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FRONI B. OF L. t
CLEVELAND. OHlQ^^^
FORCED LABOR IN THE
UNITED STATES
FORCED LABOR
IN THE
UNITED STATEf
by
WALTER WILSON
With an Introduction by
THEODORE DREISER
INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK
BOOKS ON AMERICAN
LABOR
This book is one of several prepared
under the direction of the Labor Re-
search Association. These include the
Labor Fact Book and the volumes in the
Labor and Industry Series:
LABOR AND STEEL
By Horace B. Davis
LABOR AND COAL
By Anna Rochester
LABOR AND TEXTILES
By Robert W. Dunn and Jack
Hardy
LABOR AND LUMBER
By Charlotte Todes
LABOR AND AUTOMOBILES
By Robert W. Dunn
LABOR AND SILK
By Grace Hutchins
Other volumes in this series are planned
on clothing, food, leather and shoes, con-
struction, transportation, in addition to
special volumes on Labor in the South
and on Women in Industry.
Copyright, 1933, by
INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS CO., INC
Printed in the US^.
This book is composed and printed by union labor
CONTENTS
Introduction 7
CHAPTER
I. What Is Forced Labor? 9
Making a "Free" Contract, 12; Capitalism as a
More Efficient System of Exploitation, 16; Forms
of Labor Under Imperialism, 17; Borderline Types
of Forced Labor, 19.
II. Convict Labor 24
Who Are in Prison To-day?, 24; Big Crooks Go
Free, 27; What Are the "Crimes"?, 29; Third De-
gree, 30,
III. Exploiting Convict Labor 34
Convict Labor in State Prisons, 36 ; Farm, Road and
Construction Work, 2>7\ Local and County Convict
Work, 38; Systems of Employing Prisoners, 39;
Prison-Made Commodities, 41; "Manufacturers" of
Prison Goods, 43; Marketing Convict-Made Goods,
43; Competition with "Free Labor," 46.
IV. "Making Good Citizens'* 50
Prison Wages, 51 ; Accidents and Occupational Dis-
eases, 52; Hours and Tasks, 54; Punishment, 55;
Prison "Home" Life, 58; Strait- Jacket and Other
Tortures, 59 ; Young Convict Workers, 61 ; Revolts
and Struggles Against Prison Labor, 62; Struggles
in 1931-32, 65.
V. The Chain Gang 68
The Guards Are Killers, 72; Man Hunting, 73;
Chain Gang Tortures, 73; A Few Killings, 79;
Prison Farm Tortures, 82.
VI. Peonage 84
What Is Peonage?, 85; Peonage Is Legalized, 91;
Emigrant Agency Law, 94; "Jumping Contract"
Law, 95.
VII. Peonage Exposed 100
Catastrophes Expose Peonage, 104; Other Recent
Peonage Cases, 106 ; Peonage on Government Job,
107; Rebellion and Struggle, 109; Peonage Among
Mexicans in the United States, 114.
5
6 CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
VIII. Forced Labor in the Colonies . . . . ii8
Products of Forced Labor, 120 ; Forced Labor in the
West Indies, 122; Imported Forced Labor in Cuba,
124 ; in Black Haiti, 127 ; in Central America, 128 ;
Peonage in Guatemala, 129; Liberia — a Rubber Col-
ony, 131 ; Contract Labor in Hawaii, 136 ; Peonage
in the Philippines, 139; Struggles Against Forced
Labor in the Colonies, 141.
IX. "Forced Labor" in the Soviet Union . . 145
Who Charges Soviet Forced Labor?, 146; Some of
the Charges, 148; the Answer to the Charges, 149;
Americans Also Deny Forced Labor Charges, 151;
Labor Turnover and the Labor Code, 154; More
About Soviet Timber, 156; the Kulaks and Forced
Labor, 158; the Status of Soviet Convict Labor,
159; Socialist Labor vs. Capitalist Labor, 162;
Stimuli^ for Increasing Production, 166; Socialist
Competition and Shock Brigades, 167; Soviet Labor
Unions, 170; Hours, Wages and Social Insurance,
171; Education and Culture, 173.
X. Summary and Conclusion 176
Reference Notes 183
Index „ . 187
INTRODUCTION
It is a pleasure and a privilege to write an introduction to
this book. Because of the outcry against the products of
forced labor presumably being shipped into this country
by Soviet Russia in order to undermine honest, well-paid
American labor, Mr. Wilson set himself the task of estab-
lishing that forced labor is one of the outstanding character-
istics of the American business world, and of its colonial
extensions.
In his very interesting chapter. Forced Labor in the Colo-
nies, Mr. Wilson devotes disturbing but also convincing
space to the forced labor phases of the businesses of the
United Fruit Company and the General Sugar Company
in Cuba, the Firestone Rubber Company in Liberia, the
Guggenheim tin mines in Bolivia, and other American com-
panies having heavy investments in Central and South
America, Haiti (The National City Bank), Hawaii (Sugar
Planters Association), the Philippines. In this connection,
he particularly emphasizes the section of the 1930 Tariff
Act banning importation of goods produced by forced labor,*
which he points out was especially contrived to injure the
Soviet Union.
As regards forced labor actually in existence within the
United States, he dwells chiefly on convict labor, peonage and
chain gangs, an awful — in the best meaning of that word^
assemblage of horrors. He makes a point of the fact that
our prison laborers are chiefly recruited from the ranks of
poverty, and for small offenses, mostly petty thieveries due
to poverty. The victims, through framed charges, forced
confessions and the like, are finally landed in the ranks of
the prison workers.
He seeks to establish that, outside our prisons, there are
forms of contract and provisions of government and chari-
table relief which preclude free labor. And he adds the
Marxian argument which makes it perfectly clear ithat,^
under capitalism, labor is bound, in any case, to be ex-
ploited, as it is.
I know that it will be argued that in comparing labor con-
ditions in Russia and America he is presenting conditions
7
8 INTRODUCTION
not exactly parallel. It will probably be said that in America
it is taken for granted that people must work, but that there
is no legal compulsion. Whereas in Russia, they are com-
pelled by law so to do, if they want to eat. And, while,
frankly, there is involved here a fundamental difference
between freedom and tyranny, the actual result is that there
is tyranny here and not in Russia, That which will be
ignored in this argument is the absolute proof that the funda-
mental business of the Soviet government, its philosophy as
well as its official and technical structure, is devoted to the
principle that it is truly of, by and for its people, and that
all of the rewards of a properly functioning government
must and do redound to the physical and mental welfare
of all of its people. Whereas in America there have always
been especial rewards and class privileges not for the really
mentally gifted, but rather for the money-bag, the individual
who centered on the business of accumulating money in its
most tangible form, besides the direction and control of the
government itself. For this would secure these properties
and privileges for themselves and for their wives, children,
relatives and friends to the third, fourth and seventeenth
generations.
Mr. Wilson, throughout his carefully documented and
verified study, lays very great stress on punishment, inhu-
mane conditions and torture in the United States and its colo-
nies, and there is no escaping the force of his argument any
more than the volume of his data. It is overwhelming. In
certain cases, it is of such nature as to be not only depressing
but discouraging. And were it not for the Marxian analysis
of the inevitable process and failure of capitalism, it would
be reason for complete social despair. But there is this
philosophy, Marx* destructive analysis of the waste and the
futilities of capitalism. And with this in the foreground,
and taking into account whatever modifications so-called
human nature in its race and state form may require, there
is still the possibility of a more equitable and hence a better
state than we have yet seen. I congratulate the author on his
labors, and bespeak for the volume a wide reading.
Theodore Dreiser.
CHAPTER I
WHAT IS FORCED LABOR?
The holy crusade of the past two or three years against
"forced labor" in the Soviet Union has had one result cer-
tainly not desired by those who initiated the crusade. It
aroused general interest in the problem of forced labor,
which in turn led to the "discovery" that much forced
labor exists in every capitalist country. In the United States,
for example, where more discussion of forced labor has been
generated than at any time since the Civil War, it has be-
come evident that one need not go thousands of miles to
Africa to witness forced labor in all its forms: there is
enough first-hand material at home to satisfy the most thor-
ough student of the problem. The old story: beams and
motes, people in glass houses, boomerangs, and chickens
coming home to roost.
Of course every one knows that there is some forced labor
in the United States but how widespread is the practice is
not generally recognized. This writer himself, who had
done some work on the problem, never quite realized the
extent until he made a special investigation during the past
two years. Put a dot on the map of the United States
wherever you find forced labor and you will find the fair
face of this country covered with a close-mottled rash.
What is the meaning of the term "forced labor"? Gen-
erally speaking we understand it to mean work that is done
by a worker in the absence of a "free" contract between
himself and the employer. The United States Tariff Act
of 1930 (section 307), prohibiting the importation of goods
made by "forced labor"— including convict labor — ^and aimed
0
10 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
at the Soviet Union, adopted the definition of forced labor
given by the League of Nations. This definition, made by
the Draft Convention of the Fourteenth International Con-
ference of Labor at Geneva in 1930, states : "For the pur-
pose of the present convention the term * forced or obligatory*
labor shall mean all work or service which is extracted from
a person under the menace of any penalty, and for which the
said person had not offered himself voluntarily."
By implication, this definition considers wage labor under
capitalism to be voluntary or free and uncoerced by "the
menace of any penalty." In reality, as we shall show, wage
labor under capitalism differs from forced labor as the
League of Nations defines it, not in content but only in
form. Forced labor in the generally accepted meaning of
the term — ^as applied to such types as convict labor, peonage,
and chattel slavery — is a form of labor in which the "menace
of a penalty" is more open and direct, in which all the ele-
ments of compulsion are unconcealed and evident to all.
Even when they enjoy personal freedom and outwardly,
at any rate, enter into a "free" contract with employers,
the labor of all workers in capitalist countries is forced
labor. Karl Marx clearly shows why:
. . . Capital, in the social process of production corresponding
to it, pumps a certain quantity of surplus labor out of the direct
producer, or laborer. It extorts this surplus without returning
an equivalent. This surplus labor always remains forced labor
in essence, no matter how much it may seem to be the result
of free labor.^
Under capitalism the employer hires the worker, that is,
buys his labor power. But he hires the worker for the sole
purpose of making as much profit out of him as possible.
So, whether the fact is known or not, the worker actually
toils a part of the time for himself and a part of the time
without pay, producing surplus value and piling up profits,
for his employer. Under chattel slavery the worker received
food, shelter, clothes and medical attention. But no "free"
WHAT IS FORCED LABOR? 11
contract on wages and other matters was made. Under
serfdom the serf worked a certain number of days without
pay for a lord and then was allowed to work the rest of the
time for himself. Under capitalism the worker is made to
believe that he enters into a contract freely. But when pay
day comes he is given — ^in the aggregate — ^barely enough to
buy food, clothes, and shelter which the slave or serf re-
ceived for his work without worrying. Marx put it this
way:
In point of fact, however, whether a man works three days of
the week for himself on his own field and three days for nothing
on the estate of his lord, or whether he works in the factory or
workshop six hours daily for himself and six for his employer,
comes to the same, although in the latter case the paid and
unpaid portions of labor are inseparably mixed up with each
other, and the nature of the whole transaction is completely
masked by the intervention of a contract and the pay received at
the end of the week. The gratuitous labor appears to be vol-
untarily given in the one instance and to be compulsory in the
other. That makes all the difference.^
It is this surplus value produced by the workers and taken
by the capitalists without giving any equivalent that is the
main characteristic feature of all labor in capitalist coun-
tries. Working for another class, producing surplus valuej
for the exploiters — ^this is the essence of forced labor. ^ .
But, it might be asked, where is the coercion in the pro-
duction of surplus value? The worker is free, he is not
kept under arrest, he is free to take any kind of work he
pleases, or not to take any at all.
Under capitalism the worker is a proletarian, that is, he is
deprived of the means of production and depends for a
living solely upon his wages. He is without security for
the future. He must take work from a capitalist to secure
an income to exist. He is in no position to refuse to accept
the employment offered him. He may escape working for a
particular employer but he must work for some one some-
where in the system. Because he is propertyless, because he
12 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
lacks the means of production he is compelled to sell his
own labor power, to offer it for sale on the market like
any other commodity. The penalty for refusal to work is
death, death by starvation. "Freedom" to work, or not to
work, narrows down to precisely that. It is the whiplash
of hunger that serves as a most effective form of coercion,
forcing the proletarian to work for another class.
The compulsion to work by hunger, created by the capi-
talist monopoly of the means of production and distribution,
was recognized by the earliest of the capitalist economists.
Karl Marx quotes one who said:
Legal constraint (to labor) is attended with too much trouble
and noise . . . whereas hunger is not only a peaceable, silent,
unremitted pressure, but, as the most natural motive to industry
and labor, it calls forth the most powerful exertions.^
Thus, under capitalism, there is no thought of abolishing
forced labor, but merely of changing the methods of coercion
to force workers to labor for another class. Instead of
using direct force, depriving the workers of freedom, a more
"peaceable, silent, unremitted" method of coercion is em-
ployed— ^hunger.
Making a "Free" Contract
Let us try to picture the way in which a wage worker
in a company-owned American textile, coal or lumber town
ienters into one of these "free" contracts, implying an agree-
ment between equals, made "without duress" and "with full
understanding of all the obligations assumed." The steps
taken by the "party of the first part," the capitalist, to pre-
pare the minds and bodies of the "party of the second part,"
the workers, to sign this "free" contract are somewhat as
follows.
A company in one of these towns shuts down its plant.
Thousands of the workers suffer months of unemployment.
The company threatens to import other workers at lower
wages to take the jobs of those formerly employed. It pre-
WHAT IS FORCED LABOR? 13
pares blacklists of those who may have criticized the com-
pany or attempted to organize a union. It cuts off credit
at the company store. It may even evict workers from
company-owned houses. Finally gun thugs, policemen and
detectives attempt to terrorize the workers.
When the workers' ragged clothes hang limp on their
starved bodies and when they have been terrorized suffi-
ciently, the company, with the aid of its high-priced lawyers,
draws up a contract. Usually the document consists of sev-
eral pages of fine print which are full of "whereases" and
conditions of every sort — ^all, of course, in the company's
favor.
At last all is ready for the signature of the "free worker."
Hundreds or perhaps thousands line up in front of the
employment office in response to a notice that the plant is
about to resume operations. All of them, according to capi-
talist theory, are waiting their turn to "bargain freely" with
the corporation ! Usually the procedure of hiring the whole
line of workers takes only a few minutes. As soon as they
sign their names or make their mark they pass inside the
factory gates — ^hired after having exercised their right to
make a "free" contract. And not a line or a word of the
form contract, drawn up by the lawyers, has been changed !
In practice, the worker is often forced to trade in the
company store, to accept as pay scrip which is redeemable /
only at the company store at a discount, and to live in a
company house from which he can be evicted at the com*
pany's will. To incur the displeasure of the boss in one
of these company towns means to be driven from the com-
munity.
The worker is bound to abide by the contract. In addi-
tion to hunger there are other penalties which prevent hini
from breaking it. Among them are the clubs of company
thugs and policemen, the bayonets of the militia, poison
gas, and the enslaving orders of the courts. An example
of the latter is the injunction. The ultimate purpose of the
14. FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
injunction is to keep workers in a condition bordering on
involuntary servitude, and its immediate purpose is to break
the resistance of workers who try to bargain collectively.
A great many cases of injunctions might be cited which
have prevented union members and others from leaving, or
threatening to leave, their employment without the consent
of their employers.* And very closely related to the injunc-
tion is the yellow dog contract — a contract whereby workers
"agree" not to join in any collective attempt to better wages
or conditions no matter how bad these may be.
The most notorious yellow dog contract of the frankly
anti-union type, and the form most widely used, is that
which was employed by the Hitchman Coal & Coke Co.
against the once militant organization, the United Mine
Workers of America. It was upheld by the U. S. Supreme
Court in 1917, and reads as follows:
I am employed by and work for the H. C. & C. Co. with the
express understanding that I am not a member of the U.M.W.A.
and will not become so while an employee of the H. Co.; that
the H. Co. is run non-union and agrees with me that it will run
non-union while I am in its employ. If at any time I am em-
ployed by the H. Co. I want to become connected with the
U.M.W.A. or any affiliated organization, I agree to withdraw
from the employment of said company, and agree that while I am
in the employ of that company, I will not make any efforts
amongst its employees to bring about the unionization of that
mine against the company's wish. I have read the above or heard
the same read.^
To give the appearance of mutual gain the contract h5rpo-
critically pretends that it is at the worker's special request
that the company agrees to run non-union ! Some anti-union
contracts go further — ^the worker "agrees" in addition to have
no dealings, communications, or interviews whatsoever with
any agents or members of a labor union.
But on the other hand the "party of the first part," the
employer, is not bound in any way. He has the privilege
of interpreting the contract. He has the power to terminate
WHAT IS FORCED LABOR? 15
it with or without notice and with or without reason. He
can fire the workers in mass or individually. All that is
necessary is to say, "Hey, there, you're fired !"
Thus the worker through his "inalienable" right of con-
tract is whipped into signing himself into what amounts to
forced labor just as surely as Negro slaves were whipped to
their tasks in the South in pre-Civil War days. Friedrich
Engels brilliantly summed up the whole illusion of freedom
of the "free" contract when he wrote :
The bourgeoisie have seized the monopoly of all the means
of life in the broadest sense of the word; the proletarian can
obtain the things he requires only from this bourgeoisie; they
have the power of life or death over him; they offer him the
means to live, but in exchange for a certain equivalent, his labor ;
they even allow him to harbor the illusion that he is acting on
his own free will, without any constraint, like an adult person
entering into a contract with them. But what a fine sort of
freedom it is if the proletarian has no other choice but to accept
the terms offered by the bourgeoisie or die of starvation, of cold,
to live naked among the beasts of the forest.
The very existence of the capitalist state is proof of the
existence of forced labor. The state is the organ of class
domination, the organ of oppression of one class by another,
"the national war engine of capital against labor." ® It is the
chief instrument of the capitalists in forcing the workers to
submit to class exploitation. The simplest economic struggle,
the smallest strike brings police to the factory gate to dis-
perse meetings and arrest strikers.
The capitalist's life and death control over the "free"
worker is shown most clearly in an economic crisis or at any
other time when the capitalist chooses not to operate his
factory. At such a time the worker finds the factory door
shut in his face and no opportunity to do any work no matter
how much he "volunteers." We have seen the methods of
coercion used in forcing workers to toil. Now during the
deep-going world economic crisis we see more clearly than
ever the absolute power of the capitalist, who decides when
16 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
the worker shall and when he shall not be employed. The
worker is forced to acquiesce and lapses into involuntary
idleness. Mass suffering, starvation and suicide follow.
Marx pointed this out when he said :
But capital not only lives upon labor. Like a master, at once
distinguished and barbarous, it drags with it into its grave the
corpses of its slaves, whole hecatombs of workers, who perish
in the crises^
Capitalism as a More Efficient System
OF Exploitation
It has long been recognized that a worker in an industrial
society does better and more efficient work when he is made
to believe that he is working of his own free will. It is an
accepted fact that the system of wage labor has proved to
be more efficient in the exploitation of labor than outright
slavery. Marx stated this fact tersely when he said :
Capital has developed into a coercive relation, whereby the
working class is constrained to do more work than is prescribed
by the narrow round of its own vital needs. As a producer of
diligence in others, as extractor of surplus value and exploiter
of labor power, capitalism, in its energy, remorselessness and
efficiency, has outscored all the earlier systems of production,
those that were based upon forced labor.®
John Adams discerned the illusory character of freedom in
wage labor under capitalism, as is shown in his speech in the
American Continental Congress of 1777 when he said:
It is of no consequence by what name you call the people,
whether by that of freemen or slaves; in some countries the
laboring poor are called freemen, in others they are called slaves ;
but the difference as to the state is imaginary only. What mat-
ters it whether a landlord employing ten laborers on his farm
gives them annually as much money as will buy them the neces-
saries of life or gives them those necessities at short hand? . . .
The condition of the laboring poor in most countries — that of
the fishermen particularly of the Northern states — is as abject
as that of slavery. »
WHAT IS FORCED LABOR? 17
Even southern slave owners, in defending their own sys-
tem of chattel slavery during the slavery controversy in the
United States in the 1850's, repeatedly pointed out the?
coercive character of "free labor'* exploitation. Senatoij
J. H. Hammond of South Carolina, for one, expressed this
view in a speech in the United States Senate, March 20, 1858:
The senator from New York said yesterday that the whole
world had abolished slavery. Ay, the name, but not the thing
. . . for the man who lives by daily labor, and scarcely lives
at that and who has put his labor on the market, and takes the
best he can get for it, in short your whole class of manual hireling
laborers and "operatives," as you call them, are essentially slaves.
The difference between us is, that our slaves are hired for life,
and are well-compensated; there is no starvation, no begging, no
want of employment among our people, and not too much em-
ployment either. Yours are hired by the day, not cared for,
and scantily compensated. . . .
That such arguments by defenders of slavery were re-
garded very seriously is evidenced by the papers and pam-
phlets that were circulated by the defenders of wage labor
trying to disprove the arguments.
The Maharaja of Nepal, having been "educated" by im-
perialism to recognize that wage labor can be more effec-
tively exploited than slave labor, said in a speech in 1924:
The slave must be fed and clothed whether he works ill or
well, he must be nursed in illness, and at death or desertion his
value will have to be written off as a loss. The slave will require
more constant supervision than the free laborer, because, sure
of a bellyful whether he works or not, he will naturally prefer
to do the least possible; you cannot starve him, because his
physical weakness will be your loss. The superiority of free
labor to slave labor is not a matter of mere speculation. History
has proved it and I doubt not that the experience of those who
have occasion to use both descriptions of labor in this country
will bear out the fact.^°
Forms of Labor Under Imperialism
Capitalism resorts not only to indirect coercion in the case
of wage labor but also to physical force when need arises.
18 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
Police, gangsters, prison, attacks on demonstrations, arrests
of strikers and even murder are among the common weapons
used to protect property and profits and to prevent the
workers from eflFectively waging a fight to better their con-
ditions.
But, in addition to this type of coercion, capitalism has
need of other forms of forced labor. As one of its contra-
dictions it also makes use of all the more direct types of
forced labor, in which open physical and legal restraint is
used. In every capitalist country direct forced labor is used,
including, with variations, chattel slavery, serfdom, peonage,
convict labor and imported contract labor.
Although both "free" wage and direct forced labor exist
side by side in every capitalist country, it may be said that
"free" wage labor predominates in advanced capitalist coun-
tries and direct forced labor in the colonial countries, espe-
cially the more backward. It is estimated that there are
between 5,000,000 and 6,000,000 chattel slaves in the colonies
to-day,* chiefly in Africa and Asia.
The trend of labor under modern imperialism is toward
a subtle transition from "free" to coerced labor in the
highly industrialized countries. The emphasis during the
nineteenth century was on freedom of contract and other
"freedoms." But during the past few years these "freedoms"
are being more and more openly curtailed as world capitalism
finds itself in a permanent crisis. We see extreme examples
of this under fascism in Italy and in the Balkans where all
free associations of workers are prohibited, and the state
drops its cloak of democracy entirely to reveal the naked
dictatorship of the capitalists. In England a great many
restrictions have been put on the right to strike, especially
since the British general strike of 1926. . In the United
States the use of the injunction, the yellow dog contract,
compulsory arbitration, and the police and courts place labor
more and more under coercion, abrogating many of the civil
WHAT IS FORCED LABOR? ISl
and political rights which had been won by the working
class during many years of struggle.
Paradoxical as it may seem, the trend in the colonies is
just the opposite — from open and above-board forced labor
to less open forms. There is a great deal of agitation at
present against chattel slavery. This reflects, on the one
hand, the fact that a different, more efficient type of labor
is needed to man the new industries in the colonies. On the
other hand, it reflects the struggle of the colonial masses
against enslavement by the imperialists. Such "humani-
tarians" as those in the League of Nations and Secretary
of State Stimson, in their recent outcries against chattel
slavery, merely voice the need for a more concealed form of
forced labor as a more efficient means of capitalist exploita-
tion. They also hope their hypocritical protests will help to
placate the rising tide of colonial revolt. ^
Borderline Types of Forced Labor
In the United States, as in every other industrialized
country, the predominating form of labor is "free" or wage
labor, which, however, exists side by side with much direct
forced labor as defined by the United States Tariff Act of
1930. Other types of labor are also used, which are on the
borderline between wage labor and direct forced labor. As
we do not develop these borderline cases elsewhere in this
book, a few words are necessary here to clarify the problem.
During the present world economic crisis of capitalism a
great deal of semi-direct forced labor has developed in con-
nection with unemplo)mient relief. No study of the volume
or effect of this type of forced labor has yet been made in
the United States although we know that it reaches enormous
proportions. Scarcely a day passes but that the press re-
ports such cases.
This unemployment "relief" forced labor is of two gen-
eral kinds — ^work for a private or government agency, and
20 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
work for a private employer who secures his labor through
some government agency.
Work for agencies or institutions may range from the
time-honored wood-cutting of the Salvation Army to road
building for the state or Federal government. Usually eight
hours or more of hard labor are required in return for
enough food for just bare subsistence and a bed in a "flop"
house, or, if the worker has a family, for enough coarse
food to maintain life and a shack or dingy room to sleep in.
Under a plan used in California three thousand men were
recently forced to build a thousand miles of motor roads
and mountain trails for the state. An American Legion
official in Michigan has proposed a plan for that state which
he says is modeled on that of California, under which labor
camps would be established where workers would do road
work without wages. But they would be given food wortH
22 cents and a shelter worth three cents for a day's work.
Perhaps most of this type of forced labor for a private
employer is to be found in connection with unemployment
"relief" through the so-called public works programs.
Municipalities and states allocate sums from public funds for
the construction of roads, bridges, canals, etc., "to provide
work for the unemployed." The contracts are given to
private contractors, who offer the unemployed a chance to
work at wages from 40 to 60% lower than the usual rates
for similar work. Those who refuse to go to work under
such conditions are removed from the register, deprived of
further relief, and even in extreme instances, arrested or
threatened with arrest for vagrancy. Workers have also
had their names removed from the list of registered as a
penalty for their activity in the unemployed councils. In
some cities unemployed who refuse to work for flop house
fare are "deported" from the city limits in droves.
One of the most recent and typical reports of forced labor
in the form of unemployment "relief" is from Bakersfield,
California. Labor groups there, according to a Federated
WHAT IS FORCED LABOR? 21
Press report, June 3, 1932, had protested that employers,
including well-to-do farmers, were using the relief agencies
as employment offices. "The welfare bureau," says the re-
port, "because it has the power to bestow relief where and
how it desires, can force men to work even though the wage
is not sufficient to buy food for the family What is it
but forced labor to tell a man with wife and children that
he must work for 15 cents an hour if he wishes the county
to aid him ?"
Similar reports on "work relief" have come from over a
hundred communities including Philadelphia, Chicago, Mil-
waukee (Socialist-controlled), Cleveland, Baltimore, Kansas
City, Pittsburgh, Houston, Hartford, Indianapolis, Louisville,
Buffalo, Toledo and Trenton. Still other reports reveal the
same conditions in agricultural sections, especially in the
South during the cotton-picking season.
And one of the chief offending agencies is the Red Cross,
which during the 1930 drought gave out a dole of $1.55 a
month per person to the neediest cases in the stricken sec-
tions of the South. U. S. Senator Burton K. Wheeler
charged that the organization was forcing laborers to ac-
cept work for private employers at 15 cents an hour. It
was also charged that the Red Cross made the workers pay
off private debts by this kind of enforced labor before relief
was given.
Such use of forced labor is not new in the history of
capitalism. Marx, in describing the cotton crisis of 1861-
1865, said :
The cotton employees willingly offered themselves for all pub-
lic labors, drainage, road-building, stone breaking, street paving,
which they did in order to get their keep from the authorities
(although this amounted practically to an assistance for the
manufacturers). The whole bourgeoisie stood guard over the
laborers. If the worst of a dog's wages were offered, and the
laborer refused to accept them, then the Assistance Committee
struck him from their list. It was in a way a golden age for
the manufacturers, for the laborers had either to starve or
22 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
work at any price profitable for the bourgeois. The Assistance
Committees acted as watch-dogs.^^
Less recognized but very important sources of forced labor
in the United States are orphan homes, religious homes for
children, government schools for Indian children, poor-
houses, insane asylums, and similar institutions. Some of
them are veritable slave-driving institutions. Unfortunately,
no study has ever been made of them but it is commonly
recognized that they all exploit direct forced labor, in fact,
hard labor imposed on inmates of these institutions is an
American tradition. An example of the sort of thing we
mean is indicated by an admission from Mrs. Franklin D.
Roosevelt, who is connected with the Rome School for mental
defectives, that girls from that institution were being ex-
ploited in private homes for 60 cents a day, the "wages"
being paid, not to the girls, but to the state.^^
We are more fortunate in having definite documentary
evidence of the lot of some 38,000 American Indian children,
v.ards of the government, between the ages of six and 18
years, who are forcibly taken from their reservation homes
and parents at the age of six and put in government boarding
schools several hundred miles away. There they are made
to perform all sorts of forced labor under conditions of
unbelievable horror — often for private profit. In the summer
many of them are forced to work in the beet fields of Kansas
and Colorado as child laborers where they are often beaten
and confined for not doing their work "properly." Many
of them contract tuberculosis and trachoma in these govern-
ment institutions.^^
Another type of forced labor in the United States is that
performed in connection with floods and other disasters
during which both private and public employers conscript
workers to build and repair levees and do other emergency
work. The least little freshet in the Mississippi River or any
of its southern tributaries serves as an excuse for conscrip-
tion of Negro and white workers. The writer personally
WHAT IS FORCED LABOR? 23
remembers workers who were afraid to go to the vicinity of
Hickman, Kentucky, during a flood for fear of being con-
scripted, and their danger is even greater in such states as
Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Alabama. Forced
labor similar to levee building is found in connection with
fighting forest fires in the West.
The difference between the various systems of exploitation
of labor is not that forced labor exists under one system
and not under another. The difference lies in the method of
coercion used for extracting surplus labor from the workers.
For the purposes of this study, we may accept the definition
of forced labor as used in the Tariff Act, keeping in mind,
however, that this definition covers only direct forced labor,
and by implication considers wage labor under capitalism to
be really free. In our concluding chapters we will have
occasion to point out under what conditions free labor can
exist when we analyze the charges about "forced labor" in
the Soviet Union and contrast the form of labor there with
that under capitalism. The main purpose in this book is to
consider the forms of direct forced labor in the United States
and in the colonies directly or indirectly imder its domination.
CHAPTER II
CONVICT LABOR
Who Are in Prison To-day?
Under capitalism forced labor, in one form or another,
is recruited from free labor, so that both forms of labor are
to be found side by side. As the world-wide economic crisis,
which began in 1929, deepens and leaves its indelible and fatal
marks on American capitalism, causing decay in all phases
of economic and social life, retrogression to the older and
more direct form of forced labor becomes more and more
accentuated.
To meet the economic crisis American capitalism has forced
the working masses to bear the brunt of the burden in the
form of unprecedented unemployment, one wage-cut after
another, the split up of available jobs among a larger number
of workers with corresponding reduction in average earnings.
This impoverishment of the working class has caused a great
increase in the prison population. Individual workers, on the
one hand, have been forced to commit "crimes against prop-
erty" in order to remain alive. Other workers have been
thrown into prison on political charges for participating in
struggles growing out of the workers' battle against
starvation.
Prison labor forms one of the largest and most constant
sections of forced labor, and it has always been recruited
almost entirely from the working class and poor farmers.
Most of the inmates of prisons are not "criminals" at all but
victims of capitalism. A great many are young workers.*
♦Police Commissioner Edward P. Mulrooney, of New York, in a
speech reported in the New York Times, May 9, 1932, said: "The
majority of our criminals to-day are only boys. The records of the
24
There hav ^ ^T
^T LABOR
25
spokesmen, o
population. I
an editorial in
cember 2y, 193
Look at the ch
the country and s
Either education a
lions against the c
measure of justice
y":
intelligent and ignor c5^ ^ v-*
Almost without ex "^ ^
k admissions, even by capitalist
is class analysis of the prison
»sions is more outspoken than
C, News and Observer, De-
crial :
id other penal institutions in
e at one of two conclusions.
•> of the strongest fortifica-
ne, or there is a different
the poor, white and black.
O
-3
tions of correction ai
more than a grammai
found to be of the p6\
which is easily explicabl
rich, and few educated, N\ '^ <^*
Many other such adniy \J^^% ^
cated and rich" could be cWj <^ % ^
B. Stone, principal keepeA^ ^ V-*
declared the recent unprecec^ ^ cv
Jersey institutions was caus^
of the persons convicted
Warden Lewis E. Lawes in
Sing Sing says that most of
Sing were convicted of robbery\
oners, 91.7% of the 17-year-oldk tn '^j, o.
81% of the 19-year-olds. One
•^^
of such statements. Who are thd * ^'y^ %
likely to have to steal to live ?
Austin H. MacCormick, assistant'
States Bureau of Prisons, recently st\
120,000 prisoners investigated over 7(
ceived organized training for an occupc
number are unskilled workers. Nearly^
New York City department show that almost
persons arrested for felonies in the last year wer
the ages of 17 and 20."
tes of our great institu-
- classes, seldom having
1. Moreover, they are
good many are black,
bet that there are few
h.
ranks of the "edu-
^e, Colonel Edward
Q sey State Prison,
^ isoners into New
'^ ent. Over half
for stealing.
sand Years in
>ners at Sing
^ar-old pris-
S-year-olds,
nplications
Who are
^^.
^
United
about
er re-
that
oca-
the
CHAPTER II
CONVICT LABOR
Who Are in Prison To-day?
Under capitalism forced labor, in one form o
IS recruited from free labor, so that both forms of
to be found side by side. As the world-wide econoi
which began in 1929, deepens and leaves its indelible
marks on American capitalism, causing decay in a
of economic and social life, retrogression to the c
more direct form of forced labor becomes more a
accentuated.
To meet the economic crisis American capitalism hs
the working masses to bear the brunt of the burde
form of unprecedented unemployment, one wage-c
another, the split up of available jobs among a larger
of workers with corresponding reduction in average c
This impoverishment of the working class has cause<
increase in the prison population. Individual worker
one hand, have been forced to commit "crimes agaii
erty" in order to remain alive. Other workers hj
thrown into prison on political charges for partici|
struggles growing out of the workers' battle
starvation.
Prison labor forms one of the largest and most
sections of forced labor, and it has always been 1
almost entirely from the working class and poor
Most of the inmates of prisons are not "criminals" a
victims of capitalism. A great many are young w
* Police Commissioner Edward P. Mulrooney, of New "V
speech reported in the New York Times, May 9, 1932, sa
majority of our criminals to-day are only boys. The recor
24 i-
CONVICT LABOR 25
There have been a few frank admissions, even by capitalist
spokesmen, of the truth of this class analysis of the prison
population. None of the admissions is more outspoken than
an editorial in the Raleigh, N. C, News and Observer, De-
cember 27 y 1930. Said the editorial:
Look at the chain gangs, jails and other penal institutions in
the country and state, and we arrive at one of two conclusions.
Either education and wealth are two of the strongest fortifica-
tions against the commission of crime, or there is a different
measure of justice for the rich and the poor, white and black,
intelligent and ignorant.
Almost without exception, the inmates of our great institu-
tions of correction are from the lower classes, seldom having
more than a grammar school education. Moreover, they are
found to be of the poorer classes. A good many are black,
which is easily explicable in view of the fact that there are few
rich, and few educated, Negroes in the South.
Many other such admissions from the ranks of the "edu-
cated and rich" could be cited. For example. Colonel Edward
B. Stone, principal keeper of the New Jersey State Prison,
declared the recent unprecedented flow of prisoners into New
Jersey institutions was caused by unemployment. Over half
of the persons convicted were imprisoned for stealing.
Warden Lewis E. Lawes in his Twenty Thousand Years in
Sing Sing says that most of the younger prisoners at Sing
Sing were convicted of robbery: all of the 16-year-old pris-
oners, 91.7% of the 17-year-olds, 70% of the 18-year-olds,
81% of the 19-year-olds. One can easily see the implications
of such statements. Who are the unemployed? Who are
likely to have to steal to live ?
Austin H. MacCormick, assistant director of the United
States Bureau of Prisons, recently stated that out of about
120,000 prisoners investigated over 70,000 "have never re-
ceived organized training for an occupation, and about that
number are unskilled workers. Nearly 40,000 have voca-
New York City department show that almost 70 per cent of the
persons arrested for felonies in the last year were young men between
the ages of 17 and 20."
26 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
tional training that is inadequate in terms of their intelligence
rating."^ In other words this authority says that at least
110,000 of a prison population of 120,000 are unskilled or
poorly trained workers. This estimate is very conservative.
MacCormick in a still more recent address stated that 60%
of all American prisoners have not gone beyond the sixth
grade; 25% are virtually illiterate, and 10% completely il-
literate. To interpret these facts, ask the question: who
is likely to be illiterate in the United States?
