A step further brings the Negro to the chain-gang. If there is no white man to pay him out, or if his crime is too serious to be paid out, he goes to the chain-gang—and in several states he is then hired out to private contractors. The private employer thus gets him sooner or later. Some of the largest farms in the South are operated by chain-gang labour. The demand for more convicts by white employers is exceedingly strong. In the Montgomery Advertiser for April 10, 1907, I find an account of the sentencing of fifty-four prisoners in the city court, fifty-two of whom were Negroes. The Advertiser says:
The demand for their labour is probably greater now than it ever has been before. Numerous labour agents of companies employing convict labour reached Montgomery yesterday, and were busily engaged in manœuvring to secure part or even all of the convicts for their respective companies. The competition for labour of all kinds, it seems, is keener than ever before known.
The natural tendency of this demand, and from the further fact that the convict system makes yearly a huge profit for the State, is to convict as many Negroes as possible, and to punish the offences charged as severely as possible. From the Atlanta Constitution of October 13, 1906, I have this clipping:
SIX MONTHS FOR POTATO THEFT
Columbus, Ga., October 12 (Special)
In the city court yesterday Charley Carter, a Negro, was sentenced to six months on the chain-gang or to pay a fine of $25 for stealing a potato valued at 5 cents.
Serious crimes are sometimes compromised. In a newspaper dispatch, October 6, 1906, from Eaton Ga., I find a report of the trial of six Negroes charged with assault with the intent to kill. All were found guilty, but upon a recommendation of mercy they were sentenced as having committed misdemeanours rather than felonies. They could therefore have their fines paid, and five were immediately released by farmers who wanted their labour. The report says that of thirty-one misdemeanours during the month it is expected that “none will reach the chain-gang,” since there are “three farmers to every convict ready to pay the fine.”
A TYPE OF THE COUNTRY CHAIN-GANG NEGRO
Still other methods are pursued by certain landlords to keep their tenants on the land. In one extreme case a Negro tenant, after years of work, decided to leave the planter. He had had a place offered him where he could make more money. There was nothing against him; he simply wanted to move. But the landlord informed him that no waggon would be permitted to cross his (the planter’s) land to get his household belongings. The Negro, being ignorant, supposed he could thus be prevented from moving, and although the friend who was trying to help him assured him that the landlord could not prevent his moving, he dared not go. In another instance—also extreme—a planter refused to let his tenants raise hogs, because he wanted them to buy salt pork at his store. It is, indeed, through the plantation store (which corresponds to the company or “truck” store of Northern mining regions) that the unscrupulous planter reaps his most exorbitant profits. Negroes on some plantations, whether they work hard or not, come out at the end of the year with nothing. Part of this is due, of course, to their own improvidence; but part, in too many cases, is due to exploitation by the landlord.