Twentieth Century Negro Literature. Various

Terrell held that the convicts were under the care of the lessees, whose duty it was to see that they were treated humanely, citing the order of 1887 by Governor Gordon, to prove that while the whipping bosses were appointed by the governor, they were under the control of the lessees. Governor Atkinson said that he did not dream for a moment that the lessees did not consider it their duty to see that the convicts were properly treated.

      Mr. Huff, addressing the legislature, said, that "any attempt at reformation of the present system is an absurdity, a swindle and a fraud. It is a damnable outrage. The lessee contract would not stand fifteen minutes before a petit jury. I could hang any of the lessees before a petit jury in two and a half hours," said he.

      One convict testified that in his case the skin came off with every blow inflicted by a soaked strap drawn through sand; that twenty bastard children were in one camp. A female convict testified that during her prison life of fourteen years she had borne seven children. A lessee testified that such irregularities as bastard children would occasionally occur as long as women were guarded by men.

      Dr. Felton, addressing the Georgia Legislature, said:

      "I stated ten years ago that the State was acting as a procuress for convict camps; the legislature is keeping up the supply in accordance with the demand. I repeat the accusation here and now."

      In 1895 a number of convicts had their feet so frozen that the flesh and toes rotted off. Governor Atkinson enlightened the legislature of the deplorable condition existing in the convicts' camps through the report thereon by Hon. R. F. Wright, showing nearly fifty misdemeanor camps. In the chain-gangs were twenty-seven white and 768 colored convicts; generally both races and sexes being together day and night. Among these were eleven children under fourteen years of age. Some slept in rude floorless houses; some in tents on the bare ground, and a few in bunks. The bedding was scant and filthy, and full of vermin. The camps were poorly ventilated, the sleeping quarters being generally sweat-boxes, constructed to prevent escapes. There were no hospitals and no preparations for comfort or medical treatment. Female prisoners dressed in male attire, worked side by side with men.

      A member of the legislature declared:

      "Most lessees would rather see the devil in their camps than a Methodist or Baptist preacher. I do not urge the bill for the Negro, but for the safety of homes and property. Crime has increased in the United States more than in any other country on the globe. I plead for the orphan boys and girls of the State. Better send them to a bottomless hell than to James' camp."

      Said the lamented Colonel Alston:

      "The public knows how hard it is to get testimony in a case like the lease question. If a guard kills a man, he is not going to tell of it. If a lessee chooses to whip one to death, who is to know it? If he starves them, who is the wiser? I never expect to give up the agitation of this question till I can point to my native State redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled from this great sin, and the finger of shame shall no longer be lifted at her, as a State that is banking on the crimes and misfortunes of her defenseless and ignorant population."

      Three months after this Colonel Alston was shot dead in the State Capitol of Georgia, by a sub-lessee during a controversy arising from the leasing of some convicts; whereupon Governor Atkinson declared that, under heaven and by God's help, he meant to lift up the administration of the laws of the State to that high plane that will put an end to these things.

      Mr. Byrd of Rome, Ga., by authority of Governor Atkinson, inspected the misdemeanor camps in 1897, and reported that private chain-gangs were being operated against law, and in spite of the decisions of the Supreme Court of Georgia, and that the average penal camp of the State penitentiary is a heaven, compared to the agony and torture endured by the misdemeanor convicts in many of these joints. He said that Mr. Wright did valiant service for humanity by showing that a bondage worse than slavery was being inflicted upon the convicts, who were confined in these "hells upon earth."

      In one camp, he said, an ante-bellum residence had been converted into a prison by removing every window, and closing up every aperture, leaving not even an auger hole for light or air. In the center of a room only 18 feet by 20, was an open can, the reeking cesspool of this dungeon in which sat a sick Negro convict confined in this dark sweat-box, perishing.

      In another camp, after the visit of Mr. Wright, the guards took turns at beating a convict to death and buried him in his shackles. A respectable citizen asserted that they caught the convict by the shackles and ran through the woods dragging him feet foremost, and that when these facts were sworn to before the Grand Jury of Pulaski County, it was thought best to hush them up and keep the matter out of the newspapers, and out of court, as the superintendent of the prison camp had friends on the jury.

      Another case sworn to before the coroner's jury was that of a guard who had whipped nearly all the life out of an old Negro, who said: "Boss, is ye gwine to kill me?" The guard replied with an oath in the affirmative, whereupon the convict begged to be shot and thus freed from his sufferings. He was chained up to a tree where he died in thirty minutes.

      In another camp a white convict was being boarded at a hotel ten miles away, and doing a prosperous business at painting, while another white convict who had been made night guard and given a gun and the keys to the camp, had it so free and easy that he threw up his job and decamped.

      Mr. Boies of Pennsylvania, in his instructive work, discusses the convict lease system, and shows that the sentences of Negroes in the South are double those of white men for the same offenses; that for petty larceny a Negro may be condemned to the criminal class for life, albeit he had to steal or starve. He shows that the criminal machinery of the South is frequently used to nullify the Negro's right of suffrage; that no hand is extended to lift him up when he falls, and no effort is put forth for his reformation, and for this reason the South turns out one-third of the criminals of the whole country; that Massachusetts expends $20 per capita upon the children of her public schools, while Mississippi with a heavier tax, expends but $2 per capita.

      In the Evening Star of Washington, D. C., of November 16, 1901, an exhaustive article on the prison camps of Florida appeared. Although guardedly, it favored the effort to make the criminal self-supporting, arguing that as he lives on the public when at large, he should not be permitted to continue to live on the public when in confinement. But it admits that the convict lease system is faulty. It says:

      "At present, offenders of all grades and ages are thrown together, and the younger ones learn more evil than they knew at the time of their arrest, growing daily more depraved and vicious so long as they remain in bad company. It may be possible, however, to employ most of the convicts at tasks which will not require their close association, either at work or in quarters, and if that desideratum can be reached, the last argument against the leasing of prisoners will be met, and the system will be continued indefinitely, such minor matters as the corruption of inspectors, of which Alabama has complained, being capable of rebuke through legislation.

      "There are now thirteen camps in Florida, each one of which is technically a State prison, and they are under the watch of a supervisor, who must visit them at least once in sixty days, examine the buildings, food, clothes, and bedding, question keepers and convicts as to work, punishment and health, enforce compliance with the laws and report to the governor every month. All leases are for four years, and the only cost of its criminals to the State are the salaries of supervisors and a sum of $300 a year for chaplain service.

      "The country expends at least $200,000,000 per annum in maintaining its convicts. In the city of New York alone, the annual assessment for that purpose is $6 per citizen.

      "Where the labor unions have not prevented it, society has made the criminal pay his own bills. In the South where the people are beginning to show a keenness for money that is not surpassed in the North, but where, as yet, capital is not gathered into such immense and usable sums as in the central and eastern States, a new policy has been adopted with regard to the offender. He is generally a Negro, hence he is sent back to slavery. He is sold to a farmer, a distiller, a phosphate miner, or a manufacturer, for a term of years, and his employer pays considerably less to the State than he would otherwise lay out in wages.

      "In