloquence their prayer was denied.

Feeling sure, then, that the city would remain obdurate, and that to remain longer in prison would mean death, I paid fine and costs under protest and crawled out to the free sunlight once more, “busted” in health and pocket, and only too glad to get out.

In the end, as I have told, I procured a decision of the United States court in my favor, and then my counsel came back on the city for damages, eventually settling with the authorities for a nice little sum. Long before that, however, I had largely recovered my health and spirits and was once more on the high road to prosperity.