Often an unscrupulous landlord will deliberately give a Negro a little money before Christmas, knowing that he will promptly waste it in a "celebration" thus getting him into debt so that he dare not leave the plantation for fear of arrest and criminal prosecution. If he attempts to leave he is arrested and taken before a friendly justice of the peace, and fined or threatened with imprisonment. If he is not in debt, it sometimes happens that the landlord will have him arrested on the charge of stealing a bridle or a few potatoes (for it is easy to find something against almost any Negro), and he is brought into court. In several cases I know of the escaping Negro has even been chased down with bloodhounds. On appearing in court the Negro is naturally badly frightened. The white man is there and offers as a special favour to take him back and let him work out the fine--which sometimes requires six months, often a whole year. In this way Negroes are kept in debt--so-called debt-slavery or peonage--year after year, they and their whole family. One of the things that I couldn't at first understand in some of the courts I visited was the presence of so many white men to stand sponsor for Negroes who had committed various offences. Often this grows out of the feudal protective instinct which the landlord feels for the tenant or servant of whom he is fond; but often it is merely the desire of the white man to get another Negro worker. In one case in particular, I saw a Negro brought into court charged with stealing cotton. "Does anybody know this Negro?" asked the judge. Two white men stepped up and both said they did. The judge fined the Negro $20 and costs, and there was a real contest between the two white men as to who should pay it--and get the Negro. They argued for some minutes, but finally the judge said to the prisoner: "Who do you want to work for, George?" The Negro chose his employer, and agreed to work four months to pay off his $20 fine and costs. Sometimes a man who has a debt against a Negro will sell the claim--which is practically selling the Negro--to some farmer who wants more labour. A case of this sort came up in the winter of 1907 in Rankin County, Mississippi--the facts of which are all in testimony. A Negro named Dan January was in debt to a white farmer named Levi Carter. Carter agreed to sell the Negro and his entire family to another white farmer named Patrick. January refused to be sold. According to the testimony Carter and some of his companions seized January, bound him hand and foot and beat him most brutally, taking turns in doing the whipping until they were exhausted and the victim unconscious.