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Updated: May 4, 2025
The strong arm of the Government, guided by a wise and just executive, has been reached out to crush the poisonous growth of peonage, and men hitherto silent have raised their voices to commend. Here and there a brave judge has condemned the infamy of the chain-gang and convict lease systems. Good men, North and South, have banded themselves together to promote the cause of popular education.
The poorer people of the back country everywhere suffer because of the harsh and improper laws of debt. In practice these laws have resulted in establishing a system of peonage, such as has grown up here and there in our own nation. A radical change is needed in this matter; and the colonel is fighting for the change.
This has caused the existence of the system of peonage, of which so much has been said in this country, in the attempts that have been made to show that slavery already prevails in Mexico.
Then he gave up as his tired eyes refused to focus. "Why don't you people revolt?" "They tried it twice. But they were just a bunch of pariahs shipped here to live in peonage. They couldn't do much. The first time Earth cut off shipments and starved them. Next time the villages had the answer to that but the cities had to fight for Earth or starve, so they whipped us.
"Ephraim," the Colonel said, turning to the old preacher, "put this man on the payroll as a field hand, beginning from to-morrow, but don't send him to the field for a couple of weeks. Behave yourself," he added, turning to the peonage victim, "and you'll be all right here."
Vagrancy laws enabled the magistrates to set unemployed blacks at work under arrangements that amounted almost to peonage. It is now evident that the South was actuated by what it considered the necessities of its situation and not merely by a spirit of defiance. Yet the fear on the part of the North that slavery was being restored under a disguise was not unnatural.
Contractors and sub-contractors beset him; draughtsmen fairly buried him under tons of drawings and blue-prints. All of which was as nothing compared to the labour squabbles and endless petty entanglements which arose from personal jealousy or political vindictiveness, peppered with dark hints of peonage, threats, demands, and whispers of graft.
Then a return of cheerful tolerance, a feeling, that, if the Deity could bear with rats and sharpers, he could; with a confident trust, that, in the long run, terriers and honest men would have the upperhand, and a grateful consciousness that he had been sent just at the right time to come between a patient victim and the master who held her in peonage.
The Apache and Comanche raided on the outlying settlements; the mixed bloods, and the "tame" Indians on the great ranches and in the hamlets were in a state of peonage; in the little walled towns, the Spanish commanders lived in half civilized, half barbaric luxury, and shared with the priests absolute rule over the people roundabout.
"Six-thirty," the Colonel replied, "we keep early hours in the country. By the way," he added, "have you heard anything of this peonage business here this morning?" "No, sir," the boy answered, "I started out with my schedules bright and early." "I purpose to hold an inquiry after lunch," the planter continued. "You are lunching at Ephraim's of course?" "Yes, Colonel Egerius," the boy answered.
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