Bennet Mead, statistician of the Federal Bureau of Pris-
ons, has found that property crimes showed a big increase
from 1910 to 1927. The economic crisis has caused a
further great increase in petty property crimes. For example,
officials of the New York City Department of Correction
have admitted that the city's 18 penal institutions are over-
crowded with almost 6,000 inmates, though their total capacity
is about 5,300.^ This record has not been approached since
19 1 4. Officials of the Department were forced to admit
that a large part of the increase resulted from petty crimes
which could be traced more or less directly to poverty and
unemployment. Some prisoners, they added, committed
small crimes deliberately to obtain food and shelter for several
months.
The New York World-Telegram, August 28, 193 1, carried
a survey by George Daws, staff writer, which said : "Three
of every four men who go to Sing Sing Prison from New
York City pass through the big gates because of crimes in-
volving money And the money for which these men
risked — and lost — ^their liberty averaged only $30 for each
crime." And an editorial in the same paper commented :
No wonder the Wickersham Commission threw up its hands
and refused to make a report on the causes of crime. Most
"crimes" are crimes against property. The causes are chiefly
economic. To state those causes is to indict our mis-named
Christian civilization and to expose the barbarity and the ineflfi-
ciency of our dog-eat-dog economic system.
CONVICT LABOR 27
Poverty, slums, unemployment, and social injustice are the
crimes of our system against the individual — yet we call our
victims "criminals." Prohibition laws and other such unenforce-
able laws are merely secondary and passing breeders of lawlessness.
The Wickersham Commission had aroused even this capi-
talist paper's ire by reporting, "We find it impossible
comprehensively to discuss the causes of crime." The Com-
mission did not explain why it found it impossible. Cer-
tainly not because of lack of facts.
Big Crooks Go Free
Under capitalism the petty crooks and racketeers give a
"cut" out of their spoils to the really big crooks — ^politicians,
capitalists and government officials. When a racketeer is sen-
tenced, which is very rare, it is usually not for criminal
activities but for not paying his tribute to the government
and its officials. Witness Al Capone and scores of others,
including American Federation of Labor "business agent"
racketeers, who have collided with the "law" for falsifying in-
come tax reports. Take as an example of the "business agent"
racketeer type, Theodore M. Brandle, New Jersey (A. F. of
L.) labor "leader." On April 4, 1932, he pleaded guilty to
defrauding the government in income tax reports. He and
his partner, Joseph F. Hurley, a former state Assembly-
man, were forced to pay to government and court officials
$88,721.65 of their loot in taxes, interest and fines.
A cabinet member like Albert B. Fall, former Secretary
of the Interior, steals and receives bribes of $100,000 and */
over. He is sentenced to only one year's imprisonment. In
prison he is treated like a distinguished visitor. After serv-
ing nine months and 19 days he is released. A part of his
sentence was a fine of $100,000 and he was to remain in jail
until the fine was paid. But the authorities waived a small
matter like a $100,000 fine and permitted him to go free.
The fine stands as a judgment to be paid when, and if, he
gets the money, which observers say is doubtful. He was
28 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
not even required to take the customary pauper's oath. Harry
Sinclair, oil magnate, also went to prison for a short rest
for stealing Teapot Dome oil lands. He was given prac-
tically all the comforts and services expected in a first-class
hotel.
Wholesale bribery in federal prisons, by which wealthy
convicts have won transfers from Atlanta and Leavenworth
to the comparative comforts of army detention camps, was
recently exposed. Among those transferred in this way were
George Graham Rice, convicted in the sale of $3,500,000
worth of valueless securities; Larry Goldhurst, financial ad-
viser to Bishop James Cannon, Jr., in his Wall Street gam-
blings— Cannon went free; and John Locke, sentenced to
three years after the $8,000,000 failure of the brokerage
house of Cameron, Michael & Co.®
It is, of course, only in the most exceptional case that a
rich man goes to jail, even to be showered with such atten-
tions and courtesies. The cases of imprisonment of wealthy
persons are so rare that when one occurs the capitalist news-
papers almost invariably contend that democracy has been
vindicated. "There is one justice for the rich and poor,"
they chorus.
But what about workers ? A starving worker steals a ham
for his family as did Oscar Josey, a Negro of DeKalb
County, Ga., in 1930. He got 20 years at hard labor on the
chain gang. Caspar Wright of Asheville, N. C, steals a
pound of butter and gets a long "gang" sentence. John
Creek, an Annapolis, Md., Negro, steals a chicken and gets
five years in the pen for it. In North Carolina in 1931 a
Negro was sentenced to death and then given a commutation
to life imprisonment for stealing a pair of shoes.
It often happens that a court gives a small fine to a
worker for a petty property law violation. Court costs are
added to the fine and the worker goes to jail for a long
term to work ofiF both the fine and court costs. In one case
in Alabama a young boy was fined $1 but got court costs
CONVICT LABOR 29
assessed against him of $75. There are thousands of Ameri-
can Jean Val Jeans who steal for starving families and get
long forced labor sentences.
What Are the ''Crimes"?
What are some of the common crimes that fill the prisons
with victimized workers? They include petty property
crimes, liquor law violations, vagrancy, union organizing, vio-
lation of injunction, strike and other labor activities. Be-
sides these there are the various frame-up charges. Scores
of examples of the use of the frame-up against class war
prisoners could be cited.* Among the best known are those
of Sacco and Vanzetti, Mooney and Billings and the Scotts-
boro boys. Working class girls have been framed up by the
vice squad of New York and other cities.*
"Sedition" and "criminal syndicalism" are other crimes
fastened by the ruling class on rebellious workers in rail-
roading them to the penitentiary. An example of a "sedition"
charge was the case, in a Pennsylvania steel town, of Peter
Muselin, Milan Resetar and Tom Zima, workers who were
sentenced to five years' imprisonment and $500 fine each
for the "crime" of possessing and reading Communist litera-
ture. In October, 1931, Resetar died of tuberculosis con-
tracted while in the Allegheny County Workhouse — a
notorious forced labor prison — ^after all efforts to obtain ade^
quate medical treatment for him had failed.
A good illustration of the use of a "criminal syndicalism"
law to fill the jails with workers is shown in the coal strike
in Harlan County, Kentucky, in 1932. Every striker or
S)mipathizer was considered guilty of this "crime" and scores
were arrested and thrown into jail with this as the only
charge.
♦Judge Samuel Seabury in his report on the investigation of the
New York Magistrates' Courts, in referring to the vice squad, third
degree, etc., was forced to admit that "The abuses that have been
disclosed do not strike at people of wealth and power. They oppress
those who are poor and helpless. . . ." — New York Times, April 3,
1932.
80 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
But one may ask: "What about justice? The worker has
recourse in the courts, hasn't he? He has the right to trial
by a jury of his peers ? How is injustice possible under such
conditions?" Liberals still have illusions about "justice"
and "equality" under democracy and under capitalist laws,
but workers are beginning to understand that there are two
kinds of "justice" in this country — one for the poor and one
for the rich. The courts are stacked against the workers.
For every witness that the worker brings forward, the state
and the prosecutors can hire a dozen perjurers, as they have
done repeatedly in frame-up cases against militant workers.
Other practices like denial of counsel, mistreatment of wit-
nesses, improper jury lists — especially no Negroes on juries
in the South — ^and scores of other abuses, the Wickersham
Commission found to be "habitual and routine practices."
One hundred and fifty cases were reported to this commis-
sion where trial came so soon after arrest that no time was
permitted for defense.
Third Degree
But one of the chief methods by which workers are forced
into prison labor is through their own "confessions." These
"confessions" are secured by torture — by the third degree.
As the Wickersham Commission was forced to admit in its
report on law enforcement, third degree tortures are reserved
especially for the unemployed, the unskilled, the foreign-born,
the Negro, and militant union workers.
The courts, the prosecuting attorneys, the capitalist news-
papers, and the police would have us believe that the tortur-
ing of helpless prisoners in the jails of this country are
isolated events, a "perversion" of police powers. Such is the
purpose of all the "investigations." Particularly horrible
third degree methods come to light and immediately the "in-
vestigators" get busy. They find evidence which eliminates
certain policemen and police officials from their jobs. But
the effect of such investigations is to cover up the fact that
CONVICT LABOR 81
the third degree is an established institution and a useful
weapon under a capitalist system.
The third degree is applied with special ferocity to Negro
workers, both in the North and the South. Consider the
recent case of Yuel Lee (Orphan Jones) who was tortured
by Maryland police for i6 hours without sleep. A club was
broken over his head ; he was tied and a light flashed in his
eyes. When he was too exhausted to know what he was
doing, he was made to sign a paper which he did not read.
The police claimed that this was Lee*s "confession."
Another example of this refined democratic court pro-
cedure against workers was the shooting in a Birmingham
jail of Willie Peterson, framed-up Negro worker and ex-
soldier, by a white lawyer, Dent Williams, while the prisoner
was being subjected to the third degree by the sheriff, police
and Williams.
In Arkansas, two years ago, it was found that the Sheriff
of Helena, as well as a long line of sheriffs before him, had
used an electric chair as a part of the third degree, care
being taken not to give enough "juice" actually to cause
death.
The Wickersham Commission reported the case of a Negro
boy in Arkansas who was whipped for six consecutive days.
It found that in Texas Negroes charged with crime or\
arrested on suspicion were flogged with heavy leather whips'
on bare buttocks. This whitewash "investigation" commis-
sion found many specific cases of third degree torture. A
woman was taken from a sick bed to the Denver police sta-
tion and kept awake, starved and grilled from 2 a.m. Sun-
day until Thursday night under unspeakably filthy conditions.
A prisoner in Miami, Florida, was chained to a floor in a
room infested with mosquitoes. New York prisoners were
beaten by police with baseball bats. Of 166 recorded cases
of the third degree in New York City in 1931, more than
half were for first offenders and (ij were boys between 15
and 20.
82 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
No torture is too severe or bestial for the guardians of
"law and order" to use to obtain "confessions" from workers.
Police choke suspects, pour water through their noses, beat
them with rubber hose, strike men's sex organs, keep pris-
oners awake for days, terrorize them, handcuff them upside
down, spray them with tear gas, and not infrequently murder
them.
The worst third degrees and prison tortures generally are
reserved for the political prisoners. Political prisoners are
working class fighters and organizers who are thrown into
prison because of their convictions and activities in the labor
movement. In prison they are given the hardest and most
disagreeable work to do. They are punished severely for
minor infractions of rules. They are deprived of privileges
and kept under constant surveillance and suffer many other
special disabilities.
The harsh treatment given politicals in the Allegheny
County Workhouse at Blawnox, Pennsylvania, is typical of
treatment given such prisoners all over the country. There
have been 22 mine strikers incarcerated in this workhouse.
A newspaperman who visited there recently wrote:
In the workhouse there are many men sentenced to as high
as five years, particularly in the case of class-conscious workers.
Ordinarily persons sentenced to two to five years are sent to
the Western Penitentiary in Pittsburgh. However, this is con-
sidered too easy punishment for striking miners and they are
sent to the workhouse where conditions are much harder and
the food much worse.
Thus it is clear that victimized members of the working
class furnish the prison forced labor. They are secured by
the operation of discriminatory laws, by frame-up, by the
third degree and other practices resulting from conditions
inherent in capitalist society. This important class fact has
been largely overlooked or covered up not only by capitalists
but by liberals, prison reformers, and even by the official
labor movement as represented by the top-leadership of the
CONVICT LABOR 33
American Federation of Labor. All these groups have shed
maudlin tears about protecting the "public" from convict-
made goods but about protecting the unskilled worker or
about the welfare of the convict slaves little has been said
and nothing done.
CHAPTER III
EXPLOITING CONVICT LABOR
Of all the many kinds of forced labor in the United States,
one of the most important is the use of convicts. Its extent
can be partially grasped by looking at some official and un-
official estimates of the total annual value of merchandise
made in the prison factories, mills, shops, and farms of the
United States.
When one attempts to secure such figures one finds that
very few official studies have been made, and none of them
recently. The figures issued by the United States Bureau
of Labor Statistics in 1923 are still the most comprehensive
ever brought together.* According to these estimates, the
total value of commodities produced in 104 state and
federal civilian prisons for adults in 1923 was $75,622,983.
The value of goods placed on the market amounted to
$44,843,355. Goods consumed in state or governmental in-
stitutions and public works accounted for the rest. The above
commodities were produced by 51,799 convicts out of a total
prison population at that time in the 104 prisons of 84,761.
This estimate does not include juvenile reformatories, city
or county prisons, federal military prisons, or the maintenance
work — ^prison upkeep, cleaning, laundry, repairs, cooking and
so on — done in every prison. About 25,000 convicts were
used for maintenance in 1923.
The state with the greatest value of prison goods produced
in 1923 was Alabama with close to $7,500,000.** Next came
*The United States Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce
attempted in 1926 to bring some of the 1923 figures up to date, but
the 1923 study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics is still recognized
as containing the most authentic and comprehensive data.
**Road work is included in these estimates.
34
EXPLOITING CONVICT LABOR 36
Kentucky with over $7,000,000. Georgia was third with
over $5,000,000. Other leading prison-labor states, each
producing over $2,000,000 worth of goods in 1923, follow in
the order of their importance: Michigan, Maryland, West
Virginia, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Connecticut, Tennessee and
Oklahoma.
The latest estimates conservatively give the population of
the same type of prisons studied in 1923 as 140,000 on
January i, 1932.* It is estimated that at least 70,000 of
these are productively employed, as against slightly over
51,000 in 1923. Almost 35,000 of the 1931 prisoners were
employed at maintenance and the remainder were either not
reported or were reported incapacitated or idle.
Because of the greatly increased number of prisoners em-
ployed, and because of the improvements in machinery and
methods of emplo3mient, prison production of goods in 1930
was undoubtedly considerably greater than in 1923. But
because commodity prices and rates paid to the state for the
use of convicts have dropped so sharply since the beginning
of the economic crisis the dollar value of the goods may not
be very much greater. However, if a recent unofficial esti-
mate is anywhere near correct, then both the volume and
value of goods were much greater in 1930 than in 1923. This
estimate, made by the Associated General Contractors of
America at their San Francisco convention in 1931, gave
75,000 as the number of employed convicts in 1930, producing
goods with a market value of $100,000,000. Additional
weight is given this estimate by a statement two years ago
by Senator Harry B. Hawes of Missouri that $40,000,000 to
$50,000,000 worth of convict-made merchandise moves in
interstate commerce annually.
* American Year Book, 1931, p. 535. Note the gain in prison popu-
lation. There were 7.5% more prison commitments in 1931 than in
1930. Prisons are now about 70% overcrowded.
36 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
Convict Labor in State Prisons
Minnesota does an annual business in prison-made farm
machinery and binder twine of around $3,000,000. The twine
output amounts to over 20,000,000 pounds annually, along
with 3,000 rakes, 3,000 mowers and the same number of
binders. These goods, incidentally, are sold principally in
Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Wisconsin, Iowa,
Nebraska and Montana.
Alabama has one completely integrated prison textile indus-
try. Cotton which is grown on the prison farm is ginned,
dyed, woven into cloth and made into shirts in Kilby Prison.
The warden of the state prison at Michigan City, Indiana,
reports that 1,806,804 shirts, 71,875 pieces of furniture,
23,572 pairs of shoes, 8,800 rugs, in addition to many other
commodities, were produced in that prison in 1928.
Warden Lawes of Sing Sing Prison in New York recently
admitted that the fiscal year 1931-32 has been the most pros-
perous the Sing Sing factories have ever known. For the
first nine months, beginning with July, 1931, sales totaled
$860,000, as against total sales of $800,000 the previous
year.^ Auburn Prison also produces annually about $1,000,-
000 worth of goods consumed by state departments.^
Massachusetts, according to the Boston Evening American,
which recently ran a series of articles on prison industry in
that state, does an annual prison-goods business of over
$1,000,000. Kentucky in a single year produced 1,102,295
shoes, in addition to large amounts of other goods, of which
95% was sold outside the state.
San Quentin prison in California, where Tom Mooney and
other political prisoners are held, made 3,996,947 jute bags
during the fiscal year ended June 30, 1927. The return to
the state was $399,644. Mooney himself every day of the
year sits in a small unventilated washroom and peels potatoes
for 700 meals a day.
A report of an investigating committee from the Tennessee
EXPLOITING CONVICT LABOR 37
legislature in 1931 said: "In this time of depression this
prison (Nashville State Penitentiary) has not only been self-
sustaining but it has actually been paying a profit into the
state treasury which last year was over $100,000." Profits
for this prison in 1927-28 amounted to $266,697.
Farm, Road and Construction Work
The big prison-farm states, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana,
and Mississippi, work their convicts largely in agriculture.
Nearly 250,000 acres of land in the United States are under
cultivation by convicts. Texas alone has 83,407 acres farmed
by prisoners, raising products which were valued in 1927 at
$1,362,958. Louisiana in 1926 had an income from her prison
system of $1,557,715. This income from the forced labor
of prisoners obviously helps to keep down the tax rates on
the big plantations in these states and is hence heartily ap-
proved by the capitalists and big landowners.
Professor N. B. Bond of the University of Mississippi, in
reply to a recent questionnaire sent him by the writer, said :
"Many thousand bales of cotton are grown each year by
convicts. Sale is made to the highest bidder. The cotton is
shipped anywhere the buyer wishes." In a four-year period
ending June, 1928, Mississippi prison farms paid $2,354,260
to the state, while stocks accumulated and cash on hand
amounted to $375,687.
In 1923 work done by convicts on roads and other public
jobs was valued at over $15,000,000 for the entire country.
In 1927 prisoners in Virginia alone, according to Warden
R. M. Youell of the State Penitentiary at Richmond, did
$4,000,000 worth of road work.
There is also a great deal of construction work done by
convicts for government institutions. Out of 98 institutions
listed in the Handbook of American Prisons and Reforma-
tories for 1929, 35 were using convicts on construction work.
The largest of these undertakings are the $7,200,000 prison
at Attica, N. Y., the new Eastern Penitentiary at Gratersford,
38 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
Pa., the new Illinois State Penitentiary, the new Michigan
State Prison at Jackson, the State Prison Colony in Norfolk,
Massachusetts, and others, including the $3,000,000 job on
the U. S. Industrial Reformatory at Chillicothe, Ohio.
Local and County Convict Work
Much less is known about the convict work in city and
county lockups, workhouses and gangs. Dr. Hastings H.
Hart, prison authority, reports that there are 10,860 such
city and village prisons in towns with 500 population and up.
In addition there are about 3,000 county prisons. Accord-
ing to Dr. Hart, 1,600,000 prisoners were committed to these
prisons from January to June, 1930.
The jobs done by prisoners in these jails in all parts of the
country range from the crudest common labor, such as
crushing rock, to highly skilled typographical work. They
include road and bridge work, construction of buildings, and
manufacturing, especially furniture and clothing.
In the South, in particular, city and county prisoners are
exploited to the utmost on roads and farms as well as in
other prison industries. Florida, Georgia, North Carolina,
South Carolina, and Tennessee have a large number of pris-
oners convicted of misdemeanors — usually law violations
carrying a sentence of less than one yearns imprisonment — >
doing road work under county management. In Georgia
69% of all those convicted of misdemeanors are so employed.
Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas have farm work largely for
this type of prisoner.
Outside the South we find such cities as Toledo, Columbus,
and Dayton, Ohio, working their prisoners on farms. In
Massachusetts eight of the local jails and houses of correc-
tion work their convicts in chair, shoe, and shirt making.
Most misdemeanants in New Hampshire do farm work.
Connecticut has 10 county jails doing work ranging from
chair making to laundry work for women.
In Pennsylvania eight counties employ prisoners at road
EXPLOITING CONVICT LABOR 39
work and other public jobs, such as bridge building and
construction. Nine counties employ prisoners at farm work.
The Philadelphia County Prison has 2,906 prisoners at vari-
ous kinds of work. The Allegheny County Workhouse,
which serves Pittsburgh and where a number of political
prisoners are now incarcerated, has a broom factory, a carpet
factory, a chair factory, laundry, upholstering shop, and farm.
Although there has never been any estimate of the total
value of work done and goods produced by convict-slaves in
these city and county institutions, it must amount to tens
of millions of dollars.
Systems of Employing Prisoners
This great volume of convict-made goods, valued at around
$100,000,000 for state and federal institutions alone, and at
many millions in addition for city and county institutions, is
produced under several different systems. The most impor-
tant systems are the "contract," the "state account," "state
use," "public works," and "lease." There are a few others,
either combinations of the above or schemes devised to get
around state laws regulating the marketing of convict-made
goods.
The "contract" system is one of the oldest and most dis-
reputable of all the convict labor systems. As early as 1867
prison contractors were flourishing in all except three prisons
in the country. Under this system a private business man or
firm contracts with the state for the use of a certain number
of convicts. The private contractor then sets up machin-
ery in the prison, provides raw material and sets his convict-
slaves to manufacturing some commodity. The state feeds,
shelters, guards and otherwise takes care of the prisoners
for the contractor, who sells the products made by the con-
victs in the open market wherever he can. In 1923, prisons
in 19 states used some form of contract, and goods valued
at around $30,000,000 were produced for contractors and
40 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
sold. There has been very little, if any, change in the use
of this system since 1923.
Then there is the "state account" system under which the
state goes into business on its own, manufactures or produces
goods and sells them on the open market in competition with
other goods made by "free" labor. Oftentimes the states
set up dummy companies to market the goods for them.
Under the "state use" system convict-made goods are not
sold in the open market but consumed in the state's institu-
tions. In 1923 only 11 states used this system exclusively
and there has been little change since.
Under the "public works" system convicts are used in
construction or repair work on public jobs, such as roads,
public buildings, and the like.
The "lease" system has perhaps the longest and most
sordid record of all. Under it a convict is rented or hired
out entirely in the custody of a private business man or
company. The prisoner virtually belongs to the contractor,
who has complete authority to guard, feed, discipline and
exploit him as he sees fit. The modern lease grew out of
the Civil War. Prior to that time convicts in the South
were white workers and farmers. .But after the "freeing"
of the slaves the prison population rapidly became black
workers and peasants. Negroes convicted of minor "crimes"
were hired out to private business men under slavery condi-
tions. It was undoubtedly a deliberate move by the ruling
class to secure forced labor on a large scale as a partial
substitute for chattel slavery.
The best citizens and biggest companies made fortunes in
the traffic and exploitation of leased convict-slaves. Confed-
erate generals, colonels, senators and justices of the supreme
court were among the big dealers. General Joseph E. Brown,
ex-chief justice of Georgia, and his son, Julius, the late Gen-
eral Joseph M. Brown, and General John B. Gordon, ex-
United States Senator, are Georgia's outstanding examples of
convict-slave leasers. The Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad
EXPLOITING CONVICT LABOR 41
Company, now a subsidiary of the United States Steel Cor-
poration, was one of the biggest companies to be founded
on convict labor. This company, as well as others, dealt in
convict labor "futures" in the same way that gamblers deal
in wheat and corn "futures."
It is no overstatement to say that the conditions inevitable
tinder the lease system have been more horrible than under
any other penal system in the modern world. In spite of the
fact that the lease is "illegal" in several states it is still used
to some extent and is legal for certain types of convicts in
North Carolina, South Carolina, Arkansas, Louisiana, Flor-
ida, and Kentucky. Florida legislated against the lease sys-
tem— for almost all of its prisoners — ^in 1923, following the
whipping to death on a chain gang of a young North Dakota
boy, Martin Tabert. Alabama abolished the lease in 1928,
following the exposure of the death of a young white convict
named Knox, who was deliberately scalded to death in a
laundry vat at the Flat Top mine operated by the Sloss-
Sheffield Steel Co. Prior to the scalding he had been brutally
whipped with a steel wire the thickness of a man's finger.
After his death the warden who witnessed his death had
bichloride of mercury pumped into the body to simulate sui-
cide. He was murdered because he could not perform the
amount of work required.
Prison-Made Commodities
The wide range of prison-made goods includes almost
everything imaginable from baby buggies to coffins, from
lumber to flags, and from farm machinery to cotton. Work
clothing is the most important. In 1923 production in this
one field was valued at around $18,000,000. According to
one of the foremost authorities on the subject, A. F. Allison,
of the International Association of Garment Manufacturers,
the competition in the work-clothing line has grown steadily
since 1923. The National Federation of Women's Clubs
estimated in 1926 that 41% of all work shirts and 35% of
42 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
all work pants were convict-made. A single prison contract-
ing firm in 1923 produced in its 17 prison factories about
16,000,000 shirts.
Next in importance among prison-made commodities is
twine and rope valued at $5,543,000 in 1923. Of all binder
twine made in the United States, 21% is prison-made. The
value of work done by prisoners on farms amounted to
$5,200,000. Close after farming came shoemaking valued
at $5,363,000.* Prison-made furniture was valued at $2,970,-
000. Then came brooms and brushes, $1,604,000; hosiery
and underwear, $1,565,000. Lumber, which was valued at
$728,000, is further down the list but is mentioned here
because of its special interest in relation to the cry of Soviet
"dumping" of allegedly convict-cut timber. In addition to
the above, road construction, repair, and general work on
public jobs were valued at over $15,000,000.
Several hundred commodities are made in prisons. Prob-
ably the most extensive list of them was that sent to the
70th Congress, First Session, by a group of about 75 prison
wardens. But even this list was by no means complete. The
wardens' statement reads :
In the southern states cotton, grain, sugar cane and live-
stock are produced by convict labor; in others turpentine and
lumber; in others granite, marble and agricultural limestone is
quarried; in Missouri and other central states sheep, hogs and
cattle are raised and slaughtered on penal farms and the surplus
sold. In Oregon flax is raised on farms and processed by con-
vict labor. In many other states fruit and vegetables are
canned on penal farms and gardens ; in the great wheat-growing
states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Kansas, Indiana, Oklahoma,
Missouri and the two Dakotas binder twine and farm implements
are manufactured by convict labor and sold to the farmers in
those states; in other states scrub brushes, rat traps, rag rugs
and rag carpets are made; in others work shirts, work clothing,
overalls, shoes, brooms and mops; in a few states coal is mined
from state-owned coal mines by convict labor. In some states
♦Coal was mined in 1923 which was valued at over $4,000,000, but
declined in 1928 when Alabama took its convicts out of the mines.
EXPLOITING CONVICT LABOR 43
juvenile offenders, male and female, are employed making knit
goods, embroidery, baskets, books and a variety of other wares.
The wardens might have mentioned also many other kinds
of convict work, especially roads, bridge, and general con-
struction work, as well as the huge new industry manufac-
turing license tags for automobiles.
"Manufacturers" of Prison Goods
A large part of the convict-made merchandise is made
under contract for and distributed by many concerns, some
of them well known. The following list gives only a few
companies among the many engaged in this business ;
Salant and Salant Mfg. Co., Inc. (shirts). New York
City, which has contracts in several prisons, including Flor-
ida, Tennessee and Iowa; the Reliance Mfg. Co. (shirts)
of Chicago, with several subsidiary companies; the Worthy
Mfg. Co. of Chicago, with contracts in Connecticut, Indiana
and Kentucky prisons. Then there is Oppenheim & Co.
of New York City, which contracts for a part of Delaware's
prison labor. The Kentucky Whip and Collar Co. of Eddy-
ville, the Hoge Montgomery Shoe Co. of Frankfort, and the
Meyer Bridges Co. of Louisville have contracts in Kentucky
prisons. The Jones Hollow- Ware Co. of Baltimore contracts
for labor in Maryland, Gray and Dudley Hardware Co. of
Nashville in Tennessee, the Parker Boot and Shoe Co. in
Missouri. The Dearborn Furniture Mfg. Co. of Chicago
contracts in Iowa. The Schoonmaker Chair Co. of Concord
uses a part of New Hampshire's prisoners, the Ascutney Co.
(shoes) of Windsor, a part of Vermont's. There are many
other companies in many different lines.*
Marketing Convict-Made Goods
r Many ingenious and effective devices have been developed
for getting rid of the enormous quantities of goods produced
in the prisons of the United States. For instance, states
which are not allowed by law to hire out their convicts
U FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
directly have established the "piece price" system, which the
Wickersham Commission called an "attempt to circumvent
restrictions of the contract system." The Commission called
it more iniquitous than the infamous contract system. Under
this system a state buys raw material from a contractor and
works it into manufactured articles which it then sells back
to the same contractor. Other states have been known to
establish dummy companies to handle their convict-made
goods, selling them with their prison-made character con-
cealed.
Prisoners are commonly forced to sew what they know
to be false labels on garments and other goods. It is a mat-
ter of record that prisons of various states have supplied
large mail-order houses, chain stores and department stores
with great volumes of prison-made shoes, stoves, brooms,
furniture, house-dresses, overalls and aprons which have been
sold under false labels. Thus the prisoners are being "re-
formed" by being forced to put false labels on goods they
have made.
In 1927 practices of this sort came to the attention of the
Federal Trade Commission and it was forced to investigate.
One case reported was that of the Commonwealth Manufac-
turing Co. of Chicago. This company's only facilities for
"manufacturing" were a 15 by 20 foot office and a single
desk. Yet it advertised far and wide the prison-made shoes,
clothing and binder twine that it claimed to have "manu-
factured."
The Commission reported that the shoes sold by this com-
pany "contained branded on the soles thereof the letters
*U. S.' . . . surrounded by the shield of the United States,
below which appeared the brand *Munson Army Last,' with
the full knowledge and consent of the warden of the Indiana
State Prison."
The most cunning of all tricks, however, is that of using
popular and "patriotic" labels. Masquerading under this
guise an enormous volume of goods move in the markets of
I
EXPLOITING CONVICT LABOR 45
nearly every state. What "patriot" wouldn't buy Gray and
Dudley's "George Washington Stoves," or the "Liberty
Stove," both of which are made in the Nashville peniten-
tiary ? Similar convict-made brands of work clothes are the
"Uncle Sam," the "American Eagle," the "Big Yank," the
"Army," and — as a special appeal to southerners — "Dixie
Dan." If one can be so disloyal as not to fall for an appeal
to flag and country there is the "Gridiron" or "Big Nine"
for sportsmen. But for solid comfort get the "Roomy Rich-
ard." All of these are prison-made shirts. And on the 4th
of July one can buy a flag and help the prison industries!
In 1925 a single women's reformatory in Massachusetts made
4,368 state and national flags.
Incidentally, convict labor was used for other "patriotic"
purposes in 1 930-1 931 in the following instances: clearing
underbrush from Kings Mountain in North Carolina in prep-
aration for Hoover's prosperity speech there in 1930; work
on streets in historic old Arlington, Virginia, home of the
"unknown soldier"; and work on the Arlington Memorial
Bridge across the Potomac leading to the Lincoln Memorial
in Washington, D. C. Prisoners were also used on the Lee
Memorial Boulevard in Virginia.
Not only are prison-made goods sold in the home markets.
They are also dumped abroad in huge quantities. It has been
unofficially estimated that 10% of all convict-made merchan-
dise is exported. Members of the House of Representatives
from the big prison-farm states declare that of the hundreds
of thousands of bales of cotton produced by prisoners, about
65% is exported. The cotton is not labeled and is sold in
the general market.
In 1927 Canada stopped the importation of convict-made
goods from the United States. The action followed the in-
dignant protests of Dominion manufacturers at the dumping
of prison-made hosiery and work garments into Canada by
prison-labor contractors on this side of the border.
46 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
Competition with "Free Labor"
Arthur Brisbane, the popular bourgeois columnist, has
recently been quoted as saying that "We don't let our convict
labor compete with free labor; and ought not to allow Rus-
sian convict labor to compete." The second part of this state-
ment relating to the Soviet Union we will deal with in
Chapter IX. But as for the first, Mr. Brisbane obviously has
not read the official bulletin. Prison Industries, made public
by the United States Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Com-
merce in 1929. Speaking of convict-made goods it said:
The effect of placing on the open market a volume of goods
which has been produced below normal costs is to lower prices
and demoralize the market. While at any time this practice
tends to bring about unfair competitive price conditions, the
effect is more keenly felt when there is over-production. The
increase in prison production which is predicted, will make it
difficult if not impossible for manufacturers employing free
labor to continue operation in trades where the prison output
becomes heavy. . . . The fact that the volume of displacement
of some prison-made products is small, does not mean that the
effect on the market is negligible. But it may be, and often is,
a serious factor in demoralizing price levels.
Mr. Howard B. Gill, superintendent of the State Prison
Colony, Norfolk, Massachusetts, recently said:
The reports [of the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.— PT. W."]
for 1905 and 1923 devote considerable space to the effect on
free industry of competition of convict-made goods, setting forth
an array of evidence which leaves no doubt that prison indus-
tries, by underselling, by dumping, by false labeling, by unfair
advertising, by unscientific accounting, by brutal treatment of
labor, and by bad management, have been able to take advan-
tage of free industry to the detriment of both labor and capital.
The evidence presented is not confined to any one system of
production, distribution or management. It persists under the
State-Use, the Public Account, and the Public Works and Ways
systems — all government-controlled, as well as under the Con-
tract, the Lease, and the Piece-Price systems which are under
private control."*
EXPLOITING CONVICT LABOR 47
The fact that all systems of convict-merchandise produc-
tion offer competition to "free labor" is not generally recog-
nized. The fact is, of course, that the state use system,
which is popularly supposed to furnish no such competition,
in reality does offer the same competition as any other system.
It is obvious that if the prison industries did not make auto
license plates, school desks, and other goods, then "free
labor" would get the job of making them.
As pointed out in Prison Industries, "Certain of the major
factors in the normal cost of production which must be met
by all manufacturers are entirely absent in the case of prison
industries." These frequently include rent, taxes, light and
power, and labor costs, which are always lower. For the
use of its convicts the state usually receives from the con-
tractor from one-sixth to one-third of "free labor" costs.
Julian Leavitt, a well-known student of the prison labor
problem, in a series of articles in the American Magazine
some years ago described a contract in the New Haven
(Conn.) County Jail. He reported that "For the sum of 8
cents a day the New England Chair Company, alias the
Ford- Johnson Co., has been getting the labor of an able-
bodied man together with food, clothing and shelter for the
man ; together with a factory building in which the man might
work ; together with heat, light and power and armed guards
^ and keepers to see that the man works."
K Kate Richards O'Hare, after a prison-labor survey in 1925,
told of a contract that the Oklahoma State Prison at McAles-
ter made with a large work clothing contractor. It provided
that the prison should establish a plant for the manufacture
of work shirts and women's house-dresses; that the state
should provide a suitable shop and storage rooms, heated,
lighted and ventilated; furnish the necessary electric power
to operate the plant ; furnish cutting tables, benches and other
necessary fixtures, keep the inmates fed, clothed, housed and
under good discipline, enforce the "task" set by the contrac-
tors, and transport all raw and finished materials.
48 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
Some idea of the effect of dumping convict-made goods
on the market is shown in the case of an inland state which
during the early part of 1925 sold over a million dollars'
worth of work clothes for what they would bring. The
market was demoralized for more than a year and a half.
Another effect of cut-throat prison-labor competition on
"free labor" was brought out at the convention of the Asso-
ciated General Contractors of America in 193 1. In the states
of Virginia, Florida and Alabama wages of free labor are
beaten down to 10 and 15 cents an hour by prison-labor
contractors seeking contracts in competition with other con-
tractors. Due to prison competition in South Carolina
contractors are now able to hire "free" unskilled labor for
as little as 75 cents a day.
In Oklahoma Governor "Alfalfa Bill" Murray, during
193 1> was selling prison-made ice at 20 cents a hundred
pounds cheaper than ice made by "free labor." He has
threatened also to enlarge the prison bakery and sell prison
bread in all parts of the state.
Another example of the direct effect of such competition
was shown by Peter J. Salmon, official of the American
Foundation for the Blind, in hearings before Congress in
1928. Mr. Salmon testified that "there has been set up a
competition with which neither the blind nor any other free
labor can compete. . . . Prison-made brooms are sold so
cheaply in the open market that they constitute a menace
to the large number of blind-made brooms, the principal
industry for the blind." Other fields where the blind are
meeting serious prison-labor competition are in making rugs,
brushes, mops and chairs.
Convicts have even been used a number of times as strike-
breakers. One of the first examples was in the Coal Creek
strike in Tennessee in 1891-92. When the forces of the
state had overpowered the miners, after an intensely bitter
war, an official of the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad
Co., in an interview with the New York Times, said : "One
EXPLOITING CONVICT LABOR 4^
of the chief reasons which first induced the company to take
up the system [convict-lease] was the great chance it offered
for overcoming strikes. For some years after we began the
lease system we found that we were right in calculating that
the free miners would be loath to enter upon strikes, when
they saw the company was amply provided with convicts. . . .
I don't mind saying that for many years the company found
it to be an effective club over the heads of the free miners." °
In 1926 legislation to abolish the lease system in Alabama
was defeated largely because certain industrial interests in-
sisted that the law must allow convicts to be used in emer-
gencies such as strikes.
