Albion W. Tourgee said: "They instituted a public school system in a region where public schools had been unknown. They opened the ballot-box and the jury-box to thousands of white men who had been debarred from them by a lack of earthly possessions. They introduced home rule in the South. They abolished the whipping-post, the branding-iron, the stocks and other barbarous forms of punishment which had up to that time prevailed. They reduced capital felonies from about twenty to two or three. In an age of extravagance they were extravagant in the sums appropriated for public works. In all that time no man's rights of person were invaded under the forms of law." Thomas E. Miller, a Negro member of the late Constitutional Convention of South Carolina, said: "The gentleman from Edgefield (Mr. Tillman) speaks of the piling of the State debt; of jobbery and peculation during the period between 1869 and 1873 in South Carolina, but he has not found voice eloquent enough nor pen exact enough to mention those imperishable gifts bestowed upon South Carolina between 1873 and 1876 by Negro legislators--the laws relative to finance, the building of penal and charitable institutions, and, greatest of all, the establishment of the public school system. Starting as infants in legislation in 1869, many wise measures were not thought of, many injudicious acts were passed. But in the administration of affairs for the next four years, having learned by experience the result of bad acts, we immediately passed reformatory laws touching every department of state, county, municipal and town governments. These enactments are to-day upon the statute books of South Carolina. They stand as living witnesses of the Negro's fitness to vote and legislate upon the rights of mankind." Cf. Love's "Disfranchisement of the Negro," p. 10. NOTE 9 Cf. "The Economic Future of the Negro," in papers and proceedings of the eighteenth Annual Meeting, American Economic Association, pp. 219-42. NOTE 10 See Alabama Laws on Labor Contracts. NOTE 11 See Laws of Alabama, 1906-1907. NOTE 12 See Laws of South Carolina, 1906-1907. NOTE 13 Cf. Bulletin Number 8, 12th United States Census. NOTE 14 This statement when made was challenged by a Virginia rector. Let John Sharp Williams, minority leader of the House of Representatives answer him.