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The peonage systems in parts of the United States and the labor systems of many of the African colonies of Great Britain and Germany illustrate this phase of solution. It is also illustrated in many of the West Indian islands where we have a predominant Negro population, and this population freed from slavery and partially enfranchised.
While physical slavery would have been abolished, yet a sort of feudal or peonage system would have been established in its place, the effect of which would have been practically the same as the system which had been abolished.
First, thirty thousand black men were transported from the refuges and relief stations back to the farms, back to the critical trial of a new way of working. Plain instructions went out from Washington: the laborers must be free to choose their employers, no fixed rate of wages was prescribed, and there was to be no peonage or forced labor.
One of the most striking articles I ever printed recounted the experiences of a sales-girl in one of New York's department stores, yet it was unnoticed by the New York papers, which are quick enough to republish and comment on such articles when we print them, as "Graft in Panama," "Peonage in Georgia," or "Race-Prejudice in California."
She had heard much of the practice of peonage, how that planters and contractors would enter into collusion with magistrates and convict innocent Negroes of crimes in order that they might get Negro laborers by the paying of fines assessed on these trumped up charges.
The negro thanked him profusely, and went out, his wretched frame showing up miserably in the strong sunlight as he passed by the window of the dining room. "But that's worse than any slavery I ever heard of," burst out Hamilton indignantly. "Peonage?" answered the old veteran. "Oh, yes, much worse." "And it still goes on?"
If the Senate was about to abolish black slavery, being unwilling to intrust the territorial legislature with such measures, surely it ought in all consistency to abolish also peonage. But the Senate preferred not to be consistent. By the last of July, the Omnibus in the words of Benton had been overturned, and all the inmates but one spilled out.
Thus were the chains of peonage forged about him. At the same time there developed a still more vicious system. Immediately after the war legislation enacted in the South made severe provision with reference to vagrancy.
The system of Peonage and contracted convict-labor, growing out of the codes of Black laws, were all-sufficient to keep the bulk of the Negro race in practical subjection and bondage.
Count Erskyll chatted with forced affability while the departing committeemen were being seen to the launch that would take them down. When the airlock closed behind them, he drew Prince Trevannion aside out of earshot of their subordinates. "You know what you're doing?" he raged, in a hoarse whisper. "You're simply substituting peonage for outright slavery!" "I'd call that something of a step."
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