During 1928, in a molders' strike at Nashville, Tennessee,
convicts were put to making stoves and doing foundry work.
Finding that they were not getting enough production in that
way, the stove companies arranged to have the convicts pa-
roled into the outside plants. Several men were actually so
paroled as strike-breakers. There have been many other
such cases ; but such incidents are often kept out of the press.
CHAPTER IV
"MAKING GOOD CITIZENS"
One of the most important factors determining penal
methods in every capitalist country and especially in the
United States is the desire to make profit out of the convicts.
The claim that capitalist prisons are for the purpose of re-
forming convicts is ridiculous. In a recent speech before the
American Prison Congress, Judge Andrew Bruce, professor
of law at Northwestern University and a former judge of
the Illinois Supreme Court, "declared that reform schools do
not reform and prisons do not correct. He cited Al Capone
as a product of the reform school." ^
John McGivney, editor of the Tacoma (Washington)
Labor Advocate, in a recent issue of his paper said: "In
some states crime and criminals are being made a source of
profit to such an extent that the herding of convicts, the
/imprisonment of human beings, has, in order to secure a
A labor supply for those profiteering states and firms, become
•^ / quite an industry."
Howard B. Gill, superintendent of the State Prison Col-
ony in Norfolk, Massachusetts, recently admitted: "During
the 150 years which have elapsed since Vilain, the burgo-
master of Ghent, erected his famous Maison de Force in
1771-1773, prison administrators, in America at least, have
been more concerned with developing a profitable system
than in directing it toward the reformation of the individual."
The "vocational" training given prisoners is often worth-
less. Garment making — especially work clothes — for in-
^ stance, is the largest prison industry. The types of garments
made in prison are practically all made on the outside by
women. So a man may make shirts in prison for 20 years
60
"MAKING GOOD CITIZENS*' 61
and yet not learn a thing that will help him earn a living
when he gets out.
Prison Wages
One would suppose that if the idea of rehabilitation entered
at all into this country's prison program the prisoners would
get some reward, possibly wages, for their hard work. But
10 states pay nothing at all; a few give a small bonus as
compensation for doing more than the allotted task. In
other states a small weekly or monthly wage is paid, which
in 65% of the cases is below 25 cents a day and is frequently
less than five cents a day.
On this point, the Wickersham Commission reports:
It should be remembered that wages either have not been paid
in our prisons or if paid have, with very few exceptions, been
of negligible significance. Existing wage payments have been
made still more negligible by a system of fining prisoners for
violation of prison rules. There are cases on record in the state
of New York in which prisoners who earned one and a half
cents a day were fined five dollars at a time.^
In her study. Welfare of Prisoners' Families in Kentucky,^
Ruth S. Bloodgood found that the "actual amount of money
sent to the families was pitifully small as compared with
their needs.'' She showed that the most the family of a
prisoner might expect to receive from a prisoner regularly
employed during the entire year was $23.40. This would
be true if the father's entire year's earnings were sent to
the family. But out of such earnings the prisoner had to
buy certain necessities. Out of 82 families studied, 26 re-
ceived less than $10 each. Only seven families received as
much as $20.
But in addition to the money "wages" the prisoners receive
other "rewards." For doing their work well, the most ef-
ficient workmen, according to the testimony of Tennessee
convicts, are denied their paroles when due! The speedy
workers are valuable both as producers and pace-setters and
the contractors see to it that the parole applications of these
^
52 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
men are rejected, even when the prisoner is eligible for pa-
role. In Tennessee, in 193 1, Parole Officer J. C. Acuff of
Nashville admitted that he had embezzled funds collected
under the parole provisions which require prisoners to pay
$2 a month to the state to be held until the prisoners are
released.
But Tennessee is not alone in such parole practices. In a
recent hearing before the Committee on Labor of the House
of Representatives members brought out that many men were
"refused parole because they worked too well." Just a few
months ago Benny Sabbatino, an ex-convict in the Great
Meadow Prison, Comstock, New York, won an award of
$7,500 against two former members of the parole board who
kept him in prison three years beyond his time.*
Accidents and Occupational Diseases
An absolute lack of care in protecting the life and limb
of convict slaves is one of the outstanding features of prison
practice in this country. Fire hazard is one of the most
serious dangers under which prisoners work. In the Ohio
Penitentiary at Columbus, for example, 318 prisoners were
cremated in less than an hour, when fire raged through it,
April 21, 1930. Incidentally, the prison housed at the time
4,300 prisoners and was designed for but 1,500. On March
7, 1 93 1, eleven Negro prisoners died screaming in agony
when flames swept the prison at Kenansville, N. C. An
"investigation" after the criminal tragedy revealed that it
was known all along that the prison was a fire trap. In Coral
Gables, Florida, in 1931, one convict was burned to death
and several maimed for life in a serious fire." Another of
the most serious fires of the country's prison history was
that in the Banner mines in Alabama in April, 191 1. In this
fire 123 prisoners, leased as coal miners to a private com-~^
pany, and all of them at work on the job, were killed like
vermin.
Accident hazard is also prevalent in all prisons. In the
"MAKING GOOD CITIZENS'' 53
Brushy Mountain coal mine prison at Petros, Tennessee, for
example, between 1928 and 1930, there were 42,854 hospital
cases among less than 800 prisoners at any one time. An
official investigating committee of Tennessee reporting on
the Brushy Mountain Penitentiary in 193 1 said that if a fire
should break out in the prison, which it thought likely, a
tragedy would occur "the like of which has probably never
been seen in an American prison."
Occupational disease usually gets the prisoners who escape i^^»^
being burned to death or maimed by accident. The jute mill
in San Quentin Prison, California, is one of the most hated
of all prison factories. More has been written about it,
possibly, than any other. A guard recently told a newspaper
man who was visiting Tom Mooney, "They don't last long
in the jute mill. Jute gets into the lungs and causes pul-
monary trouble. After one year their health is broken."
Tuberculosis is one of the most feared of all these prison
diseases.
There is no recourse in law or anywhere else for prisoners
or their families in cases of accident, disease or death. The
courts have often held that in the absence of statutory pro-
vision, the state is not liable for injuries sustained by a con-
vict working outside or inside the place of imprisonment.
These same decisions hold that in the absence of a statute
there is no liability to a prisoner who becomes diseased or
who dies as a result of unhealthy conditions in a penal
institution. These decisions are based on practical consid-
erations, for otherwise many of the states would face
"innumerable suits involving the injuries of prison inmates,
so precarious are the conditions of the penal institutions,
especially the road camps of the South." ® Courts in New
York, a state with so-called model prisons, have ruled like-
wise.
Only three states — Maryland, Wisconsin, and New Hamp-
shire— have any sort of workmen's compensation for con-
victs. The compensation in these states is based on the
54 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
"wages" received by the convict laborers which at best are
a few cents a day. Then from this meager compensation
are legally deducted charges of various sorts — ^board, main-
tenance and other items. Very little, if anything, is left for
the prisoner. The law is much more interested in protect-
ing the prison against loss because of disabled workers than
in protecting the workers against disability.
Hours and Tasks
Convicts in the southern states are usually worked from
10 to 12 or even more hours a day. In some of them, espe-
cially on the chain gangs and farms, the hours are measured
by the sun. "We work from sun to sun," is the way the
prisoners express it, which means that work begins at day-
break and ends at sundown. But hours are long also in the
central prisons or penitentiaries of the South. An official
in the Nashville prison has often been heard to laugh and
say, "Oh, yes, we work our men eight hours a day — eight
hours before noon and eight after." This is the "full day"
which this prison reports to investigators.
In prisons in northern states and other sections of the
country, where the most efficient methods of prison labor
exploitation have been worked out, the day's work is fre-
quently as low as eight or nine hours.
The task system is common to all prisons in the United
States— North, South, East and West. It is the "outside"
system of piecework and speed-up transplanted into prisons.
In a certain number of hours a prisoner is required to do
a certain amount of work. As it is developed in the more
efficient prisons it becomes similar to the "belt" or "line"
in a Ford plant. The task is set by a skilled pace-setter.
It is the same for all prisoners, skilled and unskilled. Each
worker is then required to do that amount of work each day.
Among the devices used to insure that he not only "does
task" but exceeds it is a bonus for overproduction. This
bonus consists of petty favors such as a small bag of smoking
"MAKING GOOD CITIZENS" 65
or chewing tobacco or stamps, or, in some cases, a few cents
a week extra.* Another device is torture.
Punishment
All who have made the slightest study of prison labor
know that throughout the country the great majority of prison
punishments — from 75 to 90% of the cases — are given for
not doing task.
After an extensive survey of prison-labor conditions, Kate
Richards O'Hare reported: "If the women convicts failed
to make task, and all of them did fail more or less, they
were punished with fiendish cruelty — ^beaten, starved, frozen
in winter, roasted in summer, strung up by the wrists with
handcuffs, gagged, subjected to beastly sex perversion, and
left to rot in dungeons." A prominent leader in the Alabama
League of Women Voters recently told the writer that women
tuberculars in Alabama prisons were flogged when they failed
to do enough work or when their work did not suit the
officials.
Warden A. A. McCorkle of Nashville prison admitted to
the Tennessee legislative investigating committee in 193 1
that he frequently ordered men given as high as 30 to 40
blows with a heavy strap "as a last resort for not pulling
task."
A Tennessee convict, Harry Good, who was released from
the Nashville prison in December, 1930, told of his experi-
ences in that "reform institution." "I saw a friend of mine,"
he said, "taken to the whipping room. I heard him scream
for half an hour. When he came to the hospital where I
was confined, his back was bleeding and all the flesh had been
torn away. His clothing stuck to torn and jagged flesh."
To escape the inhuman punishment meted out for inability
to do the required quota of work, men frequently mutilate
♦Prison labor contractors have also been known to supply "dope"
to convicts to get more work out of them. Cf. E. Stagg Whitin,
Penal Servitude, p. 79.
56 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
their bodies. In this way they gain sanctuary, for a time
at least, in the hospital. Workers in Alabama mines, up until
1928, frequently put dynamite caps in their boots and blasted
off toes or feet, or attached the caps to fingers and then
smashed them with a rock. When the officials found too
many such cases, they discouraged it by giving the men severe
lashings as soon as they were partially recovered from their
injuries.
Harry Good, the Tennessee convict, told of a friend of
his who was being driven insane by the toil and monotony
of the treadmill labor in the shirt factory. The friend told
Good, "I borrowed a hatchet, laid my hand on the block and
off came John Thumb — it didn't hurt much. Anyway, it
was worth it." Atlother of his fellow-convicts, who worked
in a foundry, poured molten lead into his shoe and had to
keep his leg in plaster of Paris for several weeks and ended
up a cripple.
George Bricker, ex-prisoner in the Brushy Mountain coal
mine prison, spoke of his experiences with the task system.
He said: "It has not been told how four strong men are
called in to hold a man to the floor while he is lashed with a
nine-pound whip for *in fraction of rules,' and *in fraction of
rules' usually means failure to get task ... I was whipped
three times, each time receiving 15 to 2"] lashes for 'not get-
ting task'."
Tennessee is not the only state that has such conditions
in its prisons. The writer simply happens to be more familiar
with the situation in that state. In other states conditions
are found to be practically the same. For example, in San
Quentin, where Tom Mooney has rotted away over 16 years
of his life, and in Folsom Prison, where his fellow frame-up
victim, Warren K. Billings, is incarcerated, men are kept in
solitary confinement in dungeons on a few ounces of bread
and water for 11 days at a time and longer. And lime is
spilled over the floor of the dungeon, giving off a suffocating
"MAKING GOOD CITIZENS*' 57
odor. Prisoners claim that this punishment is given for not
performing task.
Details of fiendish tortures at the Wichita, Kansas, Prison
Camp continue to seep out despite the denials by those in
charge of the farm. Failure to perform forced labor either
because of sickness, weakness or any other cause is punished
by bread and water rations and a 50% reduction of the
credit given for working out fines. One prisoner, Peter J.
Gentile, who had been kept on bread and water for 35 days,
was recently taken into the potato field to work. He was
too weak to hoe and started for the shade. A guard attacked
him and with a blackjack scalped a long piece of skin from
Gentile's head.
A short time ago tales of torture of convicts working in
the Connecticut State Prison at Wethersfield, became a
national scandal when Miss Genevieve Cowles, engaged for
several years painting murals in the prison chapel, and Chap-
lain William H. Smith exposed conditions there.^
Miss Cowles is convinced that prison slavery tends to turn
men into criminals. In her report on the Wethersfield prison
she said that under the Connecticut statutes. Section 1978,
revised 1930, "the warden is authorized in case prisoners are
disobedient or disorderly or do not faithfully perform their
tasks to put fetters and shackles on them or confine them
in dark and solitary cells." These cells, called "Black Holes,"
each have two metal doors with a few slots as big as dollars
for "ventilation." There are no mattresses in the punishment
cells.
Chaplain Smith likewise charges that slavery exists in the
Wethersfield prison. He says, "Like slaves you go to your
task; the monotonous routine deadens your faculties; utter
helplessness makes you rebellious; the ceaseless repression
drives you frantic." Both Miss Cowles and Mr. Smith de-
clare that driving and merciless labor accounts, in part, for
dozens of mental cases in the cell blocks.
68 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
Prison "Home" Life
The preceding paragraphs on conditions tell of convicts
toiling on the job. But what of their "home" conditions?
Surely when their day's heavy toil is over, when their long
hours of exploitation are ended, they should come back to
good food, a nice rest under pleasant surroundings, and good
treatment — all of which should characterize a real "reform**
institution.
But that would cost money and decrease the profits of this
capitalist institution. Actually one finds that convict laborers
are given not only an insufficient amount of the cheapest food
obtainable, but even this is usually badly prepared. A former
convict in a Tennessee prison says that "not once during
the time I served in Nashville prison were the prisoners, out-
side the hospital, given butter or milk/' Another convict,
describing a southern prison, declares, "we were sent into
the mines on food which consisted of half-done rice, water
gravy and old corn bread, which was our breakfast every day
in the week. When we wanted anything else we had to
cook it in our shovels, dirty and filthy with coal dust. Rusty
water we had to drink if we could get it before the mine
mules did." One Alabama county makes the boast that it is
much cheaper to feed its convicts than its mules — it costs
55 cents a day for a mule and only 14 for a convict! And
food allowances for convicts all over the country have been
cut sharply during the economic crisis just as wages have
been cut and living standards of workers reduced on the
"outside." Sing Sing recently reduced its allowance 10%
and at present 23 cents a day is allowed each convict for
food. Prisons, like other capitalist institutions, increase
profits at the expense of the workers.
When the Tennessee investigating committee was inspect-
ing the Brushy Mountain Penitentiary they found 138 suffer-
ers from influenza and pneumonia among the 800 prisoners in
the place. No attempt was made to segregate the sick from
"MAKING GOOD CITIZENS'' 69
the well. The committee reported : "They have a little shack
called the pest house, which would not possibly accommo-
date more than three beds and that was not even in use." It
was reported recently that on a single prison farm in Missis-
sippi there were 19 cases of spinal meningitis arising out of
unsanitary conditions. It is an established fact that in few,
if any, of the prisons of the country is there an adequate
system of physical examination and segregation and treat-
ment of such contagious diseases as tuberculosis, gonorrhea,
syphilis, trachoma, influenza and others.
Another "home" condition forced upon Tennessee convict-
miners was described by the official committee in 1931 :
"Sodomy is practiced promiscuously. The younger prisoners
are often forced to submit to the hardened old types." A
well-informed labor official of Tennessee told the writer that
these conditions of sex perversion exist with the knowledge
and connivance of prison officials who assign "gal-boys" to
model, hard-working prisoners. Of all the prisoners in the .
institution 60% were found to be infected with loathsome !
venereal diseases. "Many young boys," reported the Com-
mittee, "are infected with gonorrhea and syphilis." The
venereals are not segregated but work alongside the other
prisoners and use the same wash basins, towels and beds.
It is a well-known fact — ^though not agreeable and there-
fore not often mentioned — ^that sex perversion of the type
described in Tennessee exists in every prison in the United
States. A few years ago a deputy warden of the Federal
penitentiary at Leavenworth was indicted for practicing
sodomy on inmates of that prison.®
Strait- Jacket and Other Tortures
For the slightest sign of revolt against these working con-
ditions prisoners are subjected to all sorts of tortures. At ] ^
least eight states legalize the lash and many more use it '
though it is "illegal." In addition we find such torture instru-
60 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
merits and "disciplinary punishments" as the stocks, solitary
confinement on bread and water, confinement in "sweat
boxes," hanging on cell walls, drenching with cold water,
and many others. But of all tortures none has been so
well described as the strait- jacket. Jacob Oppenheimer,
former prisoner in San Quentin, gives his experiences with it :
I had not been in it fifteen minutes when sharp, needle-like
pains began shooting through my fingers, hands and arms, which
gradually extended to my shoulders . . . within half an hour
these pains shot back and forth like lightning. Cramping pains
clutched my bowels; my breath pained with a hot dry sensation.
The brass rivets ate into my flesh, and the cord ground into
my back until the slightest movement, even breathing, was an
added agony. My head grew hot and feverish, and a burning
thirst seized me which compelled me every few minutes to ask
the guard for water. ... As the hours and days passed the
anguish became more and more unbearable. I slept neither
night nor day. . . . The bodily excretions over which I had no
control in the canvas vice, ate into my bruised limbs, adding
pain to pain. My fingers, hands and arms finally became numb
and a paralyzing shock stunned my brain. . . .
Had I been offered a dose of poison I would have drunk it
with gratitude. This I suffered for 4 days and 14 hours inces-
santly. . . . Released, I reeled off to my cell where I sank on
my mattress in utter collapse. ... I managed to drag off my
saturated clothes. . . . What a sight I beheld. My hands, arms
and thigh were frightfully bruised and had all the colors of
the rainbow. My body was shriveled like that of an old man
and a horrible stench arose from it.^
In order to cover up and distract attention from such
conditions which prevail for convicts both while on the job
and during rest hours, various publicity-seeking prison offi-
cials give the convicts a treat about once a year. These
treats include entertainments of various sorts — ^turkey din-
ners, speeches by social workers, movie stars and so on. The
latest scheme is to have football games. Thus the New
York Times, November 18, 1931, carried an editorial prais-
ing Sing Sing's football eleven. But less than two weeks
later the same paper reported that additional tear gas equip-
"MAKING GOOD CITIZENS^* 61
ment was being sent to the Great Meadow Prison (in the
same state) and that 30 additional guards had been requested
by Warden Joseph H. Wilson.
Young Convict Workers
It IS not only adult prisoners who are subject to daily
abuses. Juvenile delinquent workers in American prisons
also undergo maltreatment and even torture, and fatal con-
sequences are often reported. Writing of conditions in the
Washington State Reformatory at Monroe, the Wickersham
Commission's investigator, Dr. Miriam Van Waters, said:
"Punishment in the dark cells is given for trivial as well as
serious offenses: not standing at count, speaking in the
dining room, laughing in the cell block, making loud pop-
ping noises with the mouth, were listed on some of the
discipline slips of the federal cases studied." Dr. Van Waters
was told by a member of the staff of one reformatory that a
young prisoner was found dead in one of the punishment
cells.
Concerning the industrial reformatory at Chillicothe, Ohio,
Dr. Van Waters charged that "a few minor offenses noted
in the records as punished by from three to six days in the
guard house were possession of a two-cent stamp, talking in
mess line, concealing an apple in the bimk, kicking a refuse
can, stealing five eggs from the kitchen."
During the six months ending December, 1930, there were
2,243 boys and girls under 18 in federal prisons. (The
picker sham report did not deal with the vast number of state
and local delinquents.) Of this number 44.2% were in for vio-
lation of liquor laws. Eighteen were under 14 years of age.
Many children are doing long sentences at hard labor also
in state institutions. Julian Leavitt some years ago reported
that in the Greendale House of Reform in Kentucky, 200
children under 15 were leased out at three cents an hour to
the Kentucky Furniture Co., a subsidiary of the Ford-John-
son Co. of Cincinnati.
u
62 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
The Tennessee legislative investigating committee in 1931
investigated also some boys' and girls' reformatories, includ-
ing one for Negro children. It was found that these chil-
dren were contracted out to private establishments. Salant
and Salant Mfg. Co., shirt manufacturers of New York,
were using most of the prisoners in the State Agricultural
and Training School for Boys at Nashville where the youth-
ful inmates are beaten for not "pulling task."
Governor Charles W. Tobey of New Hampshire in July,
; 1930, charged that young girls working in the State Indus-
/ /{ trial School at Manchester were given the "whipping cure"
of over a hundred lashes apiece on their naked bodies. Some
of the girls were also found confined in boxes covered with
chicken wire.
Women prisoners in the United States are not treated with
any more consideration than work animals. A part of the
Tennessee investigating committee's report in 1931 dealt with
treatment of women convict workers. It declared that "In
the Nashville penitentiary in the women's building women are
required to work in a hosiery mill and certain tasks are
assigned to them. We found women being handcuffed and
hung on pegs. . . . The inmates state that this was done
for failure to perform task." The women testified that they
were frequently left hanging for 10 hours. We have already
referred to the flogging of tubercular women in Alabama
prisons for not doing enough work. There are also instances
of the strait- jacket and solitary confinement being used on
women. At the New York State Reformatory for Women,
Bedford Hills, New York, women inmates unaccustomed to
heavy work were required to put up fences, clear ground and
pour concrete.
Revolts and Struggles Against Prison Labor
The American Federation of Labor has opposed only that
part of prison labor which turns out products made by its
skilled craft unions. This policy was summarized in the
"MAKING GOOD CITIZENS" 68
statement of President William Green at the A. F. of L.
convention in 1931 to the effect that it is "satisfactory" for
prison laborers to make bricks but not to lay them. In other
words, the A. F. of L. will oppose prison labor only when
it does work of the same kind as that performed by the craft
unions that make up the federation.
Although the A. F. of L. has done little or nothing to
fight for better conditions for the workers in the prisons
of this country, the latter, on their own initiative, have
waged some bitter struggles against the conditions we have
outlined in this chapter. In some cases these prison revolts
have been aided by workers on the outside who were acting
in their own interest as well as out of sympathy for their
imprisoned and victimized fellow-workers.
Leased or bound-out prisoners were in most of the revolts
of indentured servants, convicts and slaves before the Revo-
lutionary War. Since then they have engaged in many fights.
In the period from 1881 to 1900, for example, there are 22
recorded strikes against convict labor in coal mines.^° Most
of them have been forgotten as very few records were kept,
or because the whole matter was hushed up by the ruling'
class at the time it occurred.
Perhaps the most significant of all such revolts was the
Coal Creek Rebellion in 1891-92 in the coal mines of East
Tennessee. Following a combination lock-out and strike,
convict strike-breakers were brought in by the Tennessee
Coal, Iron & Railroad Co. (now a subsidiary of the United
States Steel Corp.), which leased an average of 1,500 to
1,600 convicts from the State of Tennessee. The company
paid to the state an average of $42 a year for the use of an
able-bodied worker. Naturally with such cheap labor power
huge profits were piled up. It may be said that this com-
pany was built upon the trade and exploitation of convict
slaves.
The president of the corporation at that time was Thomas
C. Piatt, Republican boss of New York in the 1890's. Mem-
64 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
bers of the New York legislature and other northern capi-
talists owned stock in the company. However, the convicts
were bound out to Mr. Piatt, the Republican, by the south-
ern Democratic legislature and governor of Tennessee.
The miners, Negro and white, aided by the farmers of
East Tennessee, drove out the guards, burned the prison
stockades throughout East Tennessee and released the con-
victs who escaped to the hills. Governor Buchanan sent in
the militia to subdue the workers. After a pitched battle the
entire force of soldiers was captured and driven out after
being disarmed and after promising never to return to the
mining section. The struggle had begun in earnest. It
lasted from July 14, 1891 (Bastille day), to November, 1892,
with a few skirmishes as late as 1893.
Before the struggle was over nearly a dozen prisons were
burned to the ground and over 1,000 convicts given their
freedom, food and clothing. Many convicts chose to remain
and fight, risking recapture. Most of them escaped into the
hills of Kentucky, West Virginia and North Carolina, and
were never recaptured.
Three commanding officers, a general, a colonel and a cap-
tain were captured as well as several hundred soldiers, in-
cluding whole train loads at a time. Many of the soldiers
were very easy to "capture" as they openly sided with the
miners and convicts. Even the United States War Depart-
ment was forced to admit that most of the people of Ten-
nessee, "including the militia," were in sympathy with the
miners.
Negroes and whites, men who fought for the North and
men who fought for the South in the Civil War, farmers
and miners, convicts and "free" men, stuck together in the
face of the entire armed forces of Tennessee. Approxi-
mately 10,000 soldiers and members of business men's posses
were used to crush the revolt. Workers and convicts stormed
forts and cannons and died together. But they died with the
knowledge that they had killed a great many more of the
"MAKING GOOD CITIZENS" 65
common enemy than the enemy killed of them. Over 500
miners were arrested after the workers had been disarmed.
Before the lease system was adopted in Tennessee, in 1889,
convicts were worked under contract for private contractors
at Nashville. But after the convicts burned the prison on
several occasions and with it all the manufactured goods in
the place, the employers repudiated their contracts. It was
then that the convicts were leased to the coal mines.
The 1 93 1 Tennessee legislative committee in its report on
conditions in Tennessee prisons referred to the Coal Creek
Rebellion and declared that unless conditions are improved
similar trouble would be expected in connection with the
state-owned prison coal mine at Brushy Mountain.
Struggles in 1931-32
Revolts and strikes have broken out in prisons all over the
United States during 1931 and 1932. Many of them were
not reported, or if reported were "played down" or called
"riots." There were strikes in at least three reformatories
for girls in the South and the institutions were wrecked or
burned. The two most important of these fights occurred
at the Samarcand "House of Correction" near Charlotte,
N. C, where 350 revolted and at the Alabama "Training
School for Girls," near Birmingham. There were many riots
in other sections of the country.
The most important chain gang strike in 1931 occurred in
Loudon County, Tennessee. The Negro and white convicts
there asked for an 8-hour day and better food. Two guards
quit in sympathy .^^ In July, 1932, seventy convicts on the
Sunbeam prison chain gang in Florida went on strike against
brutal conditions and won a transfer.
On December 13, 193 1, the boiler crew in Leavenworth
refused to work. Two strikes were reported in New Jersey
in 1 93 1. The most important occurred in the Reformatory
at Rahway, August 24. Striking to raise their wages to
four cents a day — ^they had been three cents — ^the prisoners
66 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
defied the officials. All convicts were locked in their cells and
deprived of any sort of exercise. About 50 of the most
active men were thrown in dungeons on bread and water.
Unemployed civilians were brought in as strike-breakers.
On August 31, the strike was broken and about half of the
816 striking convicts went back to work.
A strike occurred on a Richmond, Indiana, gang in Feb-
ruary 23, 1932, when 800 workers on the gang protested
against a cut in wages which were paid in scrip and groceries.
Under a headline reading : "Attempted Use of Sweat-Box
Brings Prison Camp Strike," a Florida dispatch to the New
York American, October 28, 1932, reports the most recent
revolt of prison inmates. Continuing, the report speaks of
30 or 40 "white convicts at a road camp near Indiantown . . .
[who] have gone on strike and are being held at bay in a
fenced enclosure by guards and armed trusties." This State
Road Camp at Indiantown is also the place where two mili-
tant workers, Angel Carbrero and Ismael Cruz, Tampa politi-
cal prisoners, are now confined.
Thus the convicts, in some cases helped by "free" workers,
have struggled against their exploiters. Thus far they have
fought without any plan or leadership, without any clear idea
of what they expected to accomplish. But now that the
class character of prison labor is being recognized and the
number of labor and political prisoners is increasing, such
plans, leadership and purposes will be developed. And it is
certain that many of the half million or so victimized and
imprisoned members of the working class will be among the
most militant fighters against capitalism. As immediate de-
mands the militant labor movement will struggle to better
prison conditions ; it will seek to expose the class character of
prisons; it will seek to secure equal pay for convicts doing
equal work with "free labor." It will seek to eliminate the
special concessions given prison contractors who, because of
low production costs — no taxes, fuel or rent — can undersell
the products of "free" workers.
"MAKING GOOD CITIZENS" 67
Convict labor, one of the most lucrative sources of state
■■'"'■• t/*
and even private income, is thus accompanied by all the '^^ \\
methods of force and brutality common to the exploitation --■''
of direct forced labor. And it leads to revolts just as the
exploitation of "free labor" leads to strikes. The prison
system in the United States is a specialized part of the whole
system of capitalist exploitation and oppression, subjecting
workers who are victimized by the more indirect system of
labor exploitation when they are "outside," to even more di-
rect and brutal forms of exploitation. Any illusion about
"prison reform" in the capitalist penal structure should be
completely dispelled by an examination of the chain gang,
the special institution established by the Southern Bourbons
to keep the masses— especially the Negro masses — in subjec-
tion.
'J
CHAPTER V
THE CHAIN GANG
Work on the chain gang, one of the chief penal institutions
of the South, is the most brutal type of convict forced labor
in the United States. The editor of the Southern Worker
recently wrote : "Tsarist Russia had its Siberia ; the Balkans
has its underground inquisition ; Venezuela its torture cham-
ber ; France its Devil's Island — and America its Chain Gang."
Historically speaking the chain gang has been largely an
instrument with which to terrorize, torture and exploit Ne-
groes. It was adopted on a grand scale at the end of the
Civil War and was one of the devices consciously developed
by the former slaveholders to put the newly "freed" Negroes
back into bondage. Before the Civil War most convicts in
the South were whites, but soon after the war this situation
was reversed and Negro prisoners were in the overwhelming
majority for many years.
During the past few years, however, the number of white
prisoners on chain gangs has grown considerably. This may
be attributed largely to the economic crisis and the chronic
agricultural crisis since the World War, resulting in a further
impoverishment of white as well as Negro workers and
farmers, and an increase in petty property law violations.
When some of the inhuman tortures and murders that
constantly occur on the gangs are forced into the light, re-
formers and liberal apologists for capitalism are "shocked"
and call for investigation. The investigation usually white-
washes the prison system as a whole by pinning the blame
on one or two subordinate guards who are dismissed. The
reformers then go into ecstasy over their "victory."
In 1923 Martin Tabert, a young white convict, was
68
THE CHAIN GANG 69
whipped to death in a privately owned lumber camp in Flor-
ida. When the news leaked out reformers and even state
officials were horrified. To think of such conditions existing
in the United States in 1923 ! An "investigation" was held.
It resulted in the prosecution of a few prison guards and
the "abolition" of whipping. This was considered a "vic-
tory"! But in 1932 the papers were full of the details of
how Arthur Maillef ert, a young New Jersey boy on a Florida
chain gang, was whipped unmercifully and then placed in
a sweat-box with a chain around his neck until he died.
Where was the great "victory" of 1923? It had long since
been forgotten. A Florida state official has recently been
quoted as saying: "I read about this torture stuff happening
a hundred years ago, but I never dreamed it could happen
right here in America in this day and age." He evidently
had never heard of the Martin Tabert case of 1923.
There have been .other great "victories." A few years ago,
after a series of particularly brutal chain gang murders were
revealed in North Carolina, Governor O. Max Gardner
abolished the lash by proclamation. The hats of the reform-
ers sailed skyward as they cheered this liberal governor.
But their silk top-pieces had barely been retrieved when
Willie Bellamy, a frail Negro boy still in his teens, was
whipped into unconsciousness and then placed in a sweat-box
where he died.
These are but a few of the numerous cases which may
be cited to show that the "victories" won by the reformers
in securing "investigations" do not affect the prison system
in any way. And in 8 southern states whipping is still openly
legalized. The chain gang exists primarily to exploit labor
and to terrorize workers on the outside into accepting their
lot without complaining.
Chain gang prisoners are usually worked on the repair
and construction of roads or similar public works for the
state or for private contractors who profit richly from this
super-exploitation of labor. It is reported that the state of
70 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
Georgia alone made a profit of $3,270,000 on the operation
of chain gangs in four years.
The convict-slaves are usually hobbled with chains which
they must wear at all times even while at work or asleep.
The chains are riveted around the legs and can be removed
only with a cold chisel on the prisoner's release from the
gang. Hence the name "chain gang.'*
A vivid picture of how convicts live on a South Carolina
chain gang is contained in Georgia Nigger, John L. Spivak's
novel of peonage and chain gang life in the deep South.
In Buzzard's Roost [a Georgia chain gang — W. WJ] there
were vermin and stench, cursings and beatings and stocks but
out of Slatternville seventeen Negroes went into the wilderness
of the South Carolina hills in a floating cage, a cage drawn
by four mules, a swaying, creaking, rumbling prison of thick
wood with no bars or windows for air on nights that choked
you, and bunks of steel with rungs for master chains to lock
you in at night. Bedbugs slept with you in that cage and lice
nestled in the hair of your body and you scratched until your
skin bled and the sores on your body filled with pus. Meat
for the floating kitchen wrapped in burlap bags, stinking meat
swarming with maggots and flies, and corn pone soaked by fall
rains, slashing rains that beat upon the wooden cage through
the barred door upon the straw mattresses until they were
soggy.
Gaunt-eyed convicts, stinking like foul creatures long buried
in forgotten dungeons. . . .
Men toil on these gangs from sim to sun, from 10 to 14
hours a day, according to season. They are slaves without
any capital value. Beaten and killed — it really doesn't mat-
ter to their masters. Other workers can be brought to take
their places. The men slave at crushing rock, felling trees,
building levees, digging ditches, building roads. Brutal
guards with whips and guns watch to see that the stripe-
clothed convicts work speedily and continuously. Blisters
and sores from worn-out, ill-fitting shoes, and swollen, blis-
tered, calloused hands are inevitable. Infections are frequent
as a result.
THE CHAIN GANG 71
Housing conditions in the chain gang camps are the worst
imaginable. One form of house for the prisoners is a cage-
like cell, mounted on wheels, so that it can be moved from
place to place as the camp follows the jobs. The cage is
about 13 feet long, 8 feet high, 7 feet wide, and looks more
like a cage for ferocious animals than anything else in the
world, except that the convict-animal cage is not gilded as
are those of the animals in a circus. Such a cage is "home"
for about 20 men. During the hot summer nights the men,
packed sardine-like into this cage, sweat and stink, but rarely
sleep. When night comes the tired workers come from work
to find a piece of coarse, dirty cloth stretched over lumpy
straw, usually alive with bugs. This is their bed.
All the men are forced to lie down on their bunks in rows.
A long chain is then run through the short leg chains which
are riveted to the legs of the men. Thus every man is se-
curely fastened to every other man, and can't get out of the
chain even to go to the toilet — a hole in the floor of the
cage — without waking all the men on the chain. In case of
fire the men are held together until unlocked from the long
chain. In several cases fires, under such circumstances, have
resulted in loss of life.
Another method of housing is in tents pitched on the
ground near a creek or spring. Around both types of camps
flies and mosquitoes swarm in clouds. Near by are uncov-
ered sewerage pits. All convicts, venereals and tuberculars,
sick and well, use the same wash basins, towels and beds.
There is no attempt to segregate sufferers from contagious ^
diseases, despite pretty-looking laws providing for such
segregations.
Food for the chain gang victims is usually worse than in
other types of prisons. It consists at best of corn bread and
grits, grease gravy, beans, black coffee for one meal, occa-
sionally salt pork, and infrequently vegetables of some sort.
72 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
The Guards Are Killers
The men in charge of the gangs are brutal and ignorant.
Most of them have had experience as guards for private
employers in turpentine camps, levee building jobs, or for
other private peon exploiters. A prime qualification to get
a job as a guard is to know how to "handle niggers and
bloodhounds." It often happens that white convicts are
made trusties and used to guard other convicts, especially
Negroes. Frequently they are used to chase escaped pris-
oners with bloodhounds and guns. Sometimes a new
prisoner, especially a Negro, who arrives in camp, not know-
ing the ropes, is encouraged to "escape" by trusties and other
guards who hope to split the bond money or to get a reward
or a pardon for recapturing or shooting the escaping pris-
oner. In Mississippi trusty-guards shot so many prisoners
"trying to escape," that legislation had to be passed to stop
the rewards.
The most notorious of these trusty-guards was Cecil
Houston, known as the "Killer of Flat Top," an Alabama
convict serving a life term for murder. A prison investiga-
tion in that state in 1926 revealed that this killer, together
with others like him, was used to enforce the speed-up by
the state and private coal companies which had leased the
prisoners. It was proved that Houston killed several fellow
prisoners and had broken both arms of at least seven others.
His favorite method was to slip up behind an unsuspecting
convict and with a heavy hickory pick-handle knock him
cold. Then before his victim regained consciousness Houston
would break both his arms, thereby preventing any resistance.
The investigation revealed that 90% of the convicts exam-
ined exhibited scars, reminders of brutal taskmasters. These
brutal methods were used primarily to make the prisoners
work faster and produce more coal.
