The American Missionary — Volume 34, No. 06, June, 1880Various
Religion
The American Missionary — Volume 34, No. 06, June, 1880
Various
Congregational churches -- Missions -- Periodicals; Home missions -- Periodicals
There have been, and are now in some States, unjust laws regulating
labor and wages. The script system, which permits the employer to
pay the laborer in script redeemable at his store, has been known,
and is ruinously unjust to the laborer, but in the two States
where this movement has been greatest, regulative legislation has
been in the one exactly the reverse of what it is in the other. In
Mississippi the landlord must fulfil his engagements before he can
force his tenant to quit. In North Carolina the tenant must fulfil
his before he can leave.
Fundamentally, it is the impoverished condition of the people,
conjoined with restlessness, and supplemented by idle curiosity,
making change easy and desirable, which has exposed these poor
people to the designs of unscrupulous sharpers and demagogues. They
have inherited poverty, ignorance, improvidence, to say nothing
of positive vices. They have been hindered by positive efforts to
keep them down. They have been discouraged by the fact that success
would give them no social or political advantage, and so they
have either refused to labor, or have squandered in pic-nics and
cake-walks, for tobacco and whiskey, it is estimated, about eighty
millions of dollars annually.
There have been, so far, about 28,000 of these _exodusters_ who
have paid an average of about $16.65 to the railroad companies
for transportation. Out of this the companies have paid to the
unscrupulous agents who promote the movement, one dollar for full,
and fifty cents for half fares.
The roads have received about $500,000 from these people, and
hope for at least half as much more from a return movement. The
emigrants have received in charity about seven cents each, as an
offset to the $16.65 which they have paid for transportation alone.
We know not what report the Senate Exodus Committee will make, but
are confident that it will come no nearer the truth in regard to
this movement than has the writer of this article. So long as the
negro is thus ignorant he will be helpless against the oppressor,
whether he be the old master or the pretended new friend. When we
know the possibilities yet undeveloped in the negro, and give full
scope to them, we shall know also what an element of wealth and
strength here is in what is now known as an incubus on prosperity
and a menace to our national life.
CONDITIONS OF INDIAN CIVILIZATION.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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