WHITE SLAVES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13814, 29 July 1908, Page 7

WHITE SLAVES.

CONVICTS SOLD LIKE MULES.

ONE WHIPPED TO DEATH.

By Telegraph— Association.—Copyright.

New York, July 27. The Legislative Investigation Committee, sitting in Alabama, elicited remarkable evidence respecting the State convict leasing systems practised by the Southern States.

It was shown that on one State prison farm the convicts were lined up and sold like mules to the highest bidder.

One convict was leased out in exchange for seven negroes because he possessed clerical ability.

A white boy who was leased was whipped to death for spilling coffee on a dog. ,

One naturally recalls the stories told by Mrs. Harriet. Beecher Stowe, of the abominable treatment to which negro slaves used to be subjected in the Southern States. Simon Legree was believed by some to have been an overdrawn character; but, reading the cabled revelations, one can readily believe that such monsters were not uncommon. Chained together !* in parties, and ..watched by an armed overseer, the convicts are " leased" to the cotton planters, and are mercilessly whipped for the merest trifles. Escapees are tracked by dogs, just as in the negro slave days, are flogged when captured, and generally spend a tortured existence.