Houston was given a special bonus for all coal that was
produced. By driving the men he was thus able to support
THE CHAIN GANG 73
his family in style on the outside and put money in the sav-
ings bank every month. Although imprisoned for murder
he was given many special privileges. When the murders
in the prison were exposed, Houston, who had helped com-
mit them, was out in the city on a week's vacation !
Man Hunting
Man hunting has always been a favorite sport of the south-
ern ruling class. Formerly the sport was in chasing escaped
slaves ; now it is in hunting escaped convicts — hunting "nig-
gers" with bloodhounds. "Why, it's just like fox hunting,"
a guard declared, "and it gives the young dogs such valu-
able training, too." Several cases of guards using prisoners
as a means of training dogs to hunt escaped prisoners have
appeared in the press in spite of efforts to keep them quiet.
A prisoner who has incurred the displeasure of the guards
is forced to get some distance ahead of the guard who is
holding the dogs. Then the dogs are released and chase the
prisoner who barely has time to take refuge up a tree. From
the tree he is forced to tease the dogs who have "treed" him
by throwing at them or striking them with a long pole.
When the guards feel that the dogs are savage enough
the convict is forced to jump from the tree among them.
If he is hesitant, the guards make him jump by shooting at
him from a distance with small bird shot.
Chain Gang Tortures
Punishment of chain gang slaves nine times out of ten is
for not doing enough work — not keeping up with pace-
setters. The punishment includes binding in cuffs and
shackles, flogging (as high as lOO blows with a heavy leather
whip), confinement in "dog houses" or sweat boxes, club-
bing and binding in stocks which suspend the body by the
legs and arms in the manner of stocks used in New England
in the early days.
The sweat boxes are small coffin-like cells just large
74 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
enough to suspend a man in an upright position. A small
hole the size of a silver dollar lets in the only air. The cell
is placed in the hot tropic sun, or sometimes a metal plate
underneath is heated with fire. It is one of the worst of all
prison tortures.
In the appendix of documents and photographs to John L.
Spivak*s Georgia Nigger are shocking forms of torture wit-
nessed and photographed by the author. An official report
from Banks County, Georgia, dated September, 1931, re-
cords that one Grover Hammond was "put in barrel" for
"disobeying guard." The use of iron halters around the
necks of convicts is recorded in a photograph taken by the
author in Muscogee County, Ga., and the use of spikes was
photographed in Decatur County, Ga. Spivak describes them
thus :
David sat on the ground and held first one foot and then
the other on a block of wood while the spikes were being
riveted. The eye between the two steel prongs fitted closely
around the ankle, with just enough space for pants to be pulled
through when changing clothes. The weight on his feet was
heavy when he rose. With his first step the projections clashed
noisily against each other.
"Spread yo' laigs," the blacksmith cautioned.
David gained the steps of the Negro cage walking straddle-
legged. Spikes was the warden's answer to his mad effort to
run away, steel to remind him at each step that he was marked
for special attention, sharp points of steel, bayonets of steel
before him and bayonets of steel behind him — ^because Chickasaw
county wanted him to finish a road for a white planter.
These 20-pound weights permanently riveted around the legs
are a drawn-out torture leading to exhaustion. During the day
they rub against the legs, creating sores which often become
infected. Such infections are known as "shackle poison." At
night the convict's rest is repeatedly broken by the need of
raising his legs whenever he turns in his bunk.
A form of torture the horror of which shocked the civilized
world when it was inflicted in the Belgian Congo upon slaves,
also is used in Georgia, and Spivak describes a convict under-
going it:
THE CHAIN GANG 76
David saw him lying near the stocks in the blaze of sun,
trussed up like a pig ready for slaughter. His head lay loosely
on the red soil as though the neck had been broken. His eyes
were closed. His legs and arms, tied with ropes, pointed to
the sky, the whole body kept motionless by a pick thrust between
the tied limbs. His mouth was open. The veins in his temples
and arms stood out, swollen. And swarming over the face and
arms and neck were myriads of tiny red ants.
But the extreme torture of breaking convicts on the
Georgia rack, witnessed and photographed by Spivak is re-
corded both in pictures and a vivid description:
Through the bar figures could be seen moving silently and
swiftly before the white post. The warden, an absurd figure
in his underwear, held a flare high.
The unresisting Negro, with his back to the post, was laced
to it from ankles to hips with a rope and the one tied to the
cuffs slipped about the second post. The guard pulled sharply.
The convict's torso jerked forward, bending at right angles, his
arms outstretched. His head drooped between the arms. The
sweat on his back and arms glistened in the light.
"Stretch!" the warden ordered harshly.
The guard pulled until the rope was as taut as a tuned violin
string.
"Oh Jesus !" the Negro screamed. "Yo* pullin* my arms out I"
The rope was wound around the post and tied, leaving the
convict stretched so the slightest movement threatened to wrench
his shoulders from their sockets.
A committee of women investigating a prison camp in
Alabama about two years ago used an order, authorizing
the investigation by the Governor to compel guards to break
open a sweat box. A man was suspended in it by the
wrists. His weight was on his numbed arms. He was un-
conscious. Lime had been placed in the bottom of the box ,
and had eaten into his feet, which were swollen to twice their I
natural size. When released the worker pitched forward on
his face.
A good idea of torture can be had by analyzing condi-
tions in a typical gang. In 1925 Nevin C. Cranford, a chain
gang superintendent of a Stanley County, North Carolina,
76 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
gang was indicted on charges of murdering at least six pris-
oners. An investigating committee took sworn testimony
from many of the prisoners in the camp. Among the testi-
mony we find such items as follows : Grady Sides, a prisoner,
stated that his wrist was broken while cranking a tractor;
that no surgical attention was given ; that his arm was jerked
straight but not dressed; that no doctor saw him; that he
was made to continue at work with his broken arm hanging
useless at his side. D. Cage Hahn, a citizen, testified that
Cranford knocked a Negro prisoner into the creek while
he was heavily shackled and ordered two other prisoners to
jump in and drown him. Cranford admitted that he threw
Arthur Butler, Negro prisoner, into the creek. It was also
charged that Cranford made three prisoners hang William
Layton, another prisoner, by the heels with a steel wire for
two hours, blood streaming down into his face.
A complete sworn statement by one of the victims, Harold
Parks, gives a graphic picture of typical prison guards in
action. Parks swore:
That on the 26th day of June, 1924, he was tried in the County
Court of the aforesaid county, and convicted for an assault
with a deadly weapon, and sentenced to the chain gang for one
year. That he was driving a wheeler a short time thereafter
when a breast chain broke. He called Captain Cranford telling
him what had happened, he said I will fix that, ran up, began
to beat upon him with a large hickory stick four or five feet
long, an inch through, beat until he was all bloody, clothing
beat into strings, about that time some white men was coming
in sight. He, Crawford, ordered the affiant to get a feed sack,
cut an arm hole, and put it on like a coat so as to cover up
the bloody, tattered clothing. He received three more beatings
with a lash, 15 licks each time, cutting blood each lick, scars
all over the body, some scars yet.
At another time he saw the following: Arthur Butler (Negro)
was beaten with a leather strop almost every day, knocked down
with a big stick, beat on the ground, stomped, shot two times;
he was not doing a thing, hanged up by the wrist with sharp
wire for four hours until the blood would run down his arms;
then make to jerk until he got away; made to eat food with a
THE CHAIN GANG 77
box of epson salts upon it when sick. If he got sick at the
stomach and threw the food up (vomited) it was caught in a
pan and he was made to eat it again, the Captain standing over
him with his big whip. This man was treated worse than an
animal.
Henry Wooten (Negro) was brought up to the camp late
one evening. The first word Cranford said to him was, "Yes,
you are the very man I have been wanting. I am going to get
even with you. I will fix you. I have not forgot how big you
drove past me when I was working on the New London
road. You came near hitting some of the mules." The next
day he knocked him down with a big hickory walking stick ; beat
him on the ground. This he did almost every day and at night
or morning while in the camp. He would whip him with the
big strop or buggy trace, until he had his back cut to pieces;
after about two weeks he continued to beat him. Henry got
so weak he could not work or walk. He would knock him
down, stomp him. On one day he knocked him down and
trampled him in the stomach and chest. The blood ran out
of his mouth and nose. He could not do anything. Cranford
got off some eight or lo steps and took his pistol and shot
several times through his hat and clothing to see if he, Henry,
would move. He did not. Captain Cranford then ordered the
tractor put in front, hitched it to his leg chains and would
drag him over the rocks, stumps and bumps; his back was
almost skinned. This was done many times. Afterwards the
deceased, Henry Wooten, was stomped in the chest and stom-
ach. He was never able to do anything or had he been able
for many days before. But the blood continued to run out
of his mouth and his bowels would not act, the food worked
out of his mouth mingled with blood. This affiant waited upon
the deceased for the last few days of his life. When he was
not able to sit up and take his medicine. Captain Cranford
stomped him for not getting up and beat him. For many days
before he died his back and body was beaten into holes and
they stunk so you scarce could stand it. His ankles where he
had been double shackled were bad. The shackles had cut the
skin and flesh to the leaders or tendons and his legs to his
knees were swollen and bursted until they smelt bad. His last
words was to me, he said, "I cannot live, I must die, I have
been beaten to death, Cranford has killed me." And this affiant
knows that he was beaten to death for no mortal man could
Stand what was inflicted upon this man.^
78 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
The prison doctor always helped the prison authorities
cover up or whitewash such conditions. When Wooten died
the doctor pronounced the cause of his death as "acute bowel
trouble." Carl Meadows, a white prisoner who was also
murdered by Cranford, was examined by the doctor and he
too was found to have had "acute kidney trouble."
Witnesses in Cranford's trial testified that he once killed
a prisoner, John Quincy Leake, and buried him secretly.
The prison authorities and the state were responsible for
such conditions just as much as Cranford. The state legal-
ized the lash. G. D. Troutman, chairman of the road com-
mission, told an investigator of the state Charities Board
that he was satisfied as long as the men received the same
treatment as mules. Both he and County Attorney W. E.
Smith, said "the only way to appeal to a nigger is through
his hide."
Many examples of such forced labor tortures could be
cited. Cranford committed his tortures and murders in
North Carolina in the years before 1925. The writer visited
three Marion, North Carolina, textile strikers who were
sentenced to the Hendersonville chain gang in 1930 for strike
activities. "While it was so hot," one said, "the prisoners
worked until they fell, completely exhausted. Then they
were carried to the shade for a few minutes. If they were
sick, they were allowed to stay in the shade until the doctor
came ; then if he ordered them to work they had to go or get
whipped. I have heard strong men crying and begging for
mercy as they were beaten with a heavy leather strap." This
beating with a strap occurred long after Governor O. Max
Gardner had issued an "order" for no more whipping ! Soon
afterwards Willie Bellamy, a young Negro convict on a Wake
County gang, was whipped and clubbed and then smothered
to death in a sweat box. But it was a "great victory" to have
the Governor "abolish" whipping by proclamation.
THE CHAIN GANG 79
A Few Killings
Toiling on the gangs men frequently die from sunstroke
during the hottest summer days. More often, however, they
are worked to death or shot or whipped until they die. In
such cases the officials whitewash the real cause of death
and conceal it in their reports by saying that such and such
a prisoner died of "sunstroke," or merely "died of natural
causes." Occasionally such cases crop up in the press. An
tmemployed Spanish-American War veteran was whipped
to death on a Memphis, Tennessee, gang in 1932. The cause
of his death was reported as "a blocked artery," but the
undertaker discovered evidence of a terrible flogging. Odell
Johnson, a 19-year-old Augusta, Georgia, youth, died on a
Greenwood, South Carolina, gang from "sunstroke" in July,
1 93 1. Later fellow prisoners charged that he was mur-
dered and Governor Ibra C. Blackwood ordered an "inves-
tigation."
Thomas Farmer, a young convict in a Georgia prison camp,
died from a "heat stroke" in 1931. Later it was brought
out that Farmer was maltreated, including being chained
to a post and left while sick. In June, 193 1, Cecil Lafferty,
17-year-old inmate of a Boonesville, Missouri, prison camp,
died as a result of a beating. Delph C. Simons, director of
penal institutions, said the preliminary investigation indicated
that Lafferty was whipped because he was "stalling" while
at work in the field.
In 1932 a big scandal came to light in Alabama when
a disabled World War veteran, James C. Kirby, was severely
beaten by a heavy leather whip on the Ardmore prison gang.\
His crime was failure to work hard enough. Kirby said I
he was unable to perform the strenuous gang work because/
of having been gassed in the war. He had been fined $25
for trespassing — probably walking along a railroad track-
but when court costs were added he owed the county a total
of $85. To pay the fine and costs he had to serve loi days
80 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
at hard labor. After an "investigation" Governor B. M.
Miller declared that "neither the law nor prison regulations
had been violated in whipping Kirby" for not working hard
enough. Thus the Governor frankly admitted that the whip-
ping torture is legal.
One of the most recent chain gain scandals comes from
Florida where Arthur J. Maillefert, 19-year-old youth from
New Jersey, was severely beaten and then hung in a sweat
box by a trace chain until he choked to death. Before being
whipped and placed in the sweat box young Maillefert had
been stripped naked and placed in a barrel which had strips
nailed across it so that the prisoner was locked in, though
with legs and head protruding. The Sunbeam prison camp
where he was confined is in the heart of mosquito-infested
swamps.
Governor Doyle E. Carlton, who was a member of the
Florida legislature which passed the law legalizing peonage,
publicly defended the prison system after this killing. He
said that the incident is "a rare exception in the prison life
of Florida. . . . On the whole our prisoners are well cared
for and well treated." But prisoners in Florida chain gangs,
who should know, talk differently. Michael Tansey, a former
Florida prisoner, for example, said :
I was riding a freight in Florida at the time. I was heading
for a job picking oranges along with a lot of others. We were
arrested outside of Tallahassee, Florida, when the train stopped
and we were sentenced to from 90 days to eight months in the
camp.
We were sent to the swamps to do logging and lay rails.
After 24 hours there we prayed for death. ... If we did not
work fast enough we were whipped cruelly. The louder a man
screamed the more lashes he got. If we could keep quiet we
would get off with 15 or 20. And after beating us all week,
Higginbotham [guard captain] and his guards would come
around on Sunday and make us sing and dance for them.
Another prisoner, James Travis, described the treatment
Maillefert received before his death. He said that in beating
THE CHAIN GANG 8l
Maillefert guard captain George W. Courson, a 200-pound
man, had used a heavy "air hose" and then had knocked
the youth down, although he was helplessly bound with
shackles and "spur." Courson had wielded the air hose
with both hands and with great force, according to Travis.
When asked if a doctor had been called to treat Maillefert
for the injuries inflicted upon him, Travis replied: "You
don't get no doctor in them camps when you get beat up."
Travis exhibited an ugly scar on his head, the result of
treatment by guards, and declared that he had been ruptured
by two guards kicking him. Pointing to his right ear, he
said : "They smashed the side of my head with a pine sapling
and now I'm deaf in this ear."
Another prisoner, William Roberts, testified that he had
seen 15 or 20 men whipped in prison camps in Florida.
Thus in spite of what the Governor said prison brutalities
are common in Florida's prison gangs. The prison reform-
ers having won a "great victory" in 1923 promptly forgot
about prison horrors until the Maillefert case demonstrated
that conditions to-day are just as bad as they were ten years
ago. And it is not only in Florida that such prison condi-
tions are found; they exist in almost every chain gang in
the South.
In Florida prison camps and chain gangs in 1932 there
were 11 of the 14 Tampa prisoners who were imprisoned
for terms ranging from one to ten years for helping to
organize workers into the Tobacco Workers Industrial
Union. These prisoners have received particularly brutal
treatment because they were militant workers. Some have
been put through the sweat box. One of them, J. E. Mc-
Donald, serving 10 years on the Raiford chain gang, has
received the worst treatment. After a month of torture
he lost 30 pounds. His lips were blistered from fever and
his ruddy complexion was sallow. Although recently having
passed through an appendicitis operation, he was forced to
push a plow all day long under the boiling sun.
82 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
The threat of a year on the chain gang hangs over all
organizers of the Communist Party and Trade Union Unity
League in Birmingham, Alabama. There the police arrested
organizers (who were employed by their organizations and
received wages for their work) and charged them with
vagrancy which carries a sentence of one year on the chain
gang. One Negro organizer in Chattanooga was rushed to
the county chain gang after being convicted on a political
charge before an appeal against the sentence could be filed,
although intention to do so was declared at the trial. His
release was forced by the International Labor Defense and
the sentence defeated. One organizer was arrested while
asleep in his hotel room by city detectives in Birmingham
and charged with vagrancy !
Prison Farm Tortures
On the big prison farms, especially in Arkansas, Missis-
sippi, Louisiana and Texas, failure to "do task," and the
punishments for it, so closely resembles the chain gang — -
indeed the men are often worked in chains — ^that no special
attention will be given them other than to mention conditions
on a few typical farms.
In May, 1931, Mrs. W. A. Montgomery, head of Missis-
sippi's prison trustee board, reported that an entire gang
of convicts, picking cotton, were thrown across the rows and
lashed because they complained to visiting trustees that they
were not getting water enough while working. She reported
also that a new prisoner, a bookkeeper in civil life (voca-
tional training!), and suffering from a chronic illness, was
forced to pick cotton until he died in the field with a cotton
sack about his neck. The reported cause of his death was
that common chain gang illness, "blocked artery."
Here is a case within the writer's personal knowledge.
In 1926, Wiley Zeigler, a white railroad worker and union
man, was whipped and spurred to death by a mounted guard
on the prison farm near Houston, Texas. The writer saw
THE CHAIN GANG 83
Zeigler's body as it lay in the morgue. His back was criss-\
crossed with long, deep, bloody cuts. On his neck were |
many tiny holes made by the rowel of the guard's spurs, j
111 and unused to farm work, Zeigler had failed to get "on '
the row" — keep up while hoeing cotton under the hot Texas
sun. The Houston Press in April, 1932, uncovered the
grewsome story of how a Texas convict, A. D. Swor, was
beaten to death on the Eastham Prison Farm, Hardin
County, six years after the "investigation" and trial over
Zeigler's death.
To serve one's sentence on these prison gangs and prison
farms does not always mean that one has been completely
"reformed," according to the Handbook of American Prisons
and Reformatories for 1929. In Georgia, for example, "men
are turned loose without any cash and given a railroad
ticket to the point from which they were sentenced. On
arrival without funds or jobs they are subject to arrest I
as vagrants by the police force and to trial by court officials,
who are paid on the fee basis for conviction."
The chain gang, the peculiar penal institution of the South,
has its setting in that part of the country which has remained
predominantly agrarian and where the Negroes are bound
by the chains of the semi- feudal tenant system to big white
landowners. Its brutality is an inevitable concomitant to
the system of super-exploitation whose victim is the Negro
people. Super-exploitation needs super-oppression to keep its
victims in "their place." The chain gang serves as a weapon
to enforce white ruling class domination and peonage, of \
which we shall have more to say in the next chapter.*
*For a succinct and graphic description of chain gang conditions,
see John L. Spivak, On the Chain Gang, International Pamphlets,
No. 32.
w
CHAPTER VI
PEONAGE
In addition to the use of convicts there are other systems
of forced labor in the United States. The most widespread
is peonage, involving as it does many thousands of workers
and farmers, chiefly Negroes. It is especially prevalent in
the South where planters and employers developed it as a
substitute for the kind of slavery which was abolished with
the Civil War. Indeed, peonage is nothing more than a con-
comitant of the tenant farming system which was delib-
erately and carefully established by the southern ruling class
to perpetuate slavery under a different name. This tenant
system is in many respects worse than the slavery it suc-
ceeded, for it combines absolute dependency on the part
of the tenant with very little responsibility on the part of
the landlord.
Before "freedom" the slaves lived in cabins back of the
"big house" and toiled in the fields for their masters. After
the Civil War they lived in the same cabins, picked cotton
in the same fields — ^which often belonged to the same masters
— ^and suffered practically all the evils of chattel slavery. For
although the Negro demanded, and was even promised for
a time by his northern allies, "40 acres of land and a mule,"
he never obtained the land which he had tilled in slavery
and which should have been his if emancipation was to mean
anything. Without land the freedman was in a completely
dependent position and at the mercy of his former master
or some other employer.
During the first two years after the Civil War the de-
feated slaveholders made their first onslaught against the
newly freed Negro. During this period southern legisla-
84
PEONAGE 85
tures met. They passed a series of restrictive measures
generally known as the Black Codes. These included va-
grancy laws, laws against a worker breaking his contract,
laws regulating employment agencies, the employment and
migration of Negroes, apprenticeship laws for Negro chil-
dren, and pauper laws — all aimed at securing a supply of
forced labor in place of slavery. Each law was flexible
enough to include tenant farmers, farm laborers, and in-
dustrial workers During the intervention of Federal troops
these laws were not enforced for a brief period, but by 1877
they were again in force, and with the help of the Ku Klux
Klan and methods of terror * the Negroes were thrust into a
new bondage — peonage.
What Is Peonage?
The term "peonage" is now generally applied in the United
States to any method by which a person is physically or
legally held in involuntary servitude, with the exception, of
course, of convict labor. The Supreme Court has called
it, "A status or condition of compulsory service, based upon i
the indebtedness of the peon to the master."
The operation of peonage in the case of tenant farmers **
or farm laborers is fairly typical of peonage in all indus- ^
tries. In 191 9 the Memphis Commercial-Appeal carried a
letter from a southerner which gives a good description of it :
In certain parts of the South, men who consider themselves
men of honor and would exact a bloody expiation of the one
who would characterize them as common cheats do not hesitate
to boast that they rob the Negroes by purchasing their cotton
at prices that are larcenous, by selling goods to them at extor-
* Lynching as a widely used ruling class weapon dates from this
period. The World Almanac for 1932 gives the figure of 4,308
persons lynched from 1885 to 1930. These are recorded lynchings.
Many are not recorded. See Lynching, by Harry Haywood and
Milton Howard, International Pamphlets, No. 15.
**The term "tenant farmer" is used here to include all tenants —
those that pay a certain amount of cash for the use of land, known
as renters, and those who give a share of the crop for the use of the
land, the share croppers.
86 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
tionate figures, and even by padding their accounts with a view
of keeping them always in debt. A protest from a Negro
against tactics of this kind is met with a threat of force. Justice
at the hands of a white jury in sections where this practice
obtains is inconceivable. Even an attempt to carry the matter
into the courts is usually provocative of violence.^
This letter describes how a landlord "buys" the tenant's
share of the crop and how he gets the tenant in his debt.
The process is somewhat as follows: A contract is made
between a tenant and a landlord. Customarily a provision
is included in the contract that the landlord shall furnish
the tenant supplies which may include food, clothes, feed
for stock, money or any other thing of value. These ad-
vances are to be used only in making the crop. Without
such help the tenant would not be able to put in a crop as
he is, in most cases, completely without funds. The planters
usually have "commissary stores" which furnish these sup-
plies at whatever prices the owners see fit to charge. The
tenant has no credit elsewhere and would be forbidden to
trade there if he had.* He usually is not permitted to have
a vegetable garden because the planter, or a merchant in
collusion with the planter, wants to sell as much as possible
to the tenant to keep him in debt. The tenant has no re-
course. At the time he makes his purchases, he is refused
an itemized bill of the articles purchased and the commis-
sary-keeper enters on the books his own figures. Matters
go on thus during the work season. When the crop is
harvested and sold, and settlement time comes, the tenant gets
a slip, simply stating "balance due."^
Many workers in turpentine, lumber, and various other
kinds of labor camps in the South are defrauded and held
in debt in much the same manner as the tenant farmer. One
of the customary ways of recruiting workers for these camps
* How well tenants are fed can be seen in figures on deaths from
pellagra, a starvation disease. In North Carolina in 1929, according
to the State Health Department, there were 981 deaths from this
disease.
PEONAGE 87
IS for an employer to go to some large center where unem-
ployed workers are seeking jobs. He promises them good
wages and conditions. After arriving on the job, the workers
find that they are in debt for transportation. Then they go
still deeper into debt for food, clothes and additional sup-
plies. In some states they are legally bound to pay off their
debts before leaving the job; in others they are held by
physical force and terrorism.*
Contrary to popular belief, peonage exists not only in the
South, but in the North also. Thus on August 12, 1932,
the Newark (N. J.) News reported that "the padrone sys-
tem of handling farm labor is flourishing again this summer
in five agricultural counties of South Jersey." The report
then explains the "padrone" system as follows :
The padrone system is a type of peonage by which farm
hands — men, women and children, mostly of Italian extraction —
are virtually enslaved to an employment agent. The agent finds
work for them, hauls them to the fields, feeds them, sells them
merchandise from his store and so indebts them to him that when
he collects their wages from the farmer-employer he usually
has to return little or nothing to the laborers . . . the padrone
system ... is said to be worse this year because of unemployment
than ever before. Farmers employing large numbers of laborers
find it a convenient system because it saves them annoyance in
handling this type of labor. Employment agents, or padrones,
become prosperous under the system. The sufferers are farm
hands, who lose their freedom gradually and fall under a mental
or actual compulsion.
In the fact that a peon is bound to pay off his debt before
he can leave his employer we find the latter' s motive in
keeping his employee deeply in debt. For the employer is
not interested in collecting the debt; he wants to hold the
employee in bondage by means of it. By falsifying the ac-
counts,— ^the employer keeps all the records of debts, pay-
* Some of these "free contracts" contain provisions that the laborer
consents to allow himself to be locked up in a stockade at night
and "at any other time when the employer sees fit to do this." Carter
G. Woodson, The Rural Negro, pp. 72-73.
88 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
ments, contracts — ^by charging exorbitant interest rates, and
by similar practices he keeps the employee perpetually in
debt.
Interest rates charged to southern tenant farmers are
equivalent to outright robbery. Arthur M. Hyde, Secretary
of Agriculture, estimates that the tenant pays 25% on store
credit and 35% on fertilizer debts. But even this high esti-
mate is very conservative compared with that made by the
North Carolina College of Agriculture after a study of Pitt
County farms in 1928. Its figures show that interest rates
ranged from 19.1% for cash advances to 72.1% for sup-
plies advanced by merchants.
A peon thus held in debt slavery dares not attempt to
leave his employment. If he is foolhardly enough to escape,
a man-hunt is organized. Even the "law" takes an active
part in these modem hunts for runaway slaves. Sheriffs
have frequently been known to cross state lines in order
to bring back escaped peons. And when the peons try to
leave in large numbers they are held by mass terrorism.
For instance, during and after the World War, there was
a considerable migration of Negroes from the South to the
North. In their efforts to stop it, planters and business-
men's posses halted trains and dragged Negroes from them,
dispersed crowds of Negroes waiting for trains to take
them North, lynched the discontented, and arrested, mobbed,
and fined labor agents who dared hire the Negroes.
Several factors aid the employers in keeping workers or
tenant farmers in peonage. Usually the tenant or Negro
worker in the peonage sections of the country is unlettered
and untraveled, and knows nothing about the outside world.
Naturally it is hard for him to break with the old life. And
even if the tenant or worker does know of a better place,
what can he do? He has no money, no clothes, no means
of transportation. He is not skilled and is by no means
sure of getting any kind of work elsewhere.
Some of the farm contracts specify, too, that if the cropper
PEONAGE 89
or renter fails to perform his contract in every detail he
loses not only his crop but all his personal property which,
little as it is, may include house furnishings and personal
effects. A typical contract of this sort reads in part :
Said tenant further agrees that if he . . . neglects, or aban-
dons, or fails (or in the landlord's judgment violates this con-
tract or fails) to properly work the land early or at proper
times, or in case he should become physically incapacitated from
working said lands or should die during the term of this lease,
or fails to gather the crops when made, or fails to pay the
rents or advances made by the owner when due, in which event
... all indebtedness of the tenant shall at once become due
and payable to the owner ... in which event the owner is
hereby authorized to transfer, sell or dispose of all the property
thereon the tenant has any interest in. . . .^
Naturally the tenant prefers to stick it out in the hope
of salvaging something, even if his very life is endangered.
Indeed, planters have been known deliberately to force ten-
ants to move after the crop is made and laid by. Thus the
planter gets the entire crop and does not have to feed the
tenant through the dull months. Under such circumstances
the tenant gets nothing for his year's work. However, this
happens only when the labor supply is plentiful. Usually
the planter is more interested in keeping the peon on the
land and employs every means to this end.
As a last resort in holding an adequate supply of labor
the planter may keep the tenant's children or wife as hos-
tages.* Or he may frame up fake court charges in order
to intimidate the serf. Such charges as "rape," "swearing
before a female," "shooting across a public road," "va-
grancy," and "theft" are among those commonly used.''
A county judge in Florida recently told an investigator,
"don't you know there's lots of ways of holding niggers?
Listen, and I'll tell you how it is done. A boss hires a
nigger and gives him a pint of whisky to celebrate. A guard
goes around and arrests him for having whisky. The boss
tells the nigger he'll bail him out of it, but if the nigger
90 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
runs away the boss'U let the law jail him for having
whisky r«
Then there is the gentlemen's agreement among the planters
not to hire each other's croppers, especially if the croppers
are in debt as they usually are. In this way an effective
blacklist is maintained and the tenant becomes even more
entangled in the web which holds him in slavery. But if,
in spite of these legal restrictions and practices, any one
should try to take laborers or tenants from a planter or
employer of any sort, he would be mobbed or shot. A
typical case of this sort was reported in the press in 1929.
The trouble started when J. T. Wilson, white manager of
the Wirewood plantation near Greenwood, Mississippi, went
to Macon in that state, signed up 23 families and chartered
two freight cars to move them. "When local business men
and planters found out what was going on" a large posse
was formed and Wilson was given 10 minutes to leave the
county — without "his" families.'^
The fact that the life of a peon is hazardous and any
attempt to escape fraught with danger has been admitted
by official government publications. An investigator for the
U. S. Department of Labor said:
According to the law of the state [Mississippi], only the
landlord can give a clear title to the cotton sold. This gives
rise to the frequently deferred settlements of which the colored
people complain bitterly. Apparently, in order to secure his
labor, the landlord often will not settle for the year's work
till late in the spring when the next crop has been "pitched."
The Negro is then bound hand and foot and must accept the
landlord's terms. It usually means that it is impossible for him
to get out of the landlord's clutches, no matter how he is being
treated. In many cases the Negro does not dare ask for a
settlement. Planters often regard it an insult to be required,
even by the courts, "to go to their books." A lawyer and
planter cited to me the planters' typical excuse: "It is unneces-
sary to make a settlement, when the tenant is in debt." As to
the facts in the case the landlord's word must suffice. . . . The
beating of farm hands on the large plantations in the lower
PEONAGE 91
South is so common that many colored people look upon every
great plantation as a peon camp; and in sawmills and other
public works it is not at all unusual for bosses to knock Negroes
around with pieces of lumber or anything else that happens
to come handy.®
Peonage Is Legalized
Apologists for capitalism will admit that peonage existed
in the past and that it may still have some hold at present.
But they usually say that this is true in spite of laws; that
the law is not being enforced. The fact is, on the contrary,
that peonage is legalized in several states through the opera-
tion of three kinds of laws — ^vagrancy, emigrant agency, and
laws penalizing failure on the part of a tenant farmer or
industrial worker to perform a contract after having received
advances.
Vagrancy laws are used to secure forced labor especially
in the southern states. Any person without work and with-
out visible means of support is a vagrant at the discretion
of the judge. The laws are used only against the poorest
tenant farmers and industrial workers as well as labor or-
ganizers. South Carolina's vagrancy law goes out of its
way specifically to include tenants by saying that it also
applies to "persons who occupy or being in possession of
some piece of land, shall not cultivate enough of it as shall
be deemed by the trial justice to be necessary for the main-
tenance of himself and his family." In Arkansas any person
above 14 years of age without work may be arrested for
vagrancy under certain circumstances. Vagrancy laws are
on the statute books of nearly every state, but they have
been used especially in the South.
Carter G. Woodson has given the history of these vagrancy
laws. He says :
Immediately after the emancipation of the Negroes in 1865
the devastated States hoped to secure labor by vagrancy laws
which compelled every freedman to enter the service of some
one and to remain therein for such wages as the ruling classes
92 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
agreed among themselves to pay. Those freedmen who con-
tinued to loiter thereafter were arrested, condemned and put
to work on the public highways or leased to planters.
That the law is still being put to its intended use is evi-
denced by the fact that at present, in order to escape impris-
onment as vagrants, tenants and laborers are forced to accept
work under any conditions. For example, the Associated
Press carried a dispatch from Macon, Georgia, August 23,
1930, which read :
Macon police were continuing Saturday their efforts as a vol-
unteer employment bureau for middle Georgia growers. J. H.
Stroud of Alma appealed to Chief-of-Police Ben T. Watkins for
50 to 60 unemployed to serve as cotton pickers. Stroud was
here Saturday to take the pickers back with him. . . . The city
police are rounding up loiterers and offering them jobs or the
view of the passing throngs from the inside of the jail. [The
charge under such arrests would have been vagrancy. — W, W.'\
Another and more recent example is contained in the
following news item from the New York Times, September
26, 1931:
Little Rock, Ark. — Police action to force unemployed men
to help pick this year's bounteous cotton crop to-day had ex-
tended from Helena, in Eastern Arkansas, to Bowie County,
Texas, on the southwestern border.
Helena and Phillips County officers already have started a
drive to get cotton pickers to the fields by threats of vagrancy
charges and Bowie County officials to-day said a similar cam-
paign would start there next Monday.
Cotton planters in various sections of the State have com-
plained that they were unable to obtain an adequate number of
pickers, despite an unusually large number of unemployed
persons.
They attributed the situation to the prevailing low rate of
30 to 40 cents per hundred pounds being paid to pickers, but said
a higher price could not be paid because of the low price of
cotton.
Helena was free of loiterers to-day, although many Negroes
had gone outside the city limits to escape the officers.
PEONAGE 93
Several truckloads of Negroes were captured and sent
out to the cotton fields. The sheriff and other officers fol-
lowed to see that none escaped.
The following news story from Louisiana in 1930 will
make it clear why unemployed have to be hunted down and
put under guard to work:
At a meeting of 50 leading planters of Caddo and Bossier
parishes at the call of Jack P. Fullilove, chairman of the agri-
cultural committee of the Shreveport Chamber of Commerce,
it was decided that 50 cents a hundred pounds will be the stand-
ard price to be paid cotton pickers in the two parishes this fall.^
Since 1930, when this action was taken, as the above story
on Arkansas shows, the price for cotton picking has come
down to 30 and 40 cents per hundred pounds. Only a few
years ago $2 per hundred \vas being paid. Two hundred
pounds of cotton a day is a high average. So the picker
who gets the rate of 30 cents a hundred makes 60 cents a
day. And then he has to run the risk of never being able
to collect even that small amount.
When one of these workers — "bad niggers" and "va-
grants"— refuses to toil 10 or 12 hours for 60 cents a day
or less and is brought before a judge for his crime, he
hasn't a ghost of a chance of being acquitted. The sheriff
and court officials in many states are paid by the notorious
fee system — so much for each arrest and conviction. Elo-
quent testimony as to the industry of such officers is con-
tained in their salary figures. In 1929 the sheriff of Bolivar
County, Mississippi, received $24,350.70, while the sheriff
of Harrison County received $20,401.60 the same year.
Other sheriffs averaged aroimd $20,000 a year.^°
There are other uses for the vagrancy law. Frequently
county road building jobs, or even private business men
such as planters or turpentine camp operators, need a few
hands. Whoever has charge of the work looks around the
neighborhood and selects some men — almost always Negroes
— ^whom he would like to have work for him. Then he
94 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
swears out a warrant for them. The warrant, of course,
is based on a vagrancy charge. A typical one was used in
Gilchrist County, Florida, in 1930. It specifically names
six persons all of whom are in equal degree "rogues, vaga-
bonds, idle or dissolute persons, people who use unlawful
games or plays, common pipers and fiddlers . . . persons
who neglect their calling (sic), or are without reasonable
continuous employment, or regular income and who have
not sufficient property to sustain them . . . contrary to the
statute of this state." On the basis of such a warrant the
sheriff obligingly arrests them.
Once convicted on charges of this kind, the newly-made
convict is ordered to pay a heavy fine and court costs —
which the court promptly pockets imder the fee system. At
this point the employer who needs the workers generously
volunteers to pay the fines and costs provided the victim
will sign or touch his pen to a contract agreeing to work
out the amoimt on his plantation or other job.
Emigrant Agency Law
Another law that is a direct aid to peonage practices is the
"emigrant agency" law. Such laws are on the statute books
of nearly every southern state. They curtail operations of
agents who would ship the tenants and laborers to other
sections of the South and to the North. Georgia's law is
typical of this sort of legislation and reads :
If any person shall, by offering higher wages or in any other
way entice, persuade, or decoy, or attempt to entice, persuade,
or decoy any servant, cropper or farm laborer, whether under
a written or parol contract, after he shall have actually entered
the service of his employer, to leave his employer during the
term of service, knowing that said servant, cropper, or farm
laborer was so employed, he shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.^^
Texas, which also has its emigrant agency law, passed an
auxiliary law in 1930 which forbade any one moving or help-
ing to move the household furnishings and other property of
PEONAGE 95
a worker or tenant after nightfall. The effect of such a law,
of course, was to prevent peons from escaping during the
night.
"Jumping Contract" Law
The favorite legal device used by the southern ruling class
to maintain a supply of forced labor is the law which makes
it a criminal offense for a laborer or tenant to accept "ad-
vances'* as part of a contract and then fail — for any reason —
to perform that contract to the employer's satisfaction. Such
laws are often referred to as "peonage laws/* "contract
jumping" laws or "false pretense" laws.
The significance of laws of this kind, on the books of
several states in 1932, cannot be measured by the number of
times workers or tenants are prosecuted under them. It must
be measured by the effect they have as swords hanging over
the heads of the possible victims. For the worker or tenant
who makes a contract and accepts — ^as he must, being entirely
penniless — a, loan or supplies of any sort, and then fails for
any reason and for any provocation to fulfill that contract, is
a "criminal" and is bound for the chain gang at the pleasure
of his employer.
The Georgia law, penalizing the breaking of a contract by
a worker or tenant, was passed in 1903 after years of ex-
perimenting by planters and turpentine bosses in order to get
a law that would secure them a supply of forced labor. The
law reads in part :
If any person shall contract with another to perform for him
services of any kind, with intent to procure money or other
thing of value thereby, and not to perform the service contracted
for; to the loss and damage of the hirer, or after having so
contracted, shall procure from the hirer money, or other thing
of value with intent not to perform such service, to the loss
and damage of the hirer, he shall be deemed a common cheat
and swindler, and upon conviction shall be punished as for a
misdemeanor.^^
96 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
Another section was soon added which defined the rules of
evidence as to "intent to defraud" :
Satisfactory proof of the contract, the procuring thereon of
money or other thing of value, the failure to perform the
services so contracted for, or failure to return the money so
advanced with interest thereon at the time said labor was to be
performed, without good and sufficient cause, and loss or damage
to the hirer, shall be deemed presumptive evidence of the intent
referred to in the preceding section.^*
Armed with this statute, and controlling the courts and law
enforcement machinery generally, from justice-of-the-peace
to United States Senator, the planters and other employers
obviously have the tenant or laborer at their mercy. Of what
value is the "without good and sufficient cause" provision of
the above when the planter practically decides what is good
cause and what is not ? *
This law legalizing peonage was held constitutional by the
Georgia State Supreme Court in 191 2. The Georgia law has
never been tested in the United States Supreme Court.
However, in 191 1 an Alabama law, worded almost exactly
like the Georgia peonage law cited above, was held uncon-
stitutional in the famous case of Bailey v. State of Ala-
bama.^* It was found that, as was intended, every case
reported under the Alabama statute involved Negro tenants
and laborers. The United States Supreme Court in its
decision said of the Alabama law that "although the statute
in terms is to punish fraud, still its natural and inevitable
effect is to expose to conviction for crime those who simply
fail or refuse to perform contracts for personal service in
liquidation of a debt, and judging its purpose by its effect
that it seeks in this way to provide the means of compulsion
through which performance of such service may be secured."
* Because of fear of violent retribution, the peonage victim natu-
rally hesitates to testify against a planter. "Investigation has proven
that of the hundreds of Negroes lynched in the South during the
past half century, a large number died because of their objection to
this vicious practice of debt slavery." (See pamphlet, Black Justice,
published by the American Civil Liberties Union.)
PEONAGE 97
In short the Supreme Court found that the law legalized in-
voluntary servitude. Yet the Georgia law, almost identical,
was found to be constitutional by the Georgia Supreme Court
in 1 91 2, one year after the decision of the United States
Supreme Court in the Bailey v. Alabama case.
Compare the text of the Georgia law cited above with the
Alabama statute which follows :
Any person, who with intent to injure or defraud his em-
ployer, enters into a contract in writing for the performance
of any act of service, and thereby obtains money or other per-
sonal property from such employer, and with like intent, and
without just cause, and without refunding such money, or pay-
ing for such property, refuses or fails to perform such act or
service, must on conviction be punished by a fine in double the
damage suffered by the injured party, but not more than $300,
one-half of said fine to go to the county and one-half to the
party injured; and any person, who with intent to injure or
defraud his landlord, enters into any contract in writing for
the rent of land, and thereby obtains any money or other per-
sonal property from such landlord, and with like intent, without
just cause, and without refunding such money, or paying for
such property, refuses or fails to cultivate such land, or to
comply with his contract relative thereto, must on conviction
be punished by fine in double the damage suffered by the in-
jured party, but not more than $300, one-half of said fine to
go to the county and one-half to the party injured. And the
refusal or failure of any person, who enters into such contract,
to perform such act or service or to cultivate such land, or
refund such money, or pay for such property without just cause
shall be prima facie evidence of the intent to injure his employer
or landlord or defraud him. That all laws and parts of laws
in conflict with the provisions hereof be and the same are
hereby repealed.^"
Now compare both the Alabama and Georgia laws with one
passed in Florida as late as 191 9, or eight years after the
Alabama law, as cited above, was declared unconstitutional
by the United States Supreme Court. No essential difference
can be seen in the provisions of the three. The Florida law
follows :
98 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
Any person in this state who shall, with intent to injure and
defraud, under and by reason of a contract or promise to perform
labor or service, procure or obtain money or other thing of
value as a credit, or as advances, shall be guilty of a mis-
demeanor and upon conviction thereof shall be punished by a
fine not exceeding $500 or by imprisonment not exceeding six
months.
In all prosecutions for a violation of this section the failure
or refusal, without just cause, to perform such labor or service
or to pay for the money or other thing of value so obtained or
procured shall be prima facie evidence of the intent to injure
and defraud.^^
The Florida law was passed under the Governorship of
Sidney J. Catts, who in his campaign speeches promised "to
put the niggers in their places." Catts was tried in Federal
court on peonage charges soon after his term of office ex-
pired but because of his influence was acquitted. The inter-
ests back of the law, according to Orland K. Armstrong,
former head of the Department of Journalism at the Univer-
sity of Florida, who made an investigation of the law and
interviewed members of the 1919 legislature that passed it,
were the turpentine and lumber interests of the state. Arm-
strong visited turpentine camps operated by convict labor
where there were many "contract jumpers" (persons con-
victed of violating this law). Armstrong says, "It is safe to
assume that most of these men sentenced to the gang on the
basis of the 191 9 law were recruited under misrepresentation ;
were forced to work imder intolerable conditions; were
caught and held under warrants that assert a misdemeanor
under an unconstitutional law, and sentenced wdthout a
semblance of a defense for fraud." ^^
The story is told of how a white planter in a county in
Georgia had a young Negro arrested for failing to comply
with his contract. The young man had been drafted into the
United States Army during the World War. He pleaded
that that was the reason he was forced to break the contract.
But that was not "a good and sufficient cause," so he was
PEONAGE 99
held. A Negro farmer was in the act of signing the young
man's bond, when the white planter flew into a rage, saying
"No nigger shall help another nigger to beat me out of my
money," and shot the farmer .^^
Several other states have laws, similar to those quoted
above, which legalize peonage.* But, of course, when the
ruling class of a section endorses peonage it makes very little
difference what the law permits. The ruling class will do
what is to its advantage. Senator Walter F. George, of
Georgia, for five years a member of the Georgia Supreme
Court, openly admitted this when he wrote in Liberty, April
21, 1928:
No statutory law, no organic law, no military law supersedes
the law of social necessity and social identity.
Why apologize or evade? We have been very careful to
obey the letter of the Federal Constitution — ^but we have been
very diligent in violating the spirit of such amendments and
such statutes as would have a Negro to believe himself the equal
of a white man. And we shall continue to conduct ourselves
in that way.
♦There is another important legal practice in the South which has
a bearing on peonage, and that is "legal lynching." Many of the
"executions" of Negroes are only subtle lynchings aimed to avoid
adverse criticism which would follow the crude rope and faggot
method. In the year ending July i, 1931, 68 Negroes were "legally**
executed in the southern states. A typical example of how everything
is made ready for a legal lynching is seen in the famous Scottsboro,
Alabama, case.
CHAPTER VII
PEONAGE EXPOSED
Some idea of the seriousness of the peonage problem in
this country can be gained by reviewing a few of the actual
prosecutions since 1903. For, despite precautions taken by
the planters and the inactivity of the Department of Justice,
which has jurisdiction over such cases, and in spite of ter-
rorism, stories leak out and prosecutions are forced. The
total number of such prosecutions and complaints cannot be
learned, as in recent years the Department of Justice has
refused to make public its report on this phase of its work.
But even if an annual report of prosecutions and reported
cases were available it would not tell the smallest part of the
whole story, for obviously only a very few of the total num-
ber of cases are prosecuted or even reported.
In 1903 the Federal Grand Jury at Montgomery, Alabama,
returned about 100 indictments for peonage.^ In 1907 there
were 83 peonage complaints pending in the Department of
Justice.
At that time many white families and individuals were
enmeshed in this system of forced labor.* Collier's maga-
zine, July 24, 1909, tells the story of Joseph Callas, a Russian
Jew, who was arrested in Little Rock, Arkansas, while en
route to California in search of work. He was taken to a
prison in southeast Arkansas where 145 Negroes and whites
were held. A sub-contractor in 1907 hired 60 Poles and paid
* Contract labor is here classed under peonage. This form of forced
labor arose toward the close of the Civil War with the organization
of the American Irtinigrant Co. which brought immigrants to the
United States under contract to work a certain number of years. To
enforce the contract the immigrant's wages could be legally pledged;
also there were laws penalizing breaking of such a contract.^ EncyclO"
pcedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. 4, pp. 342-44.
100
PEONAGE EXPOSED 101
their fare from New York to Greenville, N. C, where they
were put to work on the Norfolk and Southern Railroad.
They soon saw what they were up against and quit, where-
upon a local justice of the peace issued warrants for their
arrest for "obtaining goods under false pretenses."
The situation in this country regarding immigrants became
so serious that the Italian government, after seeing its na-
tionals enslaved and slain in Louisiana, warned natives of
Italy to stay away from the South. Austria and Hungary in
like manner blacklisted Mississippi and Missouri.^
The publicity that arose from such protests and exposures
caused Congress, in 1908, to request the Immigration Com-
mission to "investigate'* immigrants' conditions on cotton
plantations, turpentine farms, lumber and railway camps.
The resolution as first introduced applied only to the South,
but the outraged southern ruling class insisted that what was
going on in the North and West was just as bad as in the
South. As a result of these counter charges the scope of the
resolution was broadened to include the entire country.
The subcommittee on peonage appointed by the Immigra-
tion Commission stated that "peonage cases in the South
relating to immigrants have been found to cover almost every
industry — farming, lumbering, logging, railroading, mining,
factories and construction work."
But it was of Maine in the North, that the investigating
committee of 1908 said: "There has probably existed in
Maine the most complete system of peonage in the entire
country." In 1907 a law was passed in this state which made
it a crime for a laborer who had received "advances" to leave
the employment before he has worked long enough to repay
the employer. The investigating committee, after an examina-
tion of conditions in the logging and lumbering industries,
reported, "Considerable peonage has resulted from the
statute. . . . Involuntary servitude results in utilizing this
statute to intimidate laborers to work against their will. . . .
102 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
If a man leaves his employer before settling for advances, he
will be pursued and apprehended."
The committee also found something close to peonage in
the padrone system in shoe-shining establishments reported
from many parts of the West. Also "in some of the lumber
and railroad camps in Minnesota and North Dakota laborers
were held in a state of technical peonage." It gives little
exact information but broadly, it says, "undoubted evidence
has been discovered that peonage has been practiced in the
western states, and the indications are that there are many
cases of involuntary servitude in that section." Summing up,
the committee says that, "in every state except Oklahoma
and Connecticut the investigator found evidences of prac-
tices between employer and employee which, if substituted by
legal evidence in each case, would constitute peonage as the
Supreme Court has described it."^
Cases of this type can still be found — ^and outside the
South. For example, the Buffalo Evening News recently
won a prize for meritorious news reporting when it exposed
peonage in northern New York in August and October, 1931.
It existed at the labor camps operated by construction com-
panies on the Sardinia-Springville state road project and in
the building of the new Attica prison. Workers were re-
quired to live in cowbarns in which as many as 96 double
deck cots had been jammed. Commissary charges were de-
ducted from their meager wages, though a state law forbids
such deductions. Whisky was sold and the price deducted
from wages. If a worker bought no whisky, he was charged
for it just the same. A large number of men found to their
surprise that they had no pay coming to them. Eight dollars
a week was charged for sleeping room in the bam. Then
acting Governor Lehman was "aroused by reports that
laborers on state construction jobs lived like peons and were
treated like coolies" and finally ordered state officers to "in-
vestigate."
In 1920 widespread peonage was reported in Early, Dooly,
PEONAGE EXPOSED 103
Worth, Decatur, Toombs and Morgan counties, Georgia.*
Governor Hugh M. Dorsey of Georgia followed this in 1921
with his report on The Negro in Georgia in which he listed
almost two dozen known cases of peonage in its worst form.
Shortly after the Dorsey report the notorious John S.
Williams "murder farm" cases were exposed. It was found
that on this single farm at least 11 croppers were killed
because "they knew too much" or because it became certain
that the Department of Justice would be forced to investi-
gate.
There were many cases prosecuted in 1925. Two of the
best known were those of four men from Anderson County,
South Carolina, who were sentenced to Federal imprisonment
at Atlanta. M. B. Davis and Charles Land, turpentine
operators of Calhoun County, Florida, along with three other
men, were also convicted of peonage by a Federal jury
in 1925.*
In Corpus Christi and Raymondville, Texas, four white
men (the sheriff, two deputies and a justice-of-the-peace)
were found guilty of peonage practices. Four young white
boys, all under 21 years of age, one of them a former page
in the National House of Representatives, went to a cotton
picking job where they had been promised pay of $1.25 per
hundred pounds and free board. On the job they found that
they were being forced to pay board. They became dis-
satisfied and left and were arrested in Raymondville on
"vagrancy" charges and given the alternative of working for
their original employer or being prosecuted and sent to the
chain gang.^
In 1927 some big cases were exposed in Amite County,
Mississippi. Two wealthy planters of this county went into
Louisiana for escaped Negroes and brought them back to
Mississippi. In this same county Webb Bellue and John D.
Alford, prominent citizens, were convicted of selling Craw-
ford Allen, fifty-year-old Negro, his wife and three children
for $20.^ Bellue and Alford seized Allen and his family for
104 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
a debt of $20 and transported them to a farm near Fluker,
Louisiana, where they were forced to work several weeks
without pay. Afterwards they were sold. A short time later
W. D. Arnold, a middle Georgia planter, was indicted on
peonage charges for holding a white man, Claude King, and
a Negro, John Vanover.
Catastrophes Expose Peonage
A big "act of God" is a better investigator of peonage,
apparently, than the Department of Justice, for such catas-
trophes usually bring to light peonage cases by the wholesale.
In 1927, for example, the Mississippi River flooded a vast
territory including much of the peonage country. Several
hundred thousand white and black tenants and laborers were
thrown on the doles of that "Wonderful Mother," the Red
Cross. It is a matter of record that the planters at first re-
fused to let their tenants be removed from the plantations
for fear they might escape. Then when the waters began to
enter the cabins a deal was made between the Red Cross and
the planters by which the Red Cross agreed to have the
National Guard stand guard over the tenants, and when the
waters subsided, to deliver them, even against their will, back
to the plantations whence they came.^
In the encampments the croppers, renters, and laborers
were closely watched by guardsmen. No one could leave the
camp without a permit. Several of the flood victims were
shot, some while trying to escape. Still, many escaped.
Thousands were conscripted into levee building and work for
private employers on other jobs without pay. When the
floods receded, the Red Cross, the National Guard, and the
overseers from various plantations staged a "round-up" of
the reluctant victims, herded them into barges and returned
them to their masters. During the flood, the Arizona Cotton
Growers' Association applied to the Federal Employment
offices for 4,000 workers from among the refugees, offering
them about four months' work. But, according to the general
PEONAGE EXPOSED 106
manager of this Association, the employment offices refused
to negotiate the deal because "any move of this nature would
be fought by the different users of this class of labor through-
out the districts affected." ^
Even after the flood the doles had to be continued. The
Red Cross policy of local autonomy for branches in giving
out relief gave the planters, of course, a chance to have their
own representatives at the head of relief distribution. In
order to facilitate the distribution many planters "generously'*
offered the use of their plantation commissaries as store-
houses for the food and other supplies. Then the same goods
were sold or given away at the planter's discretion and to his
personal advancement.^^
In 1930 came another "act of God." This time God dried
up the same country he had flooded in 1927. One of the
worst famines in the country's entire history followed a pro-
longed drought in the southern states bordering the Missis-
sippi River. Widespread peonage was uncovered. Reports
came out of the drought country that terrible conditions
existed especially in Louisiana and Arkansas. More specific
locations were given around Bald Knob and Searcy, Arkansas,
as well as in St. Francis County. A professor in one of the
schools in Conway, Arkansas, told Russell Owen, corre-
spondent of the New York Times, that "Some of the farmers
. . . had been in debt so many years that they no longer sought
a statement of their accounts. They were in bondage so deep
they did not care." ^^
The Times reported that the "share-cropper made nothing
last year. He owes the planter for his food and clothing and
must hope to work it out. The share-cropper can't move to
another plantation unless his debts are assumed by the new
planter." It was found in other sections of the drought
country, as well as in Arkansas, that the Negro croppers were
living as well on the doles — an average of 3J^ cents per
meal per person ^^ — as under normal conditions, and that the
planters had to bargain with the Red Cross to restrict the
106 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
doles in order to keep the croppers satisfied on the planta-
tions. Owen reported much grumbling about the "Red
Cross freeing the Negro."
How the Red Cross freed the Negroes is well illustrated
by an Associated Press dispatch from Yazoo City, Missis-
sippi :
In order to keep laborers from deserting farms in Yazoo
County, the county Red Cross Chapter has cut down on drought
relief and now is administering only to cases of extreme destitu-
tion. Planters requested discontinuance of the daily distributions,
saying hundreds of laborers were leaving farms. . . .^^
In other places the Red Cross was reported to have told
tenants "if you leave the crop, relief will be cut off." In
other words, acceptance of their status as forced laborers was
the condition for receiving relief.
But these cases of wholesale exposure can happen only
infrequently. Less spectacular cases, however, continually
crop out in the press. Every week cases of shooting affairs
between landlord and tenant are reported. On the surface
there is little significance in such happenings, but closer
analysis reveals that most of them occur over divisions of the
crop and as a result of peonage. The writer has hundreds of
newspaper clippings deaHng with such cases, including many
in which white tenants are involved.
Other Recent Peonage Cases
Some recent and direct cases of peonage can be cited to
prove that no later than a few months ago, this system of
forced labor was being practiced in many sections of the
country.
In 1928 Thelma Duncan, a North Carolina school teacher,
reported cases of peonage in that state.^* In 1929, Orland
K. Armstrong, university of Florida professor, made a damn-
ing expose of peonage laws and practices in Florida. He
cited many cases of Negroes being sold to turpentine com-
panies at from $50 to $150 each. He was surprised to find
PEONAGE EXPOSED lOT
very few prosecutions and convictions, and asked lawyers,
legislators and business men for the reason. A typical reply
was given by a business man;
Do you want to know why they can't get any convictions?
Harass why — suppose they arrest some operators. All right.
Now bring them into court. They are men of wealth and re-
spectability. They own big property. They elect the county
and state officers. Who's the jury ? Men who owe *em money !
Accuse 'em of peonage. They bring in records to show they
don't owe a Negro a penny. The owner, the boss men, the
bookkeeper, the commissary clerk all testify. And what else?
Every big company has favorite Negroes, who get good wages
and act as straw bosses. They put them on the stand. They've
been working for that company for years; paid every month
and never mistreated. And against that line-up, you got a poor
devil of an ignorant nigger off a chain gang! Think you can
convict ? ^^
In March, 1930, James E. Piggott, prominent Washington
Parish, Louisiana, planter, pleaded guilty of holding Negro
farm workers in peonage. Piggott told Federal Judge Borah
that "I handled Negroes in the same way every one else in
the South does." He admitted that on several occasions his
croppers escaped into Mississippi and that Louisiana officers
went after them and brought them back without any sort of
requisition papers or warrants.^*
Another typical case in Louisiana occurred in 1931. J. M.
McLemore of Coushatta was charged with peonage practices.
The investigation disclosed that McLemore habitually carried
a pistol with which to shoot any one attempting to escape.
Peonage on Government Job
One of the most recent exposes of peonage involved work
done for the United States government. In December, 1931,
it was discovered that the War Department was using com-
pulsory labor on levee work under its supervision along the
Mississippi River. Gross brutality was charged including the
flogging and beating of Negro workers with leather straps.
108 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
clubs and pistol butts, for not doing enough work or for
minor infraction of camp rules. Men were forced to work
12 to 1 8 hours a day. The pay rate was from 75 cents to
$2 a day for skilled labor. For unskilled it was much less.
Trading in the commissary was compulsory and charges for
"stuff" were exorbitant. There was an arbitrary deduction
of $4.50 a week from each man's pay for commissary sup-
plies, whether the supplies were purchased or not. Thirty
contractors with offices in New Orleans, St. Louis, Kansas
City, Qeveland and Pittsburgh were declared to be involved.
Meanwhile the War Department has ordered an "investi-
gation." ^^
This record of peonage prosecutions and exposes bears out
the results of a peonage questionnaire recently sent by the
author to about 150 prominent teachers, lawyers, state offi-
cials and other professional people in every part of the South.
The majority of replies showed that peonage does exist in
these states. A former member of the Texas Senate said,
"the system of binding tenant-croppers to the soil does not
exist in Texas in theory. It is recognized by force, has a
firm hold and terrorizes the tenant." A former deputy labor
commissioner of Texas also admitted that "Peonage actually
exists in this state." Replies from other states were similar.
The editor of a Louisiana weekly said, "in the sugar districts
the condition of labor is that of out-and-out peonage, and it is
the same in the lumber industry." Officials in the department
of charities and public welfare in several states said peonage
existed to some extent. In almost every case those who
replied to this questionnaire asked that their names should
not he published.
Peonage is not a thing of the past. It exists now in many
sections of the United States. It is legal in several states
and is practiced in others, though "illegal." There is evi-
dence that since the beginning of the present economic crisis,
employers in the peonage country, in order to secure lower
PEONAGE EXPOSED 109
labor costs, have increased their exploitation. At the same
time an increasing number of small farmers are losing their
small holdings and entering the ranks of the tenant. Accord-
ing to the last census over 60% of all southern farmers are
tenants.
Rebellion and Struggle
The workers and tenants held in peonage have waged many-
militant battles against these conditions. In many of these
struggles Negroes and whites fought shoulder to shoulder.
The landlords and other employers, with the help of the law
and the courts, have drowned in blood most of the attempts
at organization.
No adequate study of organization and struggle among
workers and tenant peons has ever been made. The records
on the subject are poor and scattered and no attempt has been
made to gather even these. However, a brief summary of
some of the most important struggles can be given here.
In Sander sville, Georgia, in 1884, it was reported that a
man had arrived from Louisville, Kentucky, for the purpose
of organizing Negro tenants and farm workers into unions
to get higher wages and better conditions. The report con-
cluded typically enough with this sentence : "The militia have
been sent for."
The experiences of Hiram F. Hoover who came to middle
Georgia from Hickory, North Carolina, in 1887 to organize
the share croppers show that organizers at that time were
treated just as harshly as to-day. At Warrenton, Georgia, he
was shot by a posse of planters and left for dead. Although
half his face was blown away, he survived. When it was
learned that he still lived, an Augusta paper said, "The gen-
eral verdict here is that they should have killed him."
Hoover continued in his "crimes" of organizing the Negroes
and moved to Madison where he was told by the best
(wealthiest) citizens to leave. It was reported that while he
was recovering from his wounds his wife continued his work
110 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
— so a committee "waited on her." He tried to work in sev-
eral other places but was continually hounded and persecuted.
Finally he was driven out of the South.
One of the most important of the early efforts to organize
southern tenant farmers on a large scale was the attempt in
1891 to form a Colored Farmers Alliance of the United
States. Its headquarters were in Houston, Texas. A cotton
pickers' strike was called for September 12, 1891. Southern
newspapers became alarmed over the "threat." The official
Farmers Alliance (white), dominated by wealthy farmers and
business men, immediately attacked the Negro organization,
condemned the strike and helped the planters to defeat it.
One of the more recent and most brutal suppressions of a
tenant farmers* union took place at Elaine, Phillips County,
Arkansas, in 191 9. The Arkansas union was very conserva-
tive. The charter was drawn up by Williamson and William-
son, white lawyers. Members of this tenant-farmers' union
had to be churchgoers and swear to defend the Consti-
tution of the United States. But the union was militant in
wanting to wage a fight on peonage which was particularly
vicious in Phillips County. When the union met in a church
to lay plans and to retain a lawyer — a white man, who had
been a Federal attorney and former postmaster — it was
attacked by an armed mob of planters and business men.
The church was burned to the ground and the croppers
hunted down like wild beasts. It is estimated that close to
200 were slaughtered. The Negroes resisted and though they
were poorly armed killed some white attackers.
Hundreds of the croppers were then arrested charged with
insurrection, murder and other crimes. Not a single white
man was arrested. After a "fair trial" at which the croppers
were "defended" by a lawyer appointed by the court, 12 were
sentenced to death and 6y to long term imprisonment. The
trial lasted three-quarters of an hour. It took a jury of
planters or their hirelings seven minutes to condemn 12 men
to death. Not a single Negro was on the jury or on the
PEONAGE EXPOSED 111
jpanel ; a threatening mob and troops were present ; the crop-
pers' lawyer had no preliminary consultation with the de-
fendants; he never called a single witness even though they
were available. Shortly after the arrest of the croppers a
mob marched to the jail to lynch them but was prevented by
the Committee of Seven and other leading citizens and offi-
cials who promised if the mob refrained, they would execute
those found guilty in the form of law.
Later when appeals were made to the Governor of Arkan-
sas for clemency the American Legion, the Lions Club, and
the Helena Rotary Club held meetings, attended by repre-
sentatives of the leading industrial and commercial enter-
prises of Helena, passed resolutions asking the Governor to
ignore the appeal. The American Legion resolution stated
that a "solemn promise was given by the leading citizens of
the community that if the guilty parties were not lynched,
and let the law take its course, that justice would be done and
the majesty of the law upheld." ^^ Members of the Legion
were very active in the man-hunts in which scores of the
croppers were killed. Several members of the Legion were
also killed.
Later one of the chief motives of the planters in breaking
up the tenants' union was brought out. For "Negro prisoners
are said to have confessed, each member of the organization
at specified times was to take a bale of cotton ... to certain
prominent landowners, plantation-managers, and merchants
and demand a settlement."^® It will be recalled that the
refusal to make settlements is one of the methods of enforc-
ing peonage. The Negro tenants had positive evidence that
the planters of Phillips County were preparing to ship off the
cotton — in which the croppers theoretically had a share — and
to sell it without settling with the tenants or allowing them to
sell their share of the crop.
Industrial workers have also struggled against actual,
peonage. On November 22, 1919, in Bogalusa, Louisiana,
three white men were shot dead, and a number severely
112 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
wounded in such a struggle. The white men were killed
because they had dared walk down the main street of Boga-
lusa, with guns on their hips, protecting with their lives and
guns the life of a Negro labor organizer .^^
The Great Southern Lumber Company which owns Boga-
lusa had an auxiliary organization called the Loyalty League.
It was formed during the war and made up of business men.
The chief function of the organization was to see that every
able-bodied man — especially Negroes — should work at any
task, at any wage and for any hours that the employer might
desire. In 191 9 the situation was such that a labor leader
reported :
They have been continually arresting Negroes for vagrancy
and placing them in the city jail. It seems that a raid is made
each night in the section of the town where the Negroes live
and all that can be found are rounded up and placed in jail
charged with vagrancy. In the morning the Great Southern
Lumber Company goes to the jail and takes them before the
city court where they are fined as vagrants and turned over to
the lumber company, under the guard of the gunmen, where
they are made to work out this fine. There is one old Negro
in the hospital in New Orleans whom they went to see one
night, and ordered to be at the mill at work next day. The
old man was not able to work, and was also sick at the time.
They went back the next night and beat the old man almost
to death and broke both of his arms between the wrist and
the elbow.2i
It was out of such conditions that a hard-fought strike
arose, in which, as has been mentioned, three white men were
killed while protecting a Negro organizer, thus furnishing
one of the most important examples of solidarity between
white and Negro workers to be found in the history of the
United States.
In the summer of 1931, to cite another and even more
significant case, white and Negro tenants in and around Camp
Hill, Alabama, were organized by the Trade Union Unity
League into a militant union. The main purpose of this
avowedly militant union is in one respect no different from
PEONAGE EXPOSED 113
that of the tenants' union in Arkansas in 1919, namely — ^to
fight peonage. Alabama planters, emulating their ruling class
brothers in Arkansas, also attacked a union meeting which
was being held in a church near Camp Hill. The church
was burned to the ground, one man was murdered on the
spot in cold blood and four others were sent to "cut stove
wood," a euphemistic term for lynching. Some 35 were
rounded up and arrested.
Certain liberal organizations and individuals, including the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peo-
ple and its officials, William Pickens, Walter White and
W. E. B. DuBois, following their usual policy, played into
the hands of the lynchers by saying that the Communists were
to be blamed for thus disturbing the "good relations" between
the tenants and the planters. In reality peonage was respon-
sible, and the Communists must be credited with waging a
relentless fight against peonage. Students of the labor move-
ment have long recognized that any attempt of industrial
workers to organize in unions to better their economic position
will be fought by employers with bullets, clubs, gas and every
other weapon available. The same principle obviously holds
true with attempts of agricultural workers and tenant
farmers to improve their economic position.
The Camp Hill union, in cooperation with the International
Labor Defense, was able to win the freedom of all the 35
arrested members. And for the first time in the long history
of struggles against peonage, this Camp Hill union was able
to beat back the attacks of the employers and win certain
demands. As a result it came out of the attack stronger and
more solidly entrenched than ever. It has even been able to
extend its organization into adjoining counties, organizing a
majority of the Negro croppers in many localities.
The demands of the Share Croppers Union at Camp Hill
were : ( i ) continuation of food allowance which had been cut
off July I, after the crop was cultivated and "laid by," leav-
ing the cropper to starve or beg until cotton picking time in
114 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
September, (2) right of the cropper to sell his produce for
cash where and when he pleased, rather than turn it over to
the landlord for "division," (3) cash settlement for the sea-
son at cotton picking time, (4) a 9-months' school for Negro
children as well as white with free bus, (5) right of the
cropper to have his own garden.^ The two specific demands
won were extension of food allowance to November i and
permission to grow gardens for the use of the tenant.
Notasulga, a few miles from Camp Hill, witnessed a
more recent armed attack upon Negro share croppers. On
December 19, 1932, the sheriff and a posse came to the home
of a Share Croppers Union leader in an attempt to seize his
mule at the behest of the landowner. Other croppers came
to the defense of their leader to resist the organized terror
of the authorities. In the struggle that followed a number of
croppers were killed, others were wounded and thirteen
Negroes arrested. Two of the union leaders died a few days
later from wounds received, after having been turned over
to the police by the officials of the Tuskegee Institute to
whom they had come for hospital treatment.
Peonage Among Mexicans in the United States
Just as intolerable as the peonage that binds Negroes in
the South is the peonage to which Mexicans are subjected in
the United States. Though no formal study has been made
of the situation it is well recognized that much of the work
in the industries in the Southwest — projects in the Lower
Rio Grande Valley, the Imperial Valley in southern Cali-
fornia, big ranches, railroad construction, irrigation jobs —
has been done by Mexican workers slaving under peonage.
Thousands of Mexican forced laborers have toiled in the beet
fields of Colorado, Kansas and other states.
In at least one instance the United States government has
intervened in behalf of the employers in the Southwest in
order to enable them to get their talons on forced labor. This
action included the Rainey Amendment to the Emergency
PEONAGE EXPOSED 115
Immigration Bill which permitted ranchers, planters and
other employers to import a large number of Mexicans.
Under this law the employers were to guard the workers so
that when they were through with them they could deport
them to Mexico. Under the law these workers were not
permitted to seek other employment or leave the employment
of the man who had imported them.
To create divisions between Mexican and American
workers the capitalist sources of information have always
been used to build up a myth that Mexican workers are "in-
ferior creatures." But when business men of the Southwest
wanted an even larger supply of forced labor, the govern-
ment obligingly waived all immigration restrictions, including
the literacy test and head tax. The workers, however, were
not allowed to come as free men but were to be held on the
job on which they were imported to work. No matter how
intolerable conditions they could not leave it. And when they
were no longer needed they were to be deported.
Under the Rainey Amendment the Arizona Cotton Growers
Association alone admitted using around 35,000 of these con-
tract laborers. Ranchers under this law also arbitrarily
seized Mexicans wherever they could. Most of the Mexican
workers did not speak English and were carried into sections
where the ranchers dominated the political situation. Ob-
viously under such circumstances the workers were at the
mercy of their employers.
It frequently happened that these peons became desperate
and tried to escape. Then posses of the masters "arrested"
them and brought them back or in some cases deported them
under cover of guns. The threat of such "arrests" and de-
portations always hung over the workers as a penalty for
protesting their lot. Long after the war-time emergency had
passed the workers were still being held.
Peonage is practiced on the salmon canning fleets of the
Pacific Northwest. Helpless, unemployed Mexicans are
forced to sign a contract agreeing, on penalty of fines from
116 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
$io to $50 for each "offense," to work on Sundays, holidays
or nights when asked to do so by their employers. They also
agree that if they quit work because of strikes or any other
reason, all their wages will be forfeited.^^ Officials of the
United States Bureau of Fisheries made an investigation
and verified the charges, and in addition reported that after
a laborer had signed a contract and was taken to a canning
factory it was virtually impossible for him to escape. About
29,000 Mexican, Filipino, Chinese and Japanese laborers
were employed in such canneries in 1929 in Alaska alone.
Texas, like other southern states, has its law restricting
employment agencies which would ship Mexican and Negro
workers from Texas to other sections of the country. The
law was passed as a deliberate measure to keep a monopoly
on cheap forced labor. The State Federation of Labor
(A. F. of L.) supported this peonage bill!
An officer of the Texas Department of Agriculture re-
cently wrote the author that the state had about 400,000
Mexican farm workers or tenants ; that they were paid about
half the wages received by native Americans. He described
their conditions as a "shame without any question." Then,
a little later, an official of the Department of Labor wrote,
in reply to a questionnaire on peonage, that one of the
worst blots on the state was the peonage practices directed
against Mexican workers. He explained, moreover, that
very few prosecutions arose because the system "was so
plausibly explained" as to dupe both Federal and State au-
thorities. He was very naive.
The general solicitor of the Sante Fe railroad, E. E.
Mclnnes, recently admitted before a Congressional commit-
tee, that over 75% of all their track workers in the South-
west are Mexicans. When asked by Congressman George
J. Schneider of Wisconsin, "How do you get this labor?"
he replied, "Our workers are furnished by Holmes and Com-
pany of Los Angeles and San Francisco without charge."
It was brought out that the reason that this employment
PEONAGE EXPOSED 117
agency could afford to supply workers free was that it was
given the concession to operate commissaries in the railroad
camps. They made their profit in that way, charging what-
ever they chose, falsified the accounts, and held the whip
of discharge over the workers through cooperation with the
railroad company.
In face of such conditions the American Federation of
Labor officialdom has a record of attacking the Mexican
workers. It has refused to organize them and even refuses to
admit them into unions when their applications for mem-
bership are presented. There is a gentlemen's agreement in
many unions in the Southwest, including the longshoremen
(International Longshoremen's Association), that all Mexi-
can workers shall be "black-balled."
The Mexican cantaloupe pickers in the Imperial Valley,
California, went on strike in 1928 for better wages and to
end conditions equivalent to peonage. All the forces of
"law and order" including the courts and the sheriff helped
to crush the strike. Halls were raided and closed without
warrant. Bail for arrested workers was set as high as $1,000
on vagrancy charges based on the fact that the workers were
on strike and therefore not working. "The purpose was, of
course, to prevent organization of the Mexicans. . . ." 2*
The latest strike in the Imperial Valley, in 1930, was led
by the Agricultural Workers Industrial Union affiliated to
the Trade Union Unity League. The same sheriff who broke
the 1928 strike with his forces finally broke this strike. Six
organizers were sentenced to from three to 42 years in Cali-
fornia's bastilles for their activities. Others were deported
to Mexico. This union is organizing workers in the Im-
perial Valley as well as in the Colorado beet fields where
peonage also exists.^*' On May 16, 1932, some 18,000 of
these Colorado beet workers went on strike under the leader-
ship of this union. They struck against the intolerable con-
ditions of peonage and lowered rates.
CHAPTER VIII
FORCED LABOR IN THE COLONIES
1 Although much direct forced labor exists in the homeland
\ of every capitalist country, it prevails to a much greater ex-
1 tent in the colonies. In nearly all colonial and semicolonial
countries there are laws, regulations and practices which make
it compulsory for the majority of the native population to
work for a definite time, directly or indirectly, for foreign
capitalists without pay or for only a nominal wage.
How are forced laborers recruited in the colonies? The
methods employed for creating forced labor here are similar
to those employed by the early capitalists in creating wage
laborers. Generally, the first wage laborers were created
by forcibly robbing the peasants of their means of livelihood,
by driving them from the land and often burning their
homes. Cut off from their accustomed means of earning
a living they were forced to accept work wherever and
however offered.
In the colonies various methods have been used to take
the land away from the natives. It has been expropriated
by force, either outright or "legalized" by legislation. The
Union of South Africa provides a good example of such
land theft. Some five and a half million natives are herded
into reservations consisting of some 60,000,000 acres of the
worst land, while the 1,500,000 European population (white)
occupies 240,000,000 acres of the best land.
One of the shrewdest and most "civilized" methods used
by the imperialists in breaking up the agricultural system
of the natives and converting the peasants into forced la-
borers is to impose heavy taxes on them. There are many
kinds of such taxes: tax on the harvest; a poll tax which
118
FORCED LABOR IN THE COLONIES 119
often must be paid in "kind," i.e., by forced labor; taxes
which the natives pay in lieu of forced labor; and others.
This heavy taxation gradually ruins the natives and compels
them to apply to the large capitalist plantations, factories,
or mines for work in order to secure money with which
to pay taxes. // they are not paid the natives are jailed and
forced to do penal forced labor.
Among the other methods of securing forced labor is the
use of restrictive laws such as vagrancy and pass laws under
which persons refusing to work on the terms offered, or
persons without credentials, are arrested and sentenced to
labor. Besides, native chiefs are often bribed or compelled
to supply laborers. Colonial governments, in making con-
cessions to foreign capitalists, often agree to cooperate in
securing a plentiful supply of forced labor. Often direct
conscription or armed "recruiting" is resorted to by such
governments. Such "recruiting" closely resembles the early
slave raids.
The types of forced labor in the colonies range from out-
right chattel slavery to various types of labor on the border-
line between forced labor and wage labor. Of the five or
six million slaves in the world some two million are in
Abyssinia. There are hundreds of thousands of them in
Arabia, in the British protectorate of Sierra Leone, in China
— it has been estimated that there are two million child
slaves in China — and elsewhere.
Of much greater importance is the peonage system which
varies in form according to the economic conditions of the
particular colonial or semi-colonial country. Peonage is the
most widespread type of forced labor in the territories over
which the imperialist regime of Wall Street holds its sway.
Professor E. A. Ross of the University of Wisconsin de-
clares that from the Rio Grande down the west coast of
South America to Cape Horn "the laborers on the estates
are at various stages of mitigation of the once universal
/
120 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
slavery into which the native population were crushed by
the iron heel of the conquistador."
Other types of forced labor used in colonial countries,
including those under the heel of American imperialism,
are "contract labor" — enforced by law, violence and terror-
ism— and labor on "public works" for colonial governments,
much of which is, in reality, done for private capitalists.
There is also the practice of forcing peasants to grow food
for the use of forced laborers on certain jobs; and, of
course, convict labor which is performed both by native
prisoners and often by thousands of political prisoners exiled
to the colonies for struggling against capitalism. And va-
grancy laws are used even more cruelly than in the imperial-
ist countries. In the Kenya Colony of British East Africa,
for example, these laws force "vagrants" and juveniles with-
out parental support, into practical slavery.
Products of Forced Labor
The hypocrisy of the United States in its policy with
.regard to forced labor was clearly illustrated during the
discussion on Section 307 of the United States Tariff Act
of 1930, which bans the importation into the United States
of goods produced wholly or in part by forced labor. This
section of the Tariff Act was aimed specifically at Soviet-
American trade. However, to avoid any criticism that it
was discriminatory legislation much righteous indignation
was expressed by the legislators against forced labor in
general and the law was at first prepared to apply to all
countries alike. In that way, it was felt, the ban on goods
from the Soviet Union could be justified.
Then the startling fact was revealed that about one-fifth
of the total imports into the United States are products
which in whole or in part result from one of the forms of
direct forced labor. These include rubber, coffee, sugar,
cocoa, tea, tobacco, as well as fruits and nuts in addition to
certain oils, spices, minerals and related products. Coffee
FORCED LABOR IN THE COLONIES 121
in Brazil, Guatemala and other countries ; rubber in Sumatra,
Liberia and elsewhere; fruits in Central America, the land
of peonage ; tobacco in Sumatra, Cuba and other countries — ■
these are some of the countries and products contributing to
the imports of the United States.
Imagine the consternation of the big sugar refining com-
panies, the coffee dealers and roasters; the tire manufac-
turers— Goodyear, Firestone and others; the United Fruit
Co., the Anaconda Copper Co., the Mellon companies, the
Rockefeller oil interests and other concerns when they found
that the ban might also be applied to their goods. The
crusading fervor of the legislators waned. A rider was
then obligingly tacked on the Tariff Act providing that goods
not produced in the United States in sufficient quantities to
satisfy the demand were not to be included in the ban on
forced labor products, regardless of how much forced labor
was used in their production!
While a considerable part of these forced-labor-tainted
goods are produced in colonies of foreign imperialists — ^those
under the rule of England, France, Portugal, the Nether-
lands, and Belgium, a very large part comes from colonies
or semi-colonies of the United States or countries in which
a huge amount of American finance capital is invested. In
fact, in every one of the colonies, semi-colonies and "independ-
ent" countries where American capital is invested, Wall
Street imperialism is using forced labor either directly or
indirectly. A list of the most "respectable" citizens engaged
in this exploitation of colonial forced labor would include
some of the biggest capitalists in the United States such as
Rockefeller, Guggenheim, Ford, Mellon, Morgan and many
others. They super-exploit this labor in much the same man-
ner as did Herbert Hoover, who was for many years an
executive in the Kaiping mines in China, where he discov-
ered that "the disregard for human life permits cheap min-
ing," and where he said that it was cheaper to pay 30
122 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
Mexican dollars for killing "an occasional Chinaman" than
to timber the mines.^
"Furthermore, Mr. Hoover actually helped promote one
company, the Irtysh Corporation, a year before the war
began, and it was a concern which employed 3,000 Austrian
prisoners of war as forced laborers."^
In 1904, the Chinese Engineering and Mining Company,
under Mr. Hoover's management, accepted a contract for
recruiting and shipping Chinese coolies to work in the mines
of South Africa. The company undertook to ship 200,000
of these contract laborers who were recruited by fraudulent
advertisements. Out of the very first shipment 51 workers
died or jumped overboard. They were shipped at the rat^
of 2,000 per shipload in vessels that by regulation were only
allowed to carry 1,000.^
In the Patino tin mines of Bolivia owned by Mr. Hoover's
friends, the Guggenheims, we find semi-slave conditions ex-
isting among the Indians. These Indians are taken forcibly
from their villages, transported in hordes to the tin mines
where they work under contract for periods ranging from
16 to 24 hours at a stretch. After a few years in the mines
they are broken down with tuberculosis and are discharged
for inability to work. They then return to their villages
where they die slowly of the plague contracted in the mines
of the imperialists.
The semi-feudal government of Venezuela, supported by
warships from Washington in the interests of the Mellon
oil concessions, likewise employs forced labor. Peons and
political prisoners are forced to work in the construction
of roads and in the native haciendas of the bloody President
Gomez.
Forced Labor in the West Indies
Let us now consider some of the leading countries in
which Yankee imperialism, by an even more direct control
than in South America, piles up profits through the use of
FORCED LABOR IN THE COLONIES 123
forced labor. Take first the group of islands in the Carib-
bean Sea, gateway to Latin America, including Cuba, Haiti,
the Dominican Republic, Porto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
Wall Street dominates throughout this area.*
Cuba was formerly a country of small farms, producing
chiefly for local markets. To-day its main product is sugar,
raised on great plantations, with an occasional sugar factory
attached. This change was brought about through the virtual
annexation of the country by American investors.
It has been estimated that over 85% of Cuba's arable
land constitutes the sugar companies' domain and nothing
but sugar is allowed to be planted on this land. Thus the
means of subsistence have been taken from the natives and
forced labor has been one of the inevitable results of this
change. The brutality with which the native small land-
holders are being dispossessed is described in an article in
Current History, November, 1930, by Charles W. Hackett,
professor of Latin American History at the University of
Texas. He says:
A clash occurred between citizens and troops on Sept. 19 at
Sagua de Tanamo, Oriente Province, when Cuban soldiers ar-
rested 37 residents, who were accused of fomenting a disturb-
ance after more than 4,000 persons were ordered to move from
the land of the Atlantic Fruit and Sugar Company, which they
claimed was government-owned and on which they declared they
had lived for 50 years.
In October, 193 1, the small landowners in Cuba demanded
a moratorium saying that their lands were rapidly passing
into the hands of foreigners. Most of these lands are mort-
gaged to American capitalists. Interest rates to the small
landowners range from 8 to 12%.*
* New York Times, October 19, 1931. The Times of November 29,
1931, reported that 30,912 eviction notices were filed in six municipal
courts during the first six months of 1931. The last half of the year
was expected to show a still greater increase.
124. FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
Imported Forced Labor in Cuba
From the very beginning of the sugar industry the Cuban
toilers struggled against their exploiters. They refused to
accept the 20 cents a day which was often offered to laborers,
and so the sugar companies hit upon the expedient of im-
porting Negro workers from neighboring countries as was
done in the days before slavery was legally abolished. The
traffic in black workers proved so profitable that it has been
continued to the present day. Arnold Roller, a first hand
investigator of Cuban conditions, describes this slave trading
in an article in The Nation, January 9, 1929:
Cuba's white gold, the source of its "national prosperity,"
depends for its future role in the national economy of the
country on the size of its black population. The blacker Cuba
becomes, the more white sugar will it be able to pour out in
competition with the rest of the world. The production of sugar
in Cuba depends entirely on black labor, most of it imported
from Haiti, Jamaica, and the other Antilles, in a form which
differs from the old slave traffic only by a few legalistic formali-
ties. The Negroes are brought to Cuba in ships equipped as
the slave ships of old and delivered for a premium of $15 to
$20 each to the sugar companies on the basis of labor contracts
signed by the Negroes with a finger-print
It is easy for the sugar companies to circumvent the laws
against forced labor with this fiction of a contract made
with illiterate Negroes who do not understand the language
of the country to which they are brought.
As recent examples, Roller cited the cases of such big
American corporations as the United Fruit Co., which have
"made their own laws, disregarding Cuban laws, and are
establishing a kind of industrial extra-territoriality." These
companies improved upon the ancient slave-trading methods.
The General Sugar Co. stimulated the trade by paying $25
for every Negro delivered on its reservations, in addition
to a small bonus.
Once in Cuba the Negroes are kept as virtual prisoners
FORCED LABOR IN THE COLONIES 125
on the reservations until the crop is gathered. They are
imprisoned in large, wooden barracks surrounded by armed
guards. They cannot leave the company's reservation during
the entire time of their contract. They must buy all their
provisions in company stores. Usually at the end of the crop
they are indebted to the contractor. Often, after the
season is over, the masters "allow" them to remain in the
barracks, without having to pay rent, where they are kindly
"protected" by armed company guards who shoot any one
trying to escape. Thus the company saves the additional
expense of importing new workers for the next season's
work.
Since this modern slave traffic began the influx of Haitians
and Jamaicans under contract labor has increased consider-
ably. In 1912 less than 1,000 entered Cuba; in 1920, 63,000;
in 1 92 1 about 25,000. There was a big drop to 5,000 in
1922, a year of crisis in the sugar industry. The impor-
tation was resumed, however, and in 1924 the number rose
to 26,000, falling to 17,000 in 1927. The Cuban govern-
ment recently granted the United Fruit Co. permission to
import 9,600 Negroes for its Cuban plantations. Under the
arrangement made with this company, in order to get around
the laws, a bond of $25 on each worker must be posted with
the local authorities at each plantation district to guarantee
that the Negro will be shipped back home when his term
of employment ceases. Since it is cheaper to forfeit this
small bond than to return the laborers and then import new
ones, the local authorities are allowed to pocket the defaulted
bonds !
During the current economic crisis fewer Negro contract
laborers are being imported. However, Harvey O'Connor,
Federated Press correspondent, wrote from Cuba, March 20,
1930: "These companies intensify the chronic unemployment
on the island by importing Negro laborers — under slave
terms — from Haiti and Santo Domingo. These are kept in
126 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
semi-military compounds, guarded by troops and denied
every civil liberty."
With sugar suffering from the crisis, President Machado
is helping to take the drop in sugar prices out of the living
conditions of the workers and peasants. One-fifth of the
sugar supply of the world is being produced in Cuba at one-
'fourth the cost of sugar produced elsewhere while the
Cuban workers are in peonage and get only food for their
work.
Paying workers only in food or grocery checks was pro-
hibited by the Arteaga law some years ago, but on Novem-
ber I, 1929, this law was repealed by Machado's personal
decree. "Since then workers get less than horses — ^their
fodder only and no care." '^
The Cuban ruling class and the foreign capitalists have
provided laws devised to prevent the forced laborers in Cuba
from struggling against these conditions. The Monthly
Labor Review of September, 1929, discusses Article 268 of
the Penal Code which provides "indirectly for the punish-
ment of strikes on farms, declaring that 'those who disturb
the public peace in order to create prejudice against any
individual shall be punished.* The same penalty is pro-
vided for persons who cause trouble or who seriously at-
tempt to disturb the order on farms by unwillingness to work,
by disobeying, or by resisting the persons in charge of the
management or administration."
Another way in which the government helps the sugar
planters to take the fall in sugar prices out of the "hides"
of the workers is shown in an order to all city police chiefs
on January 21, 1 931, by Captain Frederico Quintero, Military
District Pinar del Rio :
Sir: The sugar harvest finding itself in full activity and it
being a notorious fact that much of the available laboring force
is showing a refusal to leave the city ... to go to work cut-
ting cane, which goes to prove a lamentable state of va-
grancy. . . . This class of really despicable people that hates
FORCED LABOR IN THE COLONIES 127
work and order, you must notify that they have to go into cane
cutting or, if not, to abandon the place where they wish to live
without working. ... As soon as you have rounded up the
vagrants and parasites of the city you belong to, you must
reach an agreement with the various labor contractors of the
sugar mills for the supply to them of the men you are able to
^^^^' Yours respectfully.
Captain Frederico Quintero, M.M.,
Cavalry Captain, National Army,
Provincial Supervisor,
Municipal Police Corps.
In Black Haiti
The usual imperialist practice of robbing land from peas-
ant owners has also operated in Haiti, a country long domi-
nated by American bankers, coffee, sugar and fruit barons.
Despite Haitian laws much arable land has been taken over
by these American interests. The peasants must work under
forced labor conditions for Wall Street financial interests —
notably the National City Bank— or starve, as there is no
other way to earn a living.
One of the ways of getting the land in Haiti was to
demand of the peasant proprietors a deed showing owner-
ship. Such deeds cannot be produced because of the simple
fact that there are no such deeds in existence and never
have been. In 1804 the Haitian slaves rebelled, drove out
the French slaveholders, and confiscated the land. Natu-
rally, under such circumstances, no deeds were needed. Writ-
ing of this method of robbing the land from the natives,
L. J. De Bekker, an authority on colonial matters, said :
No lessor can prove title under such land law as the Marine
Corps will understand, and when it comes to a showdown in the
new Tribunal de Cassation the peasant proprietors will find
that they have given up their birthrights . . . and will be lucky
to find work at 25 cents a day on what had been their own
property, inherited from father to son for more than a century
previous to the American occupation . . . these peasant pro-
prietors, who will become laborers on their former possessions
or find themselves in the chain-gangs.^
128 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
The chief form of out-and-out forced labor in Haiti has
been on road and construction work. Not being able to
secure a sufficient supply of such labor by other means the
Wall Street invaders under General John H. Russell and
the U. S. Marine Corps, revived an ancient and obsolete
Haitian law known as the corvee, which required that the
natives work a certain number of days for the "government"
building roads. While nominally this was work for the
Haitian government it actually benefited the imperialists
as it gave them military, business and pleasure roads.
Ernest H. Gruening, a well-known writer on this sub-
ject, describes the working of the corvee as enforced by the
brutal U. S. Marines:
Testimony varies as to the extent of the abuses committed
under the corvee, but it seems to be clearly proved that Haitians
were (a) seized wherever they could be found; (b) transported
to other parts of the island; (c) compelled to work under
guard, often for weeks; (d) placed under guard at night to
prevent their escape; (e) subjected to physical violence if they
resisted; (f) shot if they attempted to escape. Navy Depart-
ment testimony admits that at least a hundred were thus killed.
Haitian figures are very much higher.^
In Central America
In the "independent" republics of Central America, domi-
nated by American imperialism, forced labor is used in vary-
ing forms and under various names. Peonage, however, as
we have indicated, is the most typical form. Indeed, the
South and Central American countries are the traditional
home of peonage. American capitalists who own vast sugar,
banana, and chicle plantations in Central America are the
foremost exploiters of this type of forced labor. They also
dominate the public utilities, wharves, mines and other indus-
tries of the region.
The peons are mostly native Indians recruited with the aid
of local authorities and political bosses for the large native
and foreign landowners. Many imported Negroes are also
FORCED LABOR IN THE COLONIES 129
held in peonage. This is especially true in Costa Rica,
Honduras and Panama, which are now populated in certain
areas with Negroes imported by special labor contractors
from the West Indies.
The peon is doubly exploited. Of the daily wages prom-
ised him at least two-thirds and often three-fourths is de-
ducted by the landlord and paid out to the political boss and
contractor. If anything is left after paying for his sub-
sistence, the local authorities see to it that the peon if he is
out of work again is fined for "vagrancy," to the full amoimt of
his "savings." Or he may be arrested for "dnmkenness"
or "disorderly conduct."
Peonage in Guatemala
Conditions in Guatemala, where about 50 million dollars
of United States capital are invested, are typical of those
found in almost every Central American country. In Guate-
mala the system is quite open. Even the 1932 World Al-
manac admits that many of the Indians — who comprise
about 60% of the population — ^are held "under a system of
peonage." The Monthly Labor Review of May, 1930,
quotes the International Labor Office as saying that the
Guatemalan government is engaged in the forcible recruit-
ing of labor for private undertakings.
The workers and peasants are held in bondage to the land-
owners and other employers through a system of debt. Dana
G. Munro, Chief of the Division of Latin American Affairs
of the U. S. State Department, writing about peonage in
Guatemala, admits the operation of this system, describing
it as follows:
The jornaleros, or day laborers, are held on the plantations
under a peonage system. Theoretically the Indian is perfectly
free to contract himself or not as he pleases, but when he
has done so, he may not leave his employer's service until he has
completed the time for which he has agreed to work and has
repaid any money which the patron may have lent him. If he
130 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
attempts to escape he is hunted down by the authorities and
returned to the plantation; and the entire expense of capturing
him and bringing him back is debited in his account. If, on
the other hand, he refuses to work, he may be imprisoned until
he is in a more reasonable frame of mind.
Those who still prove obstinate, after fifteen days in jail, may
be sent at the request of the employer to the convict labor squads
where fifty per cent of the returns of their labor are set aside
for the benefit of the creditors. For this purpose he is allowed
a limited amount of credit at the plantation store and is even
loaned small sums of money from time to time . . . those who
leave the plantation can only look forward to similar employ-
ment elsewhere, or what is much worse, to impressment into the
army, from which mozos (laborers) working on large coffee,
sugar-cane, banana, or cacao plantations are legally exempt.
. . . The combined earnings of the whole family, for the
women and children are usually given tasks as well as the men,
are in fact hardly sufficient to supply the necessities of life
without an occasional extra loan from the employer. . . . Indians
are often induced to sign contracts by misrepresentation or even
actual violence. . . .
Many of the representatives of the government derive a large
income from considerations paid them for service of this kind
and from tributes which they exact every month or every year
from the planters in their districts as the price of official support
in disputes with their laborers.^
The symbol of bondage in Guatemala is a little book car-
ried by every Indian worker, in which the "wages" and
debts of the worker are recorded. For a work-day of 14
hours these workers usually receive from two and a half
to eight cents. In the cover of the book is the copy of a
contract in which the peon agrees to work off all debts and
fees before quitting employment and agrees not to accept
work elsewhere. He agrees also not to leave for any reason
without permission. Workers are charged for nearly every
conceivable item including the fee to the labor contractor,
tools, clothing and fines. Their land having been stolen
they are forced to accept any employment offered or starve.
One of these little books recently examined shows that a
worker who escaped from a plantation actually earned $88.07
FORCED LABOR IN THE COLONIES 131
from October, 1920, to February, 1930! With such incred-
ibly low wages the worker is forced deeper and deeper into
debt and servitude. Even children are sometimes held in
peonage to pay a dead parent's debt. The value of a planta-
tion is often estimated on the basis of the number of contract
laborers on it.
In Guatemala, as in other Central American countries,
dominated by United States imperialism, concessions to for-
eign capitalists often stipulate that the government shall
supply the necessary labor. Guillermo Rodriguez describes
the resulting forced labor in his book, Guatemala:
And even more abusive and habitual is the arrival of the
mounted and infantry escorts to capture the workers; by day
and by night in their homes or at their work, without asking
permission of any one, they hunt them down like deer, they
are caught, bound and carried off.^
A document of greater authority, and more conservative
than any we have quoted on Latin American affairs, is
Tropical Agriculture, official organ of the Imperial College
of Tropical Agriculture in Trinidad. Regarding Guatemala,
it says in its issue of August, 1924:
A sufficient number of laborers for routine work live in set-
tlements on the estates; but at picking time larger numbers are
required, and the agents enlist them in the villages of the in-
terior by means of advances. . . . They are nearly all kept in
debt for control purposes. If there is any difficulty in recruiting
labor for picking, the Guatemalan officials force the laborers
under threat of conscription in the army, or even impressment.
Liberia — A Rubber Colony
In Liberia, on the west coast of Africa, we find United
States imperialism benefiting by a still more terrible type of
forced labor. In this case there is actual chattel slavery — ^the
buying and selling of human beings as property. Liberia
was founded as a free Negro republic in 1822 to serve as
a "haven" for Negro freedmen from the United States.
To-day it has a population estimated at between two, and
132 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
two and a half million. Over 15,000 are "Americo-Liberi-
ans," that is, descendants of immigrants from the United
States. The remainder are native Liberians.
In return for a loan to the Liberian government the
Firestone Rubber Co. secured a concession of 1,000,000
acres of rubber land in 1925. This deal was pushed through
with the aid of Herbert Hoover, who was then engaged,
as U. S. Secretary of Commerce, in breaking the British
rubber monopoly. The land given Firestone had formerly
been held by natives but it was taken from them without
asking their views in the matter.
In carrying through its large-scale plantations project the
Firestone company has been confronted with two major
problems: (i) confiscation of native lands, and (2) an ade-
quate supply of cheap labor. The Liberian government,
then headed by President King, actively cooperated in solv-
ing both. The land was expropriated and attempts of the
natives to escape labor on the plantations were defeated by
terroristic methods. Not only did the government supply
Firestone with forced laborers, but it supplied other im-
perialists operating in other parts of Africa with such labor.
The Liberian slave trade recently became such an inter-
national scandal that even the League of Nations was forced
to make a gesture of protest. An international commission
of three members was appointed to look into the matter.
The commission made its report in 1930. Among the seri-
ous charges to be investigated were the use of forced labor
on roads for nine months in the year and the selling of
slaves to the near-by Spanish colony of Fernando Po. The
investigating commission reported that slavery as described
in the 1926 anti-slavery convention of the League of Nations
does exist in Liberia. "Pawning" was found to exist.
Pawning is defined as "an old native custom which is sub-
stantially an arrangement by which for a money return a
human being, ordinarily a child relative, is placed in servi-
tude indefinitely without pay or privilege." The commission
FORCED LABOR IN THE COLONIES 133
found evidence that Americo-Liberians often used female
pawns to attract male laborers to their land.
A large percentage of the contract laborers shipped from
Liberia to Spanish Fernando Po, to work on cocoa planta-
tions, and to French Gabun were found to be recruited
under conditions similar to slave raiding. Forty-five dollars
for each "boy" was paid to Liberian officials plus a bonus
of $5,000 for each 1,500 shipped, the report declared. The
Vice-President and other high officials of the Liberian gov-
ernment, including county superintendents and district com-
missioners, have sanctioned the compulsory recruiting of
laborers "and have condoned this use of force ... to con-
voy gangs of captured natives to the coast and to guard
them there up to the time of their shipment." When native
chiefs could supply no more "boys" they were heavily fined
and even flogged.
It was also found that the government gave authorization
to the use of forced laborers on private plantations. Vice-
President Yancy, President King and several commissioners
were found to be using such slaves on their own estates.
A great variety of work was found to be performed by forced
labor, which was mainly used for the construction of motor
roads, for building military barracks, civil compounds, and
other construction. It was used also for porterage and on
private plantations. None of these workers were paid. On
the contrary. In Maryland — a Liberian province — some of
the workers were compelled to pay large amounts to the
owners of plantations to obtain their release from a term of
unpaid and unfed labor. The workers were required to
feed themselves and furnish their own tools.^°
The League commission, however, found no "evidence
that the Firestone Plantations Co. consciously employs any
but voluntary labor on its leased rubber plantations." But
the commission's work may not have been so "impartial"
as it pretended to be. For in the preface to its findings it
profusely thanked "Mr. W* D. Hines and the Firestone Co.
184 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
for valuable transport and other facilities much appreciated
by the Commissioners." In other words, this commission,
appointed to investigate Firestone's use of forced labor,
went to Liberia and put itself in the hands of Firestone and
was shown about the country by his agents.
In the concession given to Firestone by the Liberian gov-
ernment the latter agreed to guarantee an adequate supply
of "suitable" labor. In discussing this point, R. L. Buell
of the Foreign Policy Association says :
Agreement Number Two provides that the Liberian govern-
ment will "encourage, support and assist the efforts of the
Lessee to secure and maintain an adequate Labor supply." . . .
In the spring of 1926 the government established this Labor
Bureau at the head of which it appointed a Commissioner, under
the control of the Secretary of the Interior. According to this
Commissioner, the Bureau will supply annually a total of 10,000
men to the Firestone Plantations — ^two thousand men from each
county. By June, 1926, the Bureau already had supplied the
Plantations with six hundred men. It sent out requisitions to
each Native and District Commissioner who in turn divided
up contingents among the chiefs. According to the Commis-
sioner, the Firestone Plantations paid the chiefs one cent a day
for each boy, and the same sum to the Government Bureau.
Thus, under this system, which is similar to that which has
produced wholesale compulsory labor in other parts of Africa,
the Firestone Plantations Company is making it financially worth
while for the government and for the chiefs to keep the
plantations supplied. ... As Liberian officials and chiefs are
already accustomed to imposing compulsion whether in securing
men for road work or for Fernando Po, there is no reason
to believe that they will employ any different methods in ob-
taining labor for the Firestone Plantations. . . .^^
President King, who was found to be a slave-dealer and
exploiter, worked hand in hand with Firestone and their
pictures were frequently taken together. Lester A. Walton
quotes President King as saying in his 1929 message to the
legislature: "Through Mr. W. D. Hines, Mr. Firestone's
personal representative in Liberia, and a gentleman of most
charming personality, the most cordial relations have been
FORCED LABOR IN THE COLONIES 13S
maintained between the government and the company. . . .** *'
One native worker who testified before the commission
said he would rather go to Fernando Po, with all its horrors,
than to Firestone's "where payment is too small because
they pay us one shilling a day and out of that daily shilling
you have to get your daily bread. . . ." Workers com-
plained that "we got nothing when Firestone took our land.
This year we will have no rice because Firestone took our
land."
Firestone hired the conscripted laborers and politely asked
no questions. In return the government was often allowed
to collect the workers* wages and to tax them. Naturally
the company is too clever to have it appear on its books
that the laborers are slaves.
Aside from its actual plantation work, the Firestone com-
pany used forced labor indirectly. One of the main obstacles
to the exploitation of the country was the lack of transpor-
tation facilities. The only means of communication be^
tween the inland sections and the seaports were mud paths
with no bridges over streams. Large-scale American effi-
ciency production of rubber was impossible under such con-
ditions. So Firestone insisted on making a big loan to the
government, stipulating that a large part of the loan was
to go to building roads and similar public improvements.
Forced labor was used in constructing these roads and in
other public works beneficial to the Firestone interests.
In the face of these facts, and in the face of the com-
plete domination of the country by Firestone, the League
commission found that Firestone did not "consciously use
forced labor." Actually, of course, Firestone and the
United States government are as responsible for these slav-
ery conditions as are their puppets — ^the Liberian officials.
When Secretary of State Stimson learned that the com-
mission would report findings of forced labor, he came out
as a great "humanitarian." He sent a "sharp note" to the
Liberian government condemning forced labor, but joined
186 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
in the deception that Firestone was innocent o£ engaging
in the traffic.
As after all white-wash "investigations" nothing was done
for the sufferers. On the contrary, an observer who was
in Liberia in 1931 found that none of the Liberian officials,
including President King and Vice-President Yancy, had
ever been arrested or brought to trial for their proved par-
ticipation in the slave traffic. Yancy was still living like a
feudal lord on his plantation near Cape Palmos. This in-
vestigator also found that workers who testified before the
League commission had been victimized. He reported a
prospering slave industry still in full blast. His findings
are supported by a cable from Geneva to the New York
Times, January 23, 1932, which reads:
Liberian natives who testified before the League of Nations
Commission which inquired into reports of slavery and economic
conditions in the Negro republic have been visited by severe
reprisals, representatives of humanitarian organizations reported
to-day.
Homes have been burned, they said, and even whole villages
of those who reported to the League on the labor situation in the
republic have been destroyed.
Even the Liberian government admits that 44 villages have
been burned and 81 men, 49 women and 29 children killed.
Many of these were burned to death. The net result of
the League's investigation, aside from persecuting the natives
and white-washing the Firestone Co., has been to prepare the
ground for a stricter control of Liberia by Firestone. The
latest move of the League, on the suggestion of Stimson, is
the proposal of a plan to appoint a foreign "advisor" with
absolute dictatorial powers over the country in the interest
of Firestone.
Contract Labor in Hawaii
The recent Massie trial in Hawaii has served to emphasize
the stranglehold of the United States over these islands in
FORCED LABOR IN THE COLONIES 137
the Pacific, so indispensable as a naval base and as a source
of profit to the imperialists from the American mainland.
American capitalists are the beneficiaries of the near-feudal
system that cruelly exploits the natives and the labor im-
ported into these islands.
Workers were imported to work the plantations of Hawaii
as early as the i86o's. During a period of 20 years, 1865 to
1886, over 33,000 Chinese coolie contract laborers were
brought in. One writer on Hawaii says that between
1877 and 1890 some 55,000 immigrant laborers were im-
ported. They came under contracts which were to pay them
an average of $4 monthly, but that does not mean they
received that much in actual cash.
A writer in Asia shows that this importation of contract
labor is going on even during the present economic crisis.
Although workers in Hawaii are unemployed the sugar com-
panies are constantly in the market for cheaper labor and
are importing from 100 to 300 Filipinos every two weeks.^*
To insure a constant supply of cheap labor about 50 sugar
companies united to form the Sugar Planters' Association
whose chief duty is to insure contract labor for member
plantations. Regular solicitors travel from country to coun-
try, especially in Porto Rico and the Philippines, attempting
to entice workers to the "Pearl of the Pacific." After work-
ers arrive in Hawaii they are told that their contracts
specify that they must work three years, 20 days a month
and 10 hours a day. The contract also forbids the worker
to leave the plantation to which he is assigned until at least
one year has elapsed.
Overseers on the Hawaiian sugar plantations have stated
that:
If a contract laborer is idling in the fields we dock him; we
give him only one-half to three-fourths of a day, and if he
keeps it up we resort to the law and have him arrested for
refusing to work. For the first offense he is ordered back to
work and he has to pay the costs of court. If he refuses to
138 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
obey orders, he is arrested again and a light fine inflicted whicK
the planter can pay and take it out of his pay, or else he is
put on the road. For the third offense he is likely to get three
months' imprisonment
In 1920, following a strike of Japanese workers on the
Hawaiian plantations, the Sugar Planters* Association tried
to secure permission from the United States Congress to
import Chinese, regardless of immigration restrictions. Fail-
ing in this they began to import Filipinos. In connection
with this attempt to import Chinese laborers even the con-
servative Washington Times was forced to say:
The House Committee on Immigration has reported a most
extraordinary resolution in favor of permitting the planters of
Hawaii to import 50,000 Chinese coolies to work as bonded
slaves on the sugar plantations for five years, and then, if de-
sirable, to be deported in favor of another batch.^*
This has always been the policy of the rich sugar planters.
They import illiterate laborers and when the latter discover
after their arrival in Hawaii that they are held in peonage,
they go on strike. The planters then proceed to import new
workers whom they attempt to use as strike-breakers. Fol-
lowing the strike of Japanese workers in 1920 — between
1922 and 1929—66,184 Filipinos were imported.^''
In the words of a Filipino labor leader, the life of the
"plantation workers in the Hawaiian islands is a series of
long days of strenuous toil, under the blazing heat of the
equatorial sun, at a salary that is often too low for the
most vital material necessities." Even during the pre-crisis
days of 1929, male workers, who were in the overwhelming
majority, earned on the average $11.04 a week while the
women averaged only $7.80, according to the United States
Bureau of Labor Statistics. No extra rate was paid for
overtime.
But to understand what such figures mean it is necessary
to know that Hawaii imports a large proportion of its total
food supply since most of its farm land is planted with
FORCED LABOR IN THE COLONIES 139
money crops and very little foodstuff is raised. The distance
between Hawaii and the mainland of the United States is
so great that the cost of importing food and other necessi-
ties adds greatly to the price of these commodities. Thus
low wages must meet very high prices. The result is that
the workers are forced to live largely on rice.
Peonage in the Philippines
American capitalists have invested over $400,000,000 in
the Philippine Islands, the most important possession of the
United States in the Orient. In this country, as in all other
colonies, a wide expropriation of the peasants* land has taken
place, although probably 90% of the masses are dependent
upon agriculture for a livelihood. Over 325 plantations
ranging from 1,500 to 25,000 acres each are operated in the
Philippines. Around 2,000,000 tenants and farm laborers
are employed on them. The process of extending the large
landholdings is still going on and it is only logical to expect
that eventually the situation will be like that in Cuba where
American sugar corporations have swallowed up all the
best sugar lands.
A leading United States business journal, in describing
the life on the big rice plantations, cynically remarked: "It
is feudal farming ; the manager is the manor laird, and these
his tenants his fief lieges."^® The rich landlords usually
contrive to involve their tenants and farm laborers in debt.
They cannot leave their employment until the debt is paid.
Interest rates range from 10 to 20% a month.
In describing the peonage which is the most important type
of forced labor in the Philippines, Dean C. Worcester, a
leading authority, said :
The rich and powerful man, commonly known as the cacique,
encourages the poor man to borrow money from him under
such conditions that the debt can never be repaid, and holds
the debtor and frequently the members of his family as well in
debt servitude for life. One might fill a score of volumes with
140 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
records of such cases. . . . Peonage is so common and wide-
spread that it may be called general. ... It lies at the very
root of the industrial system of the Philippines.*
Writing in 1928, Dr. Robert W. Hart, of the United
States Public Health Service, stationed in the Philippines
for many years, declared in The Philippines Today (p.
154 ff) :
As a matter of fact, borne out by my own investigations and
those of others, a comparatively small proportion of laborers in
■the rural districts receive any compensation whatsoever other
I than the right to a mere existence. . . .
Usury, regardless of all laws to the contrary, is universal
in the islands and, of course, the more ignorant the poor Tao,
caught in the clutches of the landholder, the more difficult it
is for him to get free. ... As he is ignorant, not only of finan-
cial matters, but of his legal rights as well, this note [money
borrowed from a landlord] is held over his head week after
week, month after month, and year after year, always drawing
an excessive rate of interest, and on numerous occasions the
> interest on the loan amounts to ten or more times the original
principal. In lieu of actually paying such a debt in cash, it is no
infrequent occurrence for the laborer to "bind out" either himself
or the members of his family for an indefinite period, to cover it.
; As a result, while slavery and peonage do not legally exist in the
islands, the end result is actually the same.
Necessarily, no figures are available on the subject [peonage],
nor is there any way of obtaining exact information regarding
it. The landlord, of course, makes no mention of it, and the
poor illiterate, ignorant Tao, as well as his family, are held in
such abject terror . . . that even should the investigator be able to
speak their language and become well acquainted, the condition
is never admitted, through fear of the consequences. . . .
J It is estimated that no less than 20% of the total laboring
/ population of the islands are held in practical slavery. It is true
j that the laborers have freedom to come and go, to associate with
whom they please, to marry, to raise children and to live, yet they
are essentially slaves, toiling from early morning until late at
night at the will of their masters to whom they are in debt.
*Dean C. Worcester, Philippines, Past and Present, pp. 534-535-
In 1914, says Worcester, three members of the Filipino legislature
were found to be holding workers in peonage. Both houses of the
legislature are made up of the cacique class.
FORCED LABOR IN THE COLONIES 141
A special Mission on Investigation to the Philippine
Islands, reported October 8, 1921, that:
A frequent cause of complaint is against extreme action taken
under the provisions of Act 2098, which enables employers of
labor to prosecute their laborers for a breach of contract, and
in many cases to hold them against their will, resulting in a
kind of legalized peonage. . . . Under the provisions of this
act, should they leave before completion of contract they can
be arrested and tried for violation of contract and for obtaining
money or supplies under false pretenses. During the fiscal year
1918 there was a total of 3,266 cases of this nature.
Struggles Against Forced Labor in the Colonies
None of the colonial revolts against United States im-
perialism have been more significant than those in the Philip-
pines. After fighting a desperate guerilla warfare for 15
years the Moros (Mohammedan peasants) were practically
annihilated by the United States and native troops trained
by American officers. In the battles of Bud Daho and
Bagstad, waged in 1906 and 1913 respectively, the women
fought alongside the men. It has been estimated that on
the Island of Luzon alone hundreds of thousands of women
and children have been slaughtered by American soldiers or
died as the result of the Wall Street wars of conquest.^^
There have been many rebellions recently against the same
oppression in the Philippines. There was an uprising of the
Tayug peasants in January, 1931. Hundreds of men and
women armed only with clubs and cane knives marched into
the town of Tayug, Pagasinian province. They set out for
their direct exploiters, those who collected the taxes. In
spite of the fact that the workers had no guns they were
fired upon. One was killed, whereupon the angry peasants
and laborers killed a lieutenant and several soldiers who
were responsible. A pitched battle ensued lasting two days.
A sympathetic soldier helped the rebels break into the
storeroom where arms and ammunition were kept. After
they were thus armed, they took over the city of 15,000
142 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
inhabitants and held it for several days. All deeds and
records of mortgages were burned. The movement was en-
tirely spontaneous. The immediate cause of the Tayug
uprising was the decision of the Philippine Supreme Court
which legalized the seizure of land belonging to i,ooo peasants
by the foreign-owned Esperanza estate which already con-
tained 100,000 acres.
The revolt was finally crushed. Four men and two women
were killed. Caesare Abe and Pedro Kalosa, leaders, were
given life imprisonment. Of the others, 37 were condemned
to 17 years' imprisonment, and two to 14 years, among theni
two less than 15 years of age. Two judges, an American
and a Filipino — symbolic of the unity between Wall Street
and the Filipino ruling class — handed down the sentences.
To hide the real cause of this uprising it was called "a
revolt of religious fanatics." The capitalist press said it was
a revolt of "Colorums," suggesting a mystical religious sect.
While the revolt was being crushed, the peasants were called
"bandits." This is the stock label now used by the im-
perialists to designate all those who oppose their rule and
who are, therefore, marked for persecution and slaughter.
On January 13, 1931, the New York Times reported threat-
ened uprisings in the towns of Santa Maria, Umingan and
Rosales, while the public peace in Nueva Ecija Province
was regarded as "none too secure." August 13, 1931, the
Times reported another uprising of peasants in the same
section. "Reports from Nueva Ecja, which is the center
of the disturbance, say that the uprising is . . . aimed . . .
against rich Filipinos, who are charged with oppressing the
poor. Many of the wealthy landlords have rushed to Manila.
. . . Land and credit abuses are believed responsible for dis-
content in Central Luzon. . . ."
On March 15, 1932, the same paper reported that 125
Tangulan peasants were sentenced to imprisonment of from
one to six years, in addition to being assessed fines ranging
FORCED LABOR IN THE COLONIES 143
from $ioo to $i,ooo each. They were charged with "con-
spiracy to commit rebellion."
But the Philippines is not the only colony, protectorate or
"sphere of influence" of Wall Street where revolts have
broken out against forms of forced labor.
We can make here only brief reference to a few of these
struggles. Many strikes have been fought in the Hawaiian
Islands, especially by the imported Japanese workers in 1920
and by the Filipinos in 1924. During the latter strike at
least 15 Filipino workers were murdered by police; many
were railroaded to prison at hard labor. The sugar com-
panies had special police in their pay.
There have been revolts also in Haiti, arising largely over
the corvee law. Even the officials of the United States
Marine Corps are forced to admit that 3,250 Haitian peas-
ants were killed either by the marines or by the marine-
trained native troops in "pacifying" the country. General
Barnett, commander of the Marine Corps, admitted that
"practically indiscriminate killing of natives had been going
on for some time." "
There have been also many fights against forced labor and
imperialism in Cuba, carried on especially by the agricultural
workers on the sugar plantations. Big strikes were waged
in 1906, 1920, 1925, 1926, and in more recent years. During
the 1925 and 1926 strikes hundreds of workers and peasants
were slaughtered. Only a few years ago 60 Canary Island
farm laborers were hung in Cuba at one time after the dis-
appearance of a Camaguey army colonel and plantation owner
who never paid his workers.^^
In the past 25 years thousands of poor farmers and work-
ers in Cuba have been murdered and more than 5,000
arrested chiefly on the orders of the big American corpora-
tions and their local agents.
But in spite of all this repression the Cuban workers and
peasants are now moving in a new revolutionary wave, and
they are showing that they have learned from the past. The
144! FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
bloody battles in Havana streets on December 14, 1929; the
political strike of January 10, 1930; the general strike of
some 200,000 persons, March 30, 1930, against unemployment
and against the persecution of the unions; the demonstra-
tions on May i ; the strike of over 15,000 tobacco workers
which was betrayed by the reformist leaders ; the strikes of
the street car men and sugar workers — most of them led by
the National Workers* Federation of Cuba and the Com-
munist Party — ^these mark a long and persistent struggle
against imperialist exploitation with its attendant forced labor.
In many countries of Central and South America there
have been recent uprisings against forced labor and op-
pression.
In Guatemala, for example, spontaneous revolts of the
Indian peons take the form of mass burning of their slave
books in which their perpetual debts are recorded. These
books, which are the symbol of forced labor, are bitterly
hated by the workers who express their rebellion frequently
by burning them.
The extent of forced labor in Colombia was disclosed by
the great strike of the banana workers of the United Fruit
Co., in the district of Santa Marta in 1928, when over 1,500
men, women and children were murdered by troops. These
Colombian laborers had been held virtually prisoners on the
banana plantations and were not allowed to leave even for a
short time. Workers were given only 60% of their wages,
the rest were held at the local offices of this American com-
pany as a guarantee that the workers would not escape. The
workers were often flogged when they tried to escape or did
not do enough work. They live in company houses; buy
food from company stores ; are paid in scrip, and work from
sun to sun. While the troops were suppressing the strike,
two United States warships were anchored off Colombia
ready to give aid when needed. The whole brutal sup-
pression occurred at the orders of the United Fruit Co.,
backed by Washington.
CHAPTER IX
"FORCED LABOR" IN THE SOVIET UNION
Year after year the capitalist world has watched the
workers of the Soviet Union speeding industrialization under
the stimulus of the first Five- Year Plan. As the country of
socialism gained in power and in the sympathy of the world
proletariat, the economic crisis was developing disastrously
in the rest of the world — at least 40 million workers imem'-
ployed, every country facing financial bankruptcy and an
acute sharpening of the class struggle. The capitalists saw
ruin for their social system unless something was done and
that soon. But what could be done ? And they asked :
Cannot we settle this or that contradiction of capitalism, or
all the contradictions taken together, at the expense of the
U.S.S.R., the land of the Soviets, the citadel of the revolution,
revolutionizing by its very existence the working class and the
colonies, preventing us arranging for a new war, preventing
us dividing the world anew, preventing us being masters of our
own extensive internal market, so necessary for capitalists, par-
ticularly to-day, in connection with the economic crisis?^
The capitalists have answered this question in the affirma-
tive. Yes, it would help stabilize capitalism if the Soviet
Union were destroyed. It would be a crushing blow to the
working class internationally, the capitalists reason. Hence
we find the tendency to sporadic armed assaults on the
U.S.S.R. which the capitalists hope will lead to armed inter-
vention, a tendency which becomes stronger daily as the eco-
nomic crisis deepens.
The capitalist world has thus felt an urgent need to create
a sentiment for war against the Soviet Union and to try
to prevent the successful completion of the Five-Year Plans.
To this end it has tried many devices. But so far every
145
146 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
weapon used against the Soviet Union has proved a boomer-
ang. One of the first charges was that in the Soviet Union
"women were being nationalized." That lie blew up quickly.
Then the cry of "Russian oil" was raised. But the Soviet
workers answered the challenge by completing the Five-Year
Plan in oil production in only two and a half years. Next
the British Tories unearthed the fake "Zinoviev letter" which
resulted in temporary severance of trade relations between
England and the Soviet Union.
Then in the United States the lurid **Whalen Documents"
were put out by New York's fashion-plate Police Commis-
sioner, Grover A. Whalen. They were intended to link the
Amtorg Trading Corporation (Soviet trade agency in the
United States) with "revolutionary propaganda." But an
alert newspaperman discovered that these "documents," al-
leged to have been printed in the Soviet Union, were actually
forged by monarchist Russians in a small print shop on the
East Side of New York City.^ Finally, big business inter-
nationally was able to overcome partisan religious lines and
Catholics, led by the Pope, Jews and Protestants went into
a huddle. Out of this conspiracy of church and business
came the accusation that the workers of the Soviet Union
were "spitting on God." This attack, based on the contention
that "believers" were persecuted in the Soviet Union, started
off with a bang. It soon collapsed of its own weight.
The latest charge — with which this chapter is concerned —
19 that of "dumping." But on second thought the capitalists
saw that this charge by itself could not hold water. After
all, they were forced to admit to themselves, dumping is a
regular capitalist practice. So the charge of dimiping was
changed to "dumping of goods produced by convicts and other
forced labor."
Who Charges Soviet Forced Labor?
So for the past two years or more a scurrilous campaign
has been conducted by the capitalist world against "forced
"FORCED LABOR" IN SOVIET UNION 14j7
labor" in the Soviet Union. This has been an international
campaign. The House of Lords in England; the Congress
of the United States; the French Parliament; journalists,
socialists and bankers, archbishops and rabbis, patrioteers and
captains of industry all reechoed this charge. The same
capitalists who lead this attack have a most unsavory record,
as we have shown, since forced labor is a phenomenon of
capitalism just as it was of feudalism and other social sys-
tems. The capitalists were silent when the Tsar held the
great mass of the Russian people in serfdom. They secured
Allied intervention in Russia and helped finance white guards
in their attempt to overthrow the Soviets. Among the many
socialist "friends of the workers" who joined in the cam-
paign were Karl Kautsky, whom Lenin called the renegade,
and Rafael Abramovitch, the Russian Menshevik. In fact
the whole Second (Socialist) International participated in
this new attack upon the Soviet Republic.
The attack has been especially venomous in the United
States. In this country the "Fish Committee" (Special Com-
mittee to Investigate Communist Activities and Propaganda
in the United States), the National Lumber Manufacturers'
Association, the American Manganese Producers' Associa-
tion, anthracite coal producers, the top leadership of the
American Federation of Labor, the National Civic Federation
— ^the latter two outfits being represented prominently by
Matthew Woll — ^the American Legion and the Daughters of
the American Revolution have been most active.
For a time it looked as if the campaign would be successful
in wiping out Soviet-American trade — and it was successful
to a large degree. Largely through this campaign a provision
was put into the Smoot-Hawley tariff act of 1930 forbidding
importation of goods produced by convicts or by any other
form of forced labor. Ostensibly a general measure applying
to any country, the real purpose of the bill was to destroy
the market for Soviet goods. This is evidenced partly by the
many efforts to get a law passed specifically banning all
148 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
Soviet products without even the pretext of "forced labor."
It was thought that since this country had no diplomatic rela-
tions with the U.S.S.R. no evidence would be produced ex-
posing the charges of forced labor.
Under this statutory provision the Treasury Department,
which has jurisdiction over its enforcement, temporarily held
up several cargoes of Soviet pulp-wood imports on the pre-
text that the wood was suspected of having been produced
by convict labor.
Subsequently, the Treasury Department held hearings on
the matter and was forced to admit that the evidence sub-
mitted to support the charges of convict labor was "conflicting
and inconclusive," and it, therefore, had to lift the embargo.
This was the first time the false charges were ever reviewed
by an official body. However, the threat of the law is ever
present as each cargo is passed upon separately and there
is no telling just when the Treasury Department will cause
expense and delay by stopping another shipment.
Some of the Charges
Timber experts who analyzed the specific charges of the
manufacturers of "forced labor" myths in connection with
Soviet timber found them to be false on their face. For
instance, it was found that two alleged timber centers, where
convicts were supposed to be employed in cutting wood for
export, did not exist at all !
One absurd charge was that prisoners were forced to
work 1 6 to 1 8 hours a day and to begin work in the forest
so early that matches had to be used in searching for the
trees to be cut! Actually, as experts pointed out, in the
northern districts during the felling season the maximum
daylight lasts six hours and therefore if this were true the
prisoners would have to fell trees from lo to 12 hours in
darkness. Any logger knows this would be practically im-
possible and altogether impractical. The trees must be so
cut that they will fall where they can be trimmed and
"FORCED LABOR'^ IN SOVIET UNION 149
handled easily. In order to throw the tree in the desired
spot it is necessary to have adequate light to judge the way
it leans and the position of other trees. If the tree falls in
the wrong direction and hits other trees, much timber is
needlessly ruined.
Another statement was that each prisoner must fell a
total of 44 trees a day. If this were true it would take
only 10,000 men, working 90 days, to produce all the timber
that is exported annually from the Soviet Union! But look
at the next charge. According to one statement. May i,
1930, there were 662,000 prisoners producing timber in con-
centration camps. At the work rate given above these would
produce more than 100 times the total sawed timber exported.
Another "affidavit" gave a still more impossible figure of
55 to 60 trees a day. These trees, according to the same
charge, must be cut at soil level — ^this in winter and with sev-
eral feet of snow ! Another wild rumor had it that 5,000,000
kulaks had been sent to timber cutting in the north country.
But, as a matter of fact, in 193 1, there were only 1,134,000
workers in the entire lumber industry.
At another time an accusation was made that 60,000 pris-
oners were toiling in two timber cutting camps. But timber
experts point out that lumber camps of 30,000 or even 3,000
men cannot exist. Operations on so vast a scale would be
impossible, for all the timber for miles around would soon
be used up. Another "affidavit" alleged that 500 convicts
were being used to load each small vessel. Those acquainted
with timber shipping know that this too must be untrue.
No more than 60 to 70 men can be engaged in loading one
such ship. There were many other similar inconsistencies
in this organized campaign of "revelation," exaggeration and
lying.
The Answer to the Charges
Dozens of statements were made by European and Ameri-
can authorities, all of them voluntary, refuting the charge
150 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
of the use of convict and other forced labor in timber cut-
ting. These statements are from capitalist and liberal as
well as working class sources.
In a letter dated January 29, 193 1, Danishevsky, chairman
of Exportles (the organization in charge of all Soviet timber
exports), said:
... I am in possession of the most complete and up-to-date
information; and I am in a position to state that not a single
standard of timber exported from the Soviet Union is produced
otherwise than on conditions established by collective agreements
between the trade unions representing the workers and the State
timber-producing trusts. Neither in the felling and preparing
of timber for export nor in the loading of it into ships is labor
allowed on any other conditions than those based on voluntary con-
tracts and collective agreements. The collective agreements which
were in force last year assured the workers of a wage double
that of pre-war days. ... It is ridiculous to represent the en-
rolment of these workers as anything approaching compulsory
recruiting, whereby workers from far-distant localities are forc-
ibly driven to the extreme north. The influx of workers to
the timber regions is a permanent phenomenon, which was as
common in pre-war Russia as it is to-day, and is an important
source of income to the peasantry of vast regions in the coun-
try. The only difference in this respect is that the wages and
conditions of labor are now incomparably better than they were
then. . . .8
Lumberjacks from Finland, Canada and various other
countries, now working in the Soviet Union, have added their
protest to that of workers everywhere at the attack on the
Five- Year Plan. Even several influential British labor lead-
ers, some of them members of Parliament in 1931, have
admitted that the charges of forced labor in the Soviet Union
were false and aimed at the defeat of the Five- Year Plan.
Among them were J. Bromley, M.P., secretary of the Asso-
ciated Societies of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen; Al-
fred M. Wall, secretary of the London Trades Council;
A. A. Purcell of the Manchester and Salf ord Trades Council ;
George Hicks, secretary of the Amalgamated Union of
Building Trades Workers and A. W. Haycock, M.P.*
"FORCED LABOR'* IN SOVIET UNION 161
But aside from these labor sources, of which only a few
have been quoted, there are many others. A group of British
investigators, headed by E. P. Tetsall, chairman of Messrs.
William Brown of Ipswich, and made up of prominent Eng-
lish business men, including W. O. Woodward, and William
Thompson, visited Leningrad, Kem, Soroka, Onega, Keret
and Archangel in 1931. They reported that they were unable
to find the slightest signs of forced labor. On the contrary,
"The workmen are in excellent condition, look cheerful and
contented," they reported.
"Our independent inquiries and observations convince us
that the labor conditions are excellent and that the rates of
remuneration agreed with the unions are satisfactory to the
workmen. We saw Red Cross huts, rest rooms and large
dining rooms, also many more buildings in the course of
erection. The most careful inquiries fail to disclose anything
in the nature of forced labor now or at any time," reads
their report. After a tour of the Archangel lumber centers,
the delegation reported that "there is not a scrap of evidence
that forced labor ever existed." It further stated that the
people were found well nourished, clean and happy. Work-
ers loading ships are paid at a double rate for overtime.
The committee particularly noticed the care given children
and their happy appearance and the cleanliness of nurseries
and schools. Workers* clubs and the cheerful and eager
demeanor of the young people also impressed them forcibly.^
Americans Also Deny Forced Labor Charges
Many American authorities who visited the Soviet Union
have reported that there is no forced labor in the timber
industry. Representative Henry T. Rainey of Illinois, ma-
jority leader in the House of Representatives, who visited the
Soviet Union in 1931, declared in an interview:
I particularly investigated the question of forced labor in
Russia and there isn't any there. Labor is freer in Russia
than in any country in the world. There is one disadvantage
152 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
under which Russia now operates — ^that the workers have more
money than ever before, and they are spending it liberally in
travelling, literally by tens of thousands of people, from one
job to another. They are sure of their employment wherever
they stop, and they can go back to their original employment
any time.^
H. R. Knickerbocker, correspondent of the New York
Evening Post, in a speech over the Columbia Broadcasting
system, June 21, 1931, said:
I worked as correspondent in Moscow for two years and last
year I travelled about 10,000 miles through the Soviet Union to
make a report on the Five- Year Plan for the New York Evening
Post and the Philadelphia Public Ledger. If the Russian people
are in chains, they have put them on since I was there.
Walter Duranty, who has lived in Russia for 10 years as
the correspondent of the New York Times, writing about
labor discipline and the tendency of workers to criticize or-
ders given by technical superiors instead of carrying them out,
said: "This contrasts somewhat curiously with talk abroad
about 'forced labor* in Soviet factories and anthracite fields.
... In your correspondent's opinion ... as an American
expressed it . . . *labor here is too darned free and too
darned talkative'." ^
Testifying before the Ways and Means Committee of the
House of Representatives, January 28, 1931, Colonel Hugh
L. Cooper, noted American engineer and builder of the great
Dnieprostroy power dam, stated that "in all the years I have
spent in Russia, I have never seen convicts employed in any
way with production." At another time he declared "investi-
gations were carried out by some of the leading business
men of this country. They have now put themselves on
record refuting the forced labor allegations."
None of these reports seems to be as exhaustive as the
series of articles by Henry Wales of the Chicago Tribune
which was also carried in the New York Times, beginning
March 27, 1931 :
"FORCED LABOR" IN SOVIET UNION 153
I have just completed a fortnight's investigation of labor
conditions in the North district and inspection of logging camps
along the Dvina and Pinega rivers, and am the first foreign
correspondent to visit this region since the wholesale exile of
kulaks (rich peasants) into this zone last year. , . .
My investigation covered three phases — first, convict labor;
second, forced labor and, third, the living conditions of the
kulaks and native workers here.
The initial question can be disposed of at once. Convict labor
is not employed by the State Timber Trust for export produc-
tion.
The question of compulsory labor opens various aspects and
no definite conclusion can be drawn without defining more clearly
the exact terms. All the inhabitants of the region, native popu-
lace as well as the exiles, are forced to work to make a living —
they must labor to exist.
But, technically speaking, they are not forced to perform any
specific kind of labor — they are not drafted by the State Timber
Trust or required to execute any given task. . . .
In the forest near Orletzy I visited a camp where thirty-five
expert Norwegian lumberjacks had been imported to teach the
most efficient methods. The Norwegians use the model ribbon
saw and the American style narrow-blade axe. They told me
they had just renewed their contract to remain two years more
in the Russian forests and that they had no complaints to make
with living or working conditions. . . .
Everywhere I was impressed by the scarcity of soldiers — ^the
militia, as the local police and members of the GPU are called
. . . Despite their arduous labor, the girls manage to keep them-
selves looking well, preserving their hands with woolen mittens
and leather gloves. And they do not need lipstick or rouge to
give them the rosiest of complexions.
In the same series Wales quotes Michael Tzetlin, Vice-
Chairman of the executive committee of the Archangel
Soviet, as saying:
The state is helping them [the kulaks] to build homes and
create new villages, composed of kulaks exclusively, where they
can hunt, fish, farm, enter the timber industry or do whatever
they please. The government is giving them all the land they
want, providing lumber, building materials, food supplies and
clothing and establishing postal, telegraph and transportation
services in the newly opened territory.
154 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
Other work being offered the kulaks includes railroad and
highway construction, draining swampy tundra and reclaim-
ing rich farming land. They are not guarded in any way.
Their death rate is not above the local rate. Intermarriage
with local inhabitants is common.
On the invitation of the Soviet timber exporting company,
two Americans, Spencer Williams, Moscow representative of
the American-Russian Chamber of Commerce, and Myron G.
Doll, American engineer, accompanied by Robin Kinkead,
New York Times correspondent, spent a part of June, 1932,
visiting the timber country in the Archangel district and the
northern Dvina River. They afterwards made affidavits as to
what they saw.
In Archangel the party visited sawmills and lumber yards
and watched the loading of ships, and in no case could they
find anything that looked like forced or convict labor. The
visitors talked directly with scores of workers — without the
use of an interpreter — ^and the workers were unanimous in
agreeing that they were working of their own free will and
could leave whenever they liked. According to their affi-
davits the young workers engaged in this work hooted any
suggestion that they were working against their will. They
said: "In Soviet Russia every one must work if he wants
to earn a living — ^that is the only forced thing about our
labor." «
Labor Turnover and the Labor Code
The high labor turnover in the Soviet Union also contra-
dicts the charges of "forced labor." Joseph Freeman points
out in The Soviet Worker that,
As a matter of simple logic, it is difficult to reconcile "armed
guards" with an absenteeism so great that it endangers the "exe-
cution of the year's plan." The tremendous labor turnover in
Soviet industry — about 150 per cent a year — would seem in
itself to be a refutation of the "forced labor^' charges. It is
impossible for labor to be "conscripted" and yet to move from
job to job at so rapid a rate. The fact is that the special inter-
"FORCED LABOR'* IN SOVIET UNION 155
ests which circulate "forced labor" charges make little effort to
be either accurate or consistent (our emphasis).^
Furthermore, the very existence of the Soviet Labor Code
explodes the false charges of "forced labor" in the Soviet
Union. As Freeman points out, "The Labor Code guaran-
tees the freedom of labor by protecting the worker against
dismissal without valid cause; by granting him the right to
break an agreement concluded for an indefinite period regard-
less of whether he has valid cause or not; and the right to
break a labor agreement without notice in case the employer
violates the conditions of the agreement or the labor laws.
Under such circumstances, where the worker has freedom of
contract, 'forced labor* is impossible."
In addition to the Labor Code, however, the labor agree-
ments with the trade imions, safety rules and social insurance
give the Soviet worker a degree of protection unequaled any-
where in the world.
There is, however, one section of the Soviet Labor Code,
which has been variously misunderstood or willfully misrepre-
sented by Soviet enemies as requiring forced labor. The
provision is explained by Freeman:
"Under Soviet law there exists a type of obligatory labor
in cases of emergency common in other countries. Paragraph
II of the Labor Code provides that under extraordinary
circumstances involving natural calamities, such as fighting
the elements, or in case of a shortage of labor for the fulfill-
ment of the most important state requirements, citizens may
be called upon to perform obligatory labor."
Thus in such regions as Central Asia and Transcaucasia,
where the welfare and safety of the community depend on
keeping the canals in good repair or the building of new
ones, such decrees are in effect. And since the community
as a whole undertakes to keep the irrigation works in proper
shape, the individual peasant is obliged to contribute his labor
to that end. Those sharing in the benefits of the irrigation
I
156 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
systeiAs who live too far away to work at the communal
tasks contribute in the form of a tax.
The Labor Code provision with regard to obligatory work
in case of labor shortage is resorted to only on the rare
occasions of extreme emergency — a life and death matter —
in which some particular kind of work is indispensable to the
national safety. Emergencies of this kind occurred in 1931
when an acute need arose for specialists and technicians in
railway and water transportation, and similarly, in connec-
tion with the spring sowing campaign of the same year
when there was an urgent need of agricultural experts and
technicians.
The mobilization of the transportation experts was carried
on among those formerly engaged in this type of work whose
skill was needed in the emergency. It did not apply to those
already employed in the field. In many cases these experts
were given higher wages in accord with the greater degree
of skill required for their tasks. The agricultural experts
were paid all traveling expenses and continued to receive their
salaries from the institutions which employed them and to
which they returned at the end of two months.
In no case, however, does this mobilization imply the use
of force or compulsion. The worst that may befall one
refusing such work is the loss of the job held at the time,
in which case he may earn a living at unskilled labor. He
cannot, however, he forced to accept work which he does not
desire. With the present acute shortage of labor, being
struck off the labor exchange list can scarcely be called a
grave penalty.
More About Soviet Timber
Most of the charges of "forced labor" in the Soviet Union,
as we have noted, have centered on the northern timber
industry. Such charges do not bear up under examination.
In the first place it must be understood that lumbering, even
in the most highly industrialized countries and under the
"FORCED LABOR'^ IN SOVIET UNION 157
very best of conditions, is no picnic. In no country have
timber cutting conditions been worse than in the United
States. Indeed, they are so bad in this country that only the
hardiest men can stand the work. The writer has visited
many timber camps and company lumber towns in East
Texas where conditions of virtual peonage exist. Fortunes
piled up by such companies as the Kirby Lumber Co. and the
Great Southern Lumber Co. were made by vicious exploita-
tion of timber workers. Taking the facts about timber pro-
duction internationally into consideration, Soviet timber
conditions show up well in comparison.
In old Russia as well as in the Soviet Union timber work
has always been a seasonal industry. It has always been
performed largely by peasants during the winter season and
has always supplied part of their income.
About 54% of all the seasonal workers throughout the
tsarist empire were too poor to pay traveling expenses and
were, therefore, obliged to walk long distances from their
homes to find employment. It has been estimated that
12,500,000 workdays were wasted every year by these en-
forced treks.
A lack of labor legislation under the old regime left the
peasant seasonal worker completely unprotected. He ob-
tained employment either by selling his labor power directly
to an employer or by becoming a member of a group hired
by a contractor. No laws regulated the number of hours,
wages, hiring or firing, general working conditions or sani-
tation. As a result even tsarist government reports reveal
grave abuses.
Until the October Revolution the working conditions in the
Russian timber camps were as bad as anywhere in the world.
The men worked from 10 to 11 and frequently 12 hours
a day. At present Soviet lumbermen, like other Soviet
workers, put in a little over seven hours a day. Since the
Revolution such conveniences as baths, laundries, first aid
stations, drug stores and, in some cases, even dental labora-
158 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
tories have appeared in the woods. To-day there are facilities
for recreation and education — ^newspapers, books, writ-
ing material, radios, sports, movies and dances.
An interesting and informative article by A. L. Gorsky
on Soviet timber conditions appeared in the May, 1932, issue
of the British Rtissian Gazette and Trade Outlook. It said
in part :
Under the Five- Year Plan now nearing fulfillment, no less
than 35,000,000 rubles will have been spent on the provision of
dwellings for the workers in newly-developed or uninhabited
forest regions. In these dwellings provision is made for clubs,
study circles, baths and drying rooms, whilst medical assistance,
and such amenities as it is possible to provide in isolated regions,
are also placed at the workers' disposal.
In the single financial year 1930-31 the huge sum of 29,500,000
rubles was spent on social insurance for the timber industry
alone. This insurance provides for the workers during tempo-
rary disablement of themselves or their dependents, and includes
free medical attention. They are provided for with bonuses to
cover the expenses of the birth and rearing of their children
through various stages of life to funeral expenses and pensions
for their dependent relatives on the death of the wage earner.
The article reports that direct wages have increased in the
last few years by 35.8% for sawmillers, 50% for lumbermen
and rafters, and 26% for transport workers in the forests,
while the cost of most articles of consumption is gradually
being lowered.
The Kulaks and Forced Labor
It is important to note that the campaign against "forced
labor" in the Soviet Union reached its height at the time
when the movement for collectivization in Soviet agriculture
had gained great momentum and the kulaks were being
"liquidated as a class." It was natural that the class of well-
to-do village sharks, remnant of capitalism in a society build-
ing socialism, should have the sympathies of the capitalists
abroad. Accordingly, many of the charges of "forced labor"
"FORCED LABOR'^ IN SOVIET UNION 159
in the U.S.S.R. were linked up with the charge that the
kulaks were being "liquidated" (eliminated) by harnessing
them in forced labor under conditions calculated to wipe them
out. Of course, it was not a question of actually "liquidat-
ing" the kulaks by physical extermination, but as a class, i.e.,
by changing the economic organization of agriculture in such
a way as to make impossible the existence of a class of rich
peasants who live by exploiting the poor peasants. Capitalist
propagandists, however, deliberately distorted the facts and
with the aid of white guard emigres, socialists, Mensheviks
and lie-manufacturing centers in the Baltic countries, spread
stories of the killing off of the kulaks. The great majority
of the kulaks who were expelled from the collectivized
regions by vote of the members of the community migrated
to other districts where they either settled on the land or
obtained jobs as artisans or laborers.
There are no concentration camps and no forced labor
for kulaks or former kulaks as charged by the capitalist
propagandists, nor are there special laws against kulaks who
commit crimes in violation of the penal code, such as murder
or arson. After conviction such a person is a prisoner on
the same basis and has the same status as an industrial
worker who is a prisoner.
The Status of Soviet Convict Labor
The actual status of convict labor in the Soviet Union
makes a significant contrast to that of convict labor in the
United States. Penal methods in the Soviet Union are
entirely different from those in any other country in the
world. There is no thought of degrading and breaking the
spirit of the prisoners in the Soviet Union. Prisoners are
treated as diseased persons or as victims of circumstances.
Every effort is made to rehabilitate the criminal by proper
medical and social treatment. The brutal slave-driving con-
ditions under which convicts work in the United States are,
therefore, impossible in the Soviet Union. Every prison
160 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
there has a staff of trained physicians and psychiatrists who
examine and treat prisoners ; schools where the prisoners are
given the elements of education ; and workshops where they
are taught useful trades. No prisoner leaves illiterate or
without a real vocation. Work in prisons is not designed
to punish the prisoner or to humiliate him. Its aim is
entirely educational.
Prisoners are usually sent to Labor Communes, where they
/ live in healthful surroundings. Cultural pursuits are en-
couraged. For instance in Commune No. 2 the members
have organized cultural circles, orchestras, dramatic groups,
literary groups, lectures, radio clubs, sports, a summer theater
and physical training groups. In Commune No. 3 more than
54% of the inmates had no professional training before
their commitment for theft. Yet in four years 163 of them
completely broke with their old habits, were accepted in labor
unions and their criminal records erased.
Maxim Gorky in describing a celebration at a prison com-
mune where 25 young men received prizes in recognition
of their work, where 36 were given back their civil rights,
and 74 given union cards, said : "I sat in the presidium and
saw that among these 1,500 people many also were near
tears — ^tears of joy for their comrades. They had been res-
urrected to a new life, people who before the October Revo-
lution would never have known resurrection — never.'*
Major C. E. Love joy, executive secretary of the Alumni
Federation of Columbia University, told of conditions in
Soviet prisons in an interview with the New York Times,
August 22, 1 93 1. Major Love joy had just returned from a
tour of the Soviet Union as leader of a group traveling
under the auspices of the American Institute of Educational
Travel. He said :
What amazed me most is the system of rehabilitation of the
prisoners. There is a school in the prison and each prisoner
is trained for some profession, so that when he is liberated he
will not be tempted by want to commit crimes again.
"FORCED LABOR'^ IN SOVIET UNION 161
The prison cells, according to Mr. Love joy, are open from
5 A.M. until 10 P.M. and each inmate is virtually his own
"trusty," allowed to come and go as he pleases within the
confines of the prison. The atmosphere of the place is rather
jovial, the prisoners seemingly being quite contented with
their lot. A radio was found in every cell. The visitors
were surprised to learn that prisoners were given two weeks
vacation annually and allowed to go home during that time.
In the Soviet Union every effort is made to solve the sex
problem of prisoners which is permitted to degrade prison
life under capitalism, causing widespread homosexuality in
every large American prison. While visiting the Lefortovo
Prison at Moscow a United Press correspondent found that
"men and women convicts respectively are allowed to spend
week-ends with their husbands and wives in special cells
belonging to the prison." ^°
Roger N. Baldwin, director of the American Civil Liberties
Union, after a thorough study of the prison labor problem
in the Soviet Union, reported :
One of the great improvements in Russian prisons is that
work is available to almost all prisoners. There is no forced
labor, no contract labor, as in the United States. All prisoners
are free not to work if they choose. But great inducements to
work lie in the payment of wages and in the deduction of one-
third time off the sentences of working prisoners.^^
Walter Duranty substantiates the above statements:
... in view of the possible discussion of the subject in the
United States or elsewhere, your correspondent would like to
put the following statement on record:
Criminals, in the ordinary sense of the word, are better treated
in the Soviet Union than in any other country — ^with due al-
lowance for universal shortage of living quarters and commodi-
ties. They work, but they get trade union rates for their labor,
the produce of which is sold exclusively within the Soviet Union,
and they have "parole" holidays yearly, which they almost never
break.i2
162 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
All these experts bear out what Soviet officials themselves
say about the condition of prisoners in the Soviet Union.
They have never denied that prisoners are used in public
works such as roads and railroad construction and other
such work, as well as in manufacturing certain articles none
of which are exported.
Socialist Labor vs. Capitalist Labor
In the first chapter of this book we analyzed labor under
capitalism and found all wage labor to be forced labor, either
indirect forced labor, caused by the whip of starvation
wielded by the capitalists who own the land and means of
production, or direct forced labor where open physical or
legal restraint is used.
In the U.S.S.R., the working class owns all the means
of production ; it is working for its own benefit and is build-
ing Socialism. Hence, in the U.S.S.R., labor is really free.
Workers in a socialist society are free, for they are not
oppressed by a ruling class. Marx and Lenin have shown
that any other sort of freedom is a mockery and a sham.
Referring to labor in the Soviet Union, Lenin wrote:
For the first time, after centuries of compulsory toil for the
benefit of others, of labor under subjection for the benefit of
the exploiters, it becomes possible for the workers to work for
their own benefit, to work on the basis of all the latest achieve-
ments of technology and culture.
The defenders of capitalism may dispute this and contend
that in the U.S.S.R. the constraint to labor also is present,
that is to say, the constraint of hunger, for if a worker does
not work he will starve. In the U.S.S.R., they say, the
workers also produce surplus value, for which they are not
directly paid in the form of wages. What then is the dif-
ference between capitalism and the Soviet system of
economy ?
Our reply to the first point is that not only individual
workers, but the whole working class of the Soviet Union
"FORCED LABOR" IN SOVIET UNION 163
would die of hunger if it did not work to produce the necessa-
ries of life. We must draw a distinction between labor called
forth by the natural need to satisfy human requirements, and
labor forced by a hunger which is deliberately created under
capitalism by one section of society, the ruling class, which
monopolizes the means of production for the purpose of com-
pelling the hungry producers to work for the benefit of the
owning class. The fact that the producers, the workers, are
deprived of the means of production, creating the whiplash
of hunger, lies at the very basis of capitalism. In the Soviet
system of economy there can be no hunger in this sense,
as under this system all the means of production belong to
the producers themselves. Here the stimulus to labor is to
produce goods for the satisfaction of human needs and not
for the profits of an exploiting class.
Free labor in a socialist society does not mean that mem-
bers of that society may work, or refuse to work, just as
they see fit. Socialist society is not a society of laggards or
slackers. It is based rather on the labor of all members of
society — with the exception of children, the aged, the infirm,
the sick.
Under the Socialist economy of the Soviet Union, that por-
tion of the total labor product which does not go directly
to the Soviet worker for his personal consumption, is applied
to the program for the economic betterment of the whole
social order — thus accruing to the benefit of the working
class as a whole — ^and not, as in capitalist society, to the sup-
port of a parasitic class of non-producers. The capital ac-
cumulation derived from the total labor product is thus
applied to the improvement of the economic and cultural
status of the working class.
As for "surplus value" this point is made clear by Joseph
Freeman when he says :
. . . Soviet economists emphasize that one basic difference
between the capitalist and socialist forms of economy lies in the
re-distribution of capital accumulation. "Surplus value," in the
164 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
sense in which it exists in the capitalist economy, does not exist
in Soviet economy, since the latter eliminates private profit.
Accordingly, vv^hile the individual w^orker forgoes part of the
product of his labor so that basic capital may be accumulated,
all such capital is spent in ways which accrue to the benefit
of the working class as a whole, and none of it goes in the
form of profits to unproductive groups of the population.
Moreover, it has never been maintained by Communists
that in a socialist economy the worker receives for his own
individual consumption the full product of his labor. The
13th congress of the Russian Communist Party in April,
1923, in discussing the problem of accumulating basic capital,
stated that "only that industry can be victorious which gives
more than it absorbs. Industry which exists at the expense
of the budget . . . cannot create a stable and lasting support
for the proletarian dictatorship. . . . The state trusts and
combines have as their basic problem the securing of surplus
value for the purpose of state accumulation, which alone can
guarantee the raising of the material level of the country and
a socialist reconstruction of the whole national economy."
In his Criticism of the Gotha Program, Karl Marx ex-
ploded the theory that in a socialist society the worker receives
as his individual allotment the full product of his labor for
his personal consumption. Marx pointed out that of the
total social product of labor only a portion is distributed
among individual producers of society for personal consump-
tion ; a considerable part of the labor product goes to satisfy
the "economically necessary" needs of society, which are
listed by Marx as "First, the amount required for the re-
placement of the means of production used up. Secondly,
an additional portion for the expansion of production.
Thirdly, a reserve and insurance fund against mischance, dis-
turbances through forces of nature, etc."
In addition to the foregoing "economically necessary" de-
ductions from the total product of labor, Marx lists an addi-
tional group of deductions which might be termed "socially
necessary" : "First, the general administrative expenses that
"FORCED LABOR'* IN SOVIET UNION 165
do not form a part of production. . . . Secondly, that por-
tion which is destined for the satisfaction of common wants,
such as schools, provision for the protection of the public
health, etc. . . . Thirdly, funds for those unable to work,
etc., in short, for what now belongs to so-called public
charity."
Only after these deductions — the "economically necessary"
and the "socially necessary" — are made from the total product
of labor do we finally have that part of the consumption
fund which is distributed among the individual producers.
The tasks confronting the Russian working class, which
owns the industries of the country and holds political power,
are thus entirely different from those which confront the
workers in other countries who are oppressed and exploited
by the capitalists. The working class, as the owner of the
means of production, besides striving to improve its own
conditions of life and labor, must also strive to develop
socialist production to the utmost, to construct giant works
according to the latest technical achievements, to strengthen
the state and to raise the whole cultural level of the popu-
lation. For this purpose the working class has to create a
social reserve; it must secure means with which to make
improvements in machinery and science and to replace worn-
out production goods. Does the creation of these reserve
funds mean that the working class is exploited? Certainly
not. The working class creates these funds not for an
exploiting class but for itself. Marx, in his Criticism of
the Gotha Program, emphasized this when he wrote : "That
which the producer loses as a private individual comes back
to him in the form of direct or indirect benefits as a member
of society." Obviously under such circumstances there can
be no exploitation of the worker; there can be no forced
labor.
166 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
Stimuli for Increasing Production
Even the enemies of the Soviet Union concede that tre-
mendous results are being achieved in developing the indus-
tries and agriculture of the country. Even they are forced
to admit that the first Five- Year Plan is being successfully
completed. If it is not forced labor which furnishes the in-
centive for such accomplishments, then what are the incen-
tives? There are two main motives which make the Soviet
worker strive to increase production. The first is class stim-
ulus— ^the desire to advance the cause of the working class
both in the Soviet Union and in the entire world. This feel-
ing was expressed recently by Joseph Stalin, secretary of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He said :
We must advance so that the working class of the whole world,
seeing us, may say: "There is our vanguard, there is our shock
brigade, there is the workers' fatherland — ^they are working for
their cause, our cause; good, we shall support them against the
capitalists and advance the world revolution." Shall we justify
the hopes of the working class of the world? Yes, we must,
if we do not want to disgrace ourselves in the end.
The second motive is the desire for personal, material and
cultural gain as well as the desire to receive recognition of
personal worth as a contributor to society. This personal
gain includes higher wages, shorter hours, social insurance,
education, recreation and the reward of honor which comes
with labor well-performed and not at the expense of others.
In the capitalist world the thing most desired is to get
money and become a parasite, to live on interest, not to have
to work. In the Soviet Union work is the thing which
receives social approbation. The shock-brigader in industry
becomes the hero of labor and he is highly esteemed by his
fellow workers.
The wage worker under capitalism on the other hand is
not interested in increasing production. He gets no social
prestige thereby, as manual labor especially is regarded as
"FORCED LABOR'' IN SOVIET UNION 167
degrading and is not done by the "best" people. Nor does
he receive material benefits by increasing production. To
increase the productivity of labor under capitalism means
lower wages and a larger army of unemployed. The worker
is not interested in technical improvements, for all means of
production under capitalism are at the same time means of
exploitation ; technical improvements only increase unemploy-
ment. The worker is not interested in lowering the cost of
production which brings gain only to the capitalist. The
worker knows that the sapping of his health and the reduction
of his standard of living are only means of increasing the
rate of profit for the capitalists. Consequently the only
stimulus to labor for him is the whip of hunger, the fear of
being dismissed, or the policeman's club when on strike.
Socialist Competition and Shock Brigades
A new spirit is already evidenced in the Soviet Union in
what has become known as "socialist competition." Under
socialist competition a group of workers in a certain factory
competes with another group in the same factory to see which
can do its job most quickly and in the most efficient manner.
Or workers of an entire factory challenge and compete with
the workers of another factory, mine or farm.
It sometimes happens that a factory or an industry falls
behind in its allotted task under the plan because of a tem-
porary lack of transportation facilities or for some other
reason. To meet such emergencies "shock brigades" have
been organized. These are groups of enthusiastic workers
that volunteer to help overcome the obstacles in the lagging
factory. When it has finished its job the brigade transfers
its efforts to another emergency. Gay celebrations follow
victorious completion of a particular job. Shock brigaders
are rewarded accordingly and are given prizes among which
the most treasured is the medal of the Order of Lenin.
To-day socialist competition has become the driving force
in the carrying out of the Five- Year Plans. At the begin-
168 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
ning of 193 1 there were 2,500,000 workers organized into
shock brigades. Besides these two methods of increasing
production there are other methods of competition and emu-
lation. Thus as Stalin said, "Labor, from being the shame-
ful, heavy burden it was considered to be in the past, becomes
a cause of honor, of glory, of gallantry, and of heroism."
The Five- Year Plans are not being achieved by the fear of
loss of job or any other capitalist coercion, but by the enthu-
siasm, the creative activity and class-conscious discipline of
the broad masses of workers.
For over a century bourgeois economists have argued that
socialism was impossible because, they contended, in a so-
cialist society there would be no incentive for further devel-
opment. Everything would remain at a standstill. There
would be no motive for work. Their stock answer was
"competition is the life blood of trade." The capitalists and
their agents simply cannot "imagine" labor other than that
produced by fear of starvation or some other form of
coercion.
Therefore, when the capitalists are forced to acknowledge
the tremendous progress in the Soviet Union they shout that
it is only possible to have such development under some
system of coerced or involuntary labor. It is evident, further-
more, that the Soviet workers are not starving else they
could not have accomplished such an enormous amount of
work. Accordingly the capitalists and their agents attempt
to dispel the favorable impression the Soviet form of labor
might make on their own forced laborers by raising the cry
of "forced labor" in the U.S.S.R. They contend that "free"
workers under capitalism cannot compete with "forced labor"
under socialism.
The Soviet workers and peasants have proved to the whole
world that the capitalists and their apologists are wrong, that
the workers* society does develop science and invention, that
the masses are able to manage the industries and the farms.
While the capitalist world is hopelessly stuck in the mud of
"FORCED LABOR" IN SOVIET UNION 169
an international crisis, the Soviet Union has no unemploy-
ment and marches ahead. In the space of a few years they
are transforming a backward agricultural country into a
highly developed industrial country. The dictatorship of the
proletariat is releasing the creative energy of millions of
workers and peasants.
This creative energy of the masses is expressed especially
by the shock brigaders and other workers engaged in socialist
competition. The record of achievements in the building
of Soviet industry and in the reorganization of agriculture
abounds with hundreds of cases of real labor heroism by
shock brigades whose example inspired the masses of work-
ers to greater enthusiasm and made possible the completion
of the Five- Year Plan in four years. Enthusiastic oil
workers brought about the completion of the Five- Year Plan
in that industry in two and a half years. The workers of
numerous factories, such as the Moscow Brake Works, the
Kolomensk and Kharkov locomotive plants and the Moscow
Electric Works, also completed the first Five- Year Plan for
their factories in two and a half years.
And when the Soviet workers overtake and surpass the
advanced industrial capitalist nations, the wealth and power
of the workers will be higher than any ever known in the
history of the world. This will be a glaring contrast to what
happens when one capitalist country surpasses another capi-
talist country, which is done only by more intensive exploita-
tion of the workers, longer hours, lower wages and poor
conditions of work.
The more class-conscious workers and more advanced
peasants are in the Communist Party and in the Young
Communist League (Komsomol), which are the center of
organization and inspiration in carrying out the work of
building socialism. Komsomols especially play a decisive role
in overcoming the anti-social habits inherited by the workers
from capitalism and replacing them by a realization of the
great historical task which has fallen to the working class
170 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
of the Soviet Union. A free working class, conscious of its
freedom and its role, has shown in the Soviet Union how
limitless are its energies.
Soviet Labor Unions
Strong labor unions safeguard workers' conditions in the
U.S.S.R. There are now (1932) nearly 17 million trade
imion members. The American Federation of Labor in con-
trast has less than 2,500,000 actual members in good stand-
ing.
But the officials of the A. F. of L. still contend that the
Soviet trade unions are not "free." What they mean is that
they don't support Democrats in one town and Republicans
in another ; they are not "business unions" and rackets ; they
don't subscribe to life insurance sold by Matthew WoU;
they are not dictated to by the employers' National Civic
Federation and the American Legion fascists. They don't
assist a capitalist government in preparing for imperialist
wars for plunder, as does the A. F. of L.
There is plenty of testimony, even from bourgeois sources,
as to the freedom and strength of the Soviet trade imions.
For instance, Sherwood Eddy, who has made six visits to
the U.S.S.R., says in his book. The Challenge of Russia:
There is a healthy trade union democracy among the workers.
Economically free, independent of any individual employers, ap-
prehensive of no arbitrary discharge or neglected employment,
the laboring class at least is encouraged in the freedom of
expression and the right of criticism of industry or the govern-
ment
Another observer. Dr. George M. Price, director of the
Joint Board of Sanitary Control of New York, and an
authority on factory inspection in the garment industry, re-
ferring to the part played by the trade imions in the Soviet
Union, said :
The principal function of the unions and their representatives
in the provincial district councils as well as within the establish-
"FORCED LABOR" IN SOVIET UNION 171
ment itself is the protection of the individual workers in their
economic, political and other rights.
All wage contracts, individual and collective agreements are
made through the Factory Committee and through the organs
of the unions, which see to it that the worker is placed in as
high a wage rank as possible, and as he is entitled to.
The union also protects the worker in all matters of dispute,
conflict, and questions of right of discharge, which may come
up during employment. The union through its organs, and
especially through its social insurance activities, takes care of
the workers during sickness, unemployment, invalidity, or in
case of death. . . .^^
HouRS^ Wages and Social Insurance
Both money or nominal wages and real wages have been
increasing steadily in the Soviet Union. By the fiscal year
1928-29 nominal wages were 190% and real wages 43%
higher than in 191 3. In 1930 the annual wages of all
workers showed a gain of 12.6% over the preceding year,
and in 193 1 there was a further gain of 23.5%. The greatest
gains in wages were in heavy industry where the wages had
been the lowest before the Revolution.
During the period of the Five- Year Plan, increase in
wages kept pace with the rapid increase in production. Thus
the average annual wages of workers in census industry in-
creased from 778 rubles in the fiscal year 1926-27 to 1,167
rubles in 193 1, a gain of 50 per cent?-^
Only recently there was a still further increase. The New
York Times, April i, 1932, reported, "The industrial pay
rises are designed to keep pace with demands made upon the
workers by the scheduled increase of 36% in industrial pro-
duction." Thus along with increases in production go in-
creases in pay. This is in marked contrast to decreases in
pay with increases in production in capitalist countries.
But cash wages for work are only a part of the total
wages. If indirect payments received by the Soviet worker
are taken into account — such as social insurance benefits, free
medical aid, vacations with pay, low or free rent, free work-
172 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
ing clothes, cultural facilities, etc., — ^wages are increased by
an average of from 20 to 35%. If these indirect payments
are included, real wages at the end of 1931 may be estimated
at about double the pre-war figure.^**
Before we consider the Soviet benefits from social insur-
ance and other privileges let us compare working hours of
tsarist Russia in 191 3 with those of the Soviet Union in
193 1. Tsarist work days averaged around 10 hours, although
workers often toiled 10 to 16 hours a day. It was only after
the October Revolution that the 8-hour day became, both in
law and in practice, the maximum for the adult population
and the 6-hour day the maximum for minors up to the age
of 18 and all workers in hazardous occupations. Children
under 16 are forbidden to work except in certain instances
when necessary for their training or education, in which
case children over 14 may work 4 hours a day. Over
70% of the workers in large-scale industry are on the 7-hour
day, and by the end of 1932 it was planned to have 92% on
this basis. By the end of the second Five- Year Plan the
6-hour day is expected to be universal within the borders
of the Soviet Union.
Social insurance has been developed further in the Soviet
Union than in any country in the world. All workers are
insured from the very first day of their work, and have
full rights to all the benefits. The worker pays nothing
whatever for the insurance and all the«<expense is paid by
the employers.
A worker and his family are entitled to receive full medical
aid, i.e., free medicine, doctor's care, sanitariums and treat-
ment, in addition to cash pay. An American friend of the
author, a former Georgia cotton mill worker, writes from
Kharkov where her husband is a mechanic, that she has
been getting the care of a specialist and free electric treat-
ments for a small growth on her neck. She says, "such care,
even if I could have aflForded it at all in the United States,
would have cost a fortune." She probably contracted the
"FORCED LABOR" IN SOVIET UNION 173
trouble while working as a child laborer in a Georgia mill —
where she started work at eight years of age. Now she is
being cured free of charge in the Soviet Union !
During temporary disability due to sickness, accident, or
any other cause, the worker gets help to the amount of 75
to 100% of his regular wages. A pregnant woman is freed
from work eight weeks before and eight weeks after child-
birth. Women and men workers receive equal pay for equal
work. All expenses connected with the birth of a child are
covered for the worker-mother. Then for nine months there
is an allowance for milk. Funeral expenses for a worker or
any members of his family are also paid.
Unemployment relief was given while some unemployment
still prevailed in the Soviet Union. But to-day, as has been
said, there is no unemployment and, therefore, no need for
relief.
Pensioners are paid in case of complete disability from in-
dustrial accident or occupational disease. In fixing the pen-
sion the length of time the worker was employed is not
considered. There is also an old age pension which begins
at the age of 60 for men, 55 for women and 50 for miners.
It amounts to as much as 55% of total earnings.
Safety and sanitation are stressed throughout the Soviet
industrial system. In building factories special attention is
given to comfort and health — proper lighting, ventilation,
safety devices and sanitation. As a result the rate of fatal
accidents in 1929 was lower than in Germany or the United
States.
Education and Culture
Education is another field where the workers in the Soviet
Union have made remarkable progress. The years 1930-31
marked a big step toward the goal of universal elementary
education. The total number of pupils in the elementary
and secondary schools in 1930-31 amounted to 19.3 millions,
as compared with 7.8 millions in 1914 and 11.9 millions in
yi4i FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
1929. During the past few years the development of the
network of trade and technical schools has advanced at a
rate even more rapid than that of general schools.
In 1 914 there were 109,000 students in the higher institu-
tions of learning. By 1931 this number had more than
trebled. Students in the technical and factory schools —
exclusive of vocational schools, vocational workshops and
the like — ^totaled 1,808,000 in 1931, or practically seven times
the pre-war figure. In addition, several million workers and
collective farmers are extending their education by evening
schools, correspondence courses, and by other means. In
1 93 1 the Soviet government spent seven and a half times as
much for education as was spent in 191 4 under the Tsar.
Workers are favored in many other ways. Frequently
free tickets are given to theaters, movies, and other enter-
tainments. Then there are clubs in every factory with
libraries, gymnasiums and rest rooms. Some of the finest
buildings in the entire country have been converted into club
buildings. The workers also get the best food and housing
obtainable.
Workers in the Soviet Union enjoy the best of ever)rthing
available. Instead of the Vanderbilts and the Romanovs it is
the workers who are the privileged. All of this is in glaring
contrast to the situation in a capitalist country where a rich
minority own the entire country and are able to enjoy all the
material advantages of life while hundreds of thousands
starve or go undernourished for lack of bread.
General William N. Haskell, chief of the American Relief
Administration in Russia in 1921-23, who recently returned
from the Soviet Union, declares that what the worker gets
that makes him better off than any other class, and more satis-
fied, is his feeling of importance in the socialistic order. He
is the element most favored by the government, and his voice
is the controlling factor in industry and politics. Thus, "today,
the worker has a feeling that he counts — and a vast hope
for the future. In tsarist days he had nothing." ^®
<TORCED LABOR'* IN SOVIET UNION 175
The Russian workers had to overcome many obstacles to
advance as far as they have. After the Revolution they came
into possession of a war-ravaged country. Then followed
violent counter-revolution, led by the capitalists and mon-
archists, backed by the armies of England, Japan, France,
the United States and other countries. Military intervention
failed but the capitalist nations continued to boycott the
young Soviet Republic. Credit could not be obtained to re-
build what had been destroyed by war and famine. Backward
methods of production had been inherited from the old
regime. Factories were idle or entirely out of commission.
But though the capitalists of the world have vainly tried
by war, blockade and lies to prevent the success of the Soviet
Union the workers in other countries have helped it. Not
only have they blocked war plots against the Soviets but many
thousands of workers from almost every country are in the
factories and on the farms of the Soviet Union helping to
build socialism. They write with glowing enthusiasm of
what they find there.
In January, 1931, a group of American workers in Stalin-
grad wrote ;
We, a group of American technicians employed at the Stalin-
grad Tractor Plant, take exception to the misleading propaganda
that is aiming to influence the minds of the peoples of the foreign
countries toward the Soviet Union.
Having been afforded the opportunity of living and working
in the U.S.S.R. during the epoch-making period ... we have
witnessed the initial efforts of the people in their industrial
program, which, minus the prevailing enthusiasm of the masses,
would be impossible of accomplishment.
It is such groups of workers, together with the hundreds
of thousands of workers and sympathizers in other lands,
who now form the real friends of the Soviet Union. It is
they who from their own experience as workers must answer
directly and sharply the stream of lies about "forced labor" in
the only land where labor is really free.
CHAPTER X
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
From the slavery of the time of the Egyptian Pharaohs to
present-day capitalism the history of labor is the history of
forced labor. Under slave systems, under feudalism and
to-day under capitalism all labor necessary for the life of
society has been carried out by an oppressed class, which has
been deprived of most of the good things of life created by
it and given only enough to assure its procreation and life
from one day of toil to the next. The various systems of
labor exploitation have differed only in the methods employed
by the ruling class to force the workers to labor.
Under a pre-capitalist form of labor, the exploiters use
direct force for extracting forced labor: the exploited are
deprived of personal liberty; serfs are bound to the land of a
manorial lord; compulsory labor laws are passed, etc. This
is direct forced labor. Under capitalism, as we have pointed
out in Chapter I, the exploiters use indirect, hidden coercion
to make the workers produce surplus value. Starvation is
the principal method of compulsion, although more direct
methods of physical force are used when the need arises.
Within the borders of the United States, as we have tried
to show in this book, we find forced labor of the most direct
type in connection with unemployment "relief" and various
public and private "charitable" institutions. We find forced
labor in prisons and on chain gangs. We find peonage wide-
spread; and in the American colonies and semi-colonies we
find every form of direct forced labor.
If the capitalists and their apologists really want to find
convict labor they should begin their search at home and not
in the Soviet Union, the only free labor country in the world.
176
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 177
As we have shown they would find in the United States that
several hundred thousand prisoners in state, federal, city and
county prisons are producing many millions of dollars worth
of convict-made goods. These commodities are being sold
in the general market, both at home and abroad, under the
most despicable methods, furnishing cut-throat competition
with "free" labor in a time of economic crisis when at least
16,000,000 "free" workers are jobless. They would find
that the conditions under which these goods are produced are
more horrible than those the most consummate liar among all
the patrioteers and monarchists has been able to concoct about
the Soviet Union. In the United States we find: women
hung up on pegs like hams of meat; men confined in the
stocks, in dungeons, in disease-infested holes on bread and
water ; men whipped to death and smothered in sweat'boxes.
In fact we find all the tortures used by the decadent ruling
classes throughout history. All these tortures are adminis-
tered for not doing enough work.
The prisoners who are thus exploited, victimized and mur-
dered are workers. Most of them are guilty of "crimes" of
hunger and unemployment, many are the victims of the third
degree and the frame-up. Others are political prisoners who
are imprisoned for their labor activities. The rich, control-
ing the courts and the law-making bodies, go free.
The prime motive of this system of convict labor is the
desire for profit. This is true whether the convict works
for a private employer or for the state. The Wickersham
report on penal institutions was forced to admit that no
wages, or at best in a few cases insignificant wages, are paid
the convicts. There is no workmen's compensation, other
than nominal compensation in only two states, for the pris-
oners who are forced to work under criminally dangerous
conditions. The highest prison authorities are forced to
admit that there is not a single well-rounded-out educational
program for prison inmates in a single prison in the country.
No real vocational training is given. Where is the vocational
178 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
training in making a farmer push a needle or a city industrial
worker a plow, or an office clerk a coal shovel? Why are
workers driven to perform impossible tasks or suffer in-
human tortures ? Is all this for reform ?
Peonage is one of the most important types of forced labor
in the United States, as it involves tens of thousands of
industrial workers and tenant farmers, chiefly Negroes. It
is especially prevalent in the South where it has been used
since the Civil War as a partial substitute for chattel slavery.
It is also found in other parts of the country, as for example
among Mexicans in the Southwest and in beet fields in Col-
orado, Kansas, Michigan.
Contrary to popular opinion peonage is still legalized in
several southern states through laws which penalize the
breaking of a contract, vagrancy laws and emigrant agency
laws. But peonage does not depend upon law alone but
also on extra-legal methods including physical force and
terrorism.
Though there is no way of determining the exact propor-
tions of the problem, the hundreds of instances of exposures
of peonage cases during the past few years, as well as many
actual court prosecutions that were forced upon the Depart-
ment of Justice, indicate that peonage involves tens of
thousands of victims. The many revolts, usually called "race
riots," against these conditions are also eloquent testimony
as to its prevalence.
This country's record of exploitation of forced labor in the
colonies differs only slightly in degree, if at all, from that of
other imperialist nations. Herbert Hoover, one of our
foremost "humanitarians," has been engaged in trafficking in
colonial forced labor on a large scale.
It has been estimated that one-fifth of all imports into the
United States, especially coffee, rubber, tobacco, sugar, spices,
oils, fruits, are produced in whole or in part by direct forced
labor. A part of these colonial forced labor goods are pro-
duced in the colonies dominated by foreign imperialists. But
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 179
most of them are produced in United States colonies, semi-
colonies, or "independent" countries where much Ameri-
can finance capital is invested, such as in the Caribbean
islands, in Central America, in certain parts of South Amer-
ica, Hawaii, the Philippines, Liberia and other countries.
The historic methods by which forced laborers have been
recruited in these places is by the expropriation of the best
land by foreign and domestic landlords and capitalists. In
this way small peasant proprietors, or natives who tilled com-
mon lands have been forced to seek work for employers in
order to exist. To speed up this process special taxes have
often been levied so that the natives were forced to seek work
from exploiters to pay the taxes. Also native chiefs are
bribed or compelled to furnish forced laborers.
The worst direct forced labor conditions have existed in
Cuba, Guatemala, Liberia, Haiti, Venezuela and the Philip-
pines. In the Philippines, for example, Robert W. Hart,
surgeon of the United States Health Service, stationed in the
islands for many years, estimated in 1926 that 20% of the
total laboring population are held in "practical slavery."
A new form of labor was ushered in by the October, 191 7,
Revolution in Russia. The essence of the Revolution was
the expropriation of the capitalists and of the large land-
owners and the seizure of power by the proletariat and the
poorest strata of the peasantry. The formerly exploited and
oppressed classes became the new ruling class; the former
exploiters were suppressed. Through the succeeding years
of the Revolution the whole economic and social structure
of Russia is becoming socialized. The last bulwark of en-
trenched capitalism is rapidly being overcome by the col-
lectivization of agriculture which is making impossible the
existence of the individual peasant proprietor. The Second
Five- Year Plan lays down as a practical task the emergence
of a classless society, ready technically and ideologically to
begin the transformation to Communism.
180 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
The means of production and distribution in the Soviet
Union are in the hands of the workers and the proletarian
state. The greater part of agriculture is already organized
on socialist lines in Soviet state and collective farms. The
whole economy of the country has been reorganized and is a
planned economy. This is possible only under a socialist
system. A tremendous cultural change is taking place. The
material and cultural conditions of the workers have been
greatly improved. Cultural life in the rural districts is mak-
ing tremendous strides and the proverbial backwardness of
the village is being abolished. Does this not prove that the
U.S.S.R. is, so far, ^the only land of free labor in the real
sense of the word, the only land where the workers are
masters of their own destiny?
However, the workers and peasants of the U.S.S.R. are
not yet satisfied with the successes they have achieved. The
rate of development of socialist construction must be in-
creased still more, technology must be mastered, the banner
of socialist competition must be raised still higher.
For the international capitalists to charge that Soviet econ-
omy is based on forced labor in the face of the above facts
gives weight to the charges that those who are conducting
the holy crusade against the "terrible" Bolsheviks are not
horrified at the thought of real forced labor in their own
country. On the contrary they have proven themselves utterly
callous on that score. They are, in fact, keenly interested in
''forced labor," merely as a pretext for shutting off Soviet-
American trade, for crippling the Five- Year Plan, and for
preparing sentiment for war against the U.S.S.R. in order
— ^they claim — ^to free the poor "forced laborers" in that
country and place them again under the wonderfully benign
protection of a capitalist system!
This is not the first time in history that the exploiting class
has tried to discredit a workers* government and destroy it.
And this is not the first time that capitalists have used the
pretext of wanting "to liberate the victims" of such a govern-
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 181
ment, in order to prepare for its overthrow by drowning it in
the blood of the working class.
The same thing happened during the reign of the Paris
Commune in 1871, when for a brief time the workers of
France held power. Thiers, leader of the French bourgeoisie,
charged that the Commune was a tyranny and used that as a
pretext for destroying it.
"Thiers," writes Karl Marx, "denounced it [the First Inter-
national] as the despot of labor, pretending to be its liberator.
... He tells Paris that he was only anxious to free it from
the hideous tyrants who oppress it."
Thus in 1871 the French bourgeoisie and foreign capital-
ists waged war against Red Paris under slogans similar to
those now being used to prepare war against the Soviet
Union. The bourgeoisie, in 1871, talked about the "despots
of labor" in Red Paris. Now they talk about slaves and
"forced labor" in Red Russia. The enemies of the worker
then said that Red Paris was oppressed by tyrants. To-day
the capitalists and their spokesmen say the Soviet workers
are under the "bloody tyranny" of the omnipotent O.G.P.U.
The rich French parasites of 1871 posed as the emancipa-
tors of labor. The story of how they "freed" the workers of
Paris can be read on the "Wall of the Communards" in the
cemetery, P^re Lachaise, in Paris. The Paris Commune,
the first workers* government in history, was drowned in the
blood of its heroic defenders. The workers of Paris were
shackled again.
The international capitalists, including those of the United
States, who exploit actual colonial slaves as well as forced
labor in their own countries, would like to "emancipate" the
Soviet "slaves" in the same way the Paris workers were
"freed." Hence the campaign of hate and lies about forced
labor in the Soviet Union. Hence the preparations for war
which go on continually and which at present center chiefly
in the Far East.
REFERENCE NOTES
CHAPTER I
1. Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. Ill, Charles H. Kerr, p. 953.
2. Karl Marx, Value, Price and Profit, p. 84.
3. Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, International Publishers, p. 715.
4. See Charlotte Todes, The Injunction Menace, International
Pamphlets, No. 22.
5. The Yellow-Dog Contract, Elliot E. Cohen, International Pam-
phlets, No. 21.
6. Karl Marx, The Civil War in France, Postgate's edition, p. 29.
7. Karl Marx, Wage-Labor and Capital, International Publishers,
p. 48.
8. Capital, Vol. I, p. 320.
9. Charles and Mary Beard, Rise of American Civilisation, p. 132.
10. Kathleen Simon, Slavery, p. 128.
11. Capital, Vol. Ill, p. 158.
12. New York Times, October 5, 1931.
13. See 1929 Report of Institute for Government Research ; Massacre,
by Robert Gessner ; article in Survey Graphic, January, 1929 ;
Good Housekeeping, February and March, 1929.
CHAPTER II
1. Austin H. MacCormick, "Education in the Prisons of Tomorrow,"
chapter in Prisons of Tomorrow, Annals of the American
Academy for Political and Social Science, September, 1931,
p. 73-
2. New York Times, July 13, 1932.
3. New York World-Telegram, July 10, 1931.
4. See Vern Smith, The Frame-Up System, International Pamphlets,
No. 8.
CHAPTER III
1. New York Times, March 27, 1932.
2. New York World-Telegram, August 29, 1931.
3. Based largely on Handbook of American Prisons and Reforma-
tories, 1929.
4. Howard B. Gill, "Convict Labor," chapter in Prisons of To-
morrow, pp. 83-101.
5. New York Times, August 22, 1892.
CHAPTER IV
1. New York Times, October 24, 1931.
2. Report of National Commission on Law Observance and Enforce-
ment (Wickersham Commission), Vol. IX, pp. 109-110.
183
184 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
3. United States Children's Bureau, Bulletin, No. 182, 1928, p. 34,
4. New York Times, November 18, 1931.
5. J. S. Allen, The American Negro, International Pamphlets, No.
18, p. 3.
6. Prisons of Tomorrow, p. 25.
7. Churchman, January 31, February 7, 1931.
8. Leon Whipple, Story of Civil Liberties in the United States,
pp. 290-291.
9. Ibid., p. 236.
10. Anna Rochester, Labor and Coal, p. 179.
11. Knoxville News-Sentinel, February, 1931.
CHAPTER V
I. From a typewritten manuscript in hands of Esther Lowell, author
of Labor in the South, International Publishers. Included in
material gathered by North Carolina State Board of Charities.
CHAPTER VI
1. Herbert J. Seligman, The Negro Faces America, p. 222.
2. Statement by a former United States attorney in Arkansas,
quoted by Seligman, op. cit., pp. 247-248.
3. Carter G. Woodson, The Rural Negro, p. 49.
4. Ibid., pp. 72-73.
5. Ibid., p. 75.
6. New York World, November 24, 1929.
7. Federated Press, December 7, 1929.
8. United States Department of Labor, Division of Negro Eco-
nomics, Negro Migrations in igi6-i7, p. 104.
9. International Labor News Service, August 9, 1930.
10. Memphis Press-Scimitar, April 18, 1931. See also American
Labor Banner, March 7, 1931.
11. Thomas J. Michie, editor, Georgia Code, 1926, Penal Code, Sec-
tion 125 (P 122), p. 1926.
12. Ibid., Section 715, p. 2037.
13. Ibid., Section 716, p. 2037.
14. 219 U.S. 219 Bailey v. State of Alabama.
15. Alabama laws as amended in 1907, cited in 219 U.S. 219 Bailey
V. State of Alabama.
16. Florida, Cumulative Statutes, 1925, Section 5161.
17. New York World, November 24, 1929.
18. Jerome Dowd, The Negro in American Life, chapter on Peonage,
pp. 133-134-
CHAPTER VII
1. Woodson, op. cit., p. 78.
2. Ibid., p. 78.
3. Immigration Commission, Peonage, pp. 439-449 of Senate Docu-
ment No. 747, Vol. II, 61 St Congress, 3rd Session.
4. The Crisis, July, 1920, p. 139.
5. Monroe Work, Negro Yearbook, 1931-32, Pp. I39-I4i«
REFERENCE NOTES 186
6. New York Times, February 2, 1927.
7. Work, op. cit., pp. 139- 141.
8. The Crisis, January, February and March, 1928; also Woodson,
op. cit., pp. 86-88.
9. Hearings on the Restriction of Western Hemisphere Immigration,
before Committee on Immigration, U. S. Senate, 70th Con-
gress, First Session, p. 42.
10. The Crisis, January, February, March, 1928.
11. New York Times, February 4, 1931.
12. Ibid.
13. New Orleans Times-Picayune, February 17, 1931.
14. Woodson, op. cit., p. 88.
15. New York World, November 24, 1929.
16. Knoxville (Tennessee) News-Sentinel, March 27, 1930.
17. New York Sun, December 2, 1931 ; also Associated Press report,
December 4, 1931.
18. See Moore et al v. Dempsey, 261 U.S. 86.
19. Seligman, op. cit., p. 234.
20. Charlotte Todes, Labor and Lumber, pp. 174-178.
21. Seligman, op. cit., p. 317.
22. Allen, op. cit., p. 13.
23. Knoxville (Tenn.) News-Sentinel, February 22, 1931.
24. Paul S. Taylor, Mexican Labor in the United States: Imperial
Valley, University of California Press, 1928, pp. 45-52.
25. Labor Research Association, Labor Fact Book, p. 157.
CHAPTER VIII
1. Walter H. Liggett, The Rise of Herbert Hoover, pp. 137-138.
2. Ibid., p. 211.
3. John Hamill, The Strange. Career of Mr. Hoover, p. 160 ff.
4. For a discussion of American imperialism in these countries see
Labor Fact Book, pp. 35-42.
5. Jessie Lloyd, Federated Press, November 19, 1930.
6. The Nation, May 23, 1928.
7. Current History, March, 1922.
8. Dana G. Mimro, The Five Republics of Central America, p.
60 #.
9. Quoted by Carleton Beals in Current History, August, 1930.
10. Report of International Commission of Inquiry into the Existence
of Slavery and Forced Labor in the Republic of Liberia,
1930. The report was also summarized in Monthly Labor
Review, May, 1931, pp. 58-62.
11. R. L. Buell, The Native Problem, in Africa, p. 834.
12. Current History, April, 1929.
13. Leo L. Partlow, Asia, January, 1931.
14. Washington Times, August 11, 1921.
15. United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bulletin No. 534,
Labor Conditions in Hawaii, p. 15.
16. The American Chamber of Commerce Journal, June, 1930.
17. Moorfield Storey and Marcial P. Lichauco, The Philippines and
the United States, p. 25 ff.
18. R. L. Buell, New York Times, December 15, 1929.
19. Federated Press, September i, 1926.
186 FORCED LABOR IN THE U. S.
CHAPTER IX
1. From a speech delivered by Joseph Stalin, February 4, 1931,
in Moscow at the First All-Russian Conference of Workers
in Socialist Industrialization.
2. Statement of John L. Spivak, Presented to the Congressional
Committee Investigating Communist Propaganda, July 24,
1930, American Civil Liberties Union (mimeographed).
3. New Republic, February 25, 1931, quoting Manchester Guardian,
4. Forced Labor in Russia f published by British-Russian Gazette
and Trade Outlook, London, pp. 37-42.
5. See Russian Timber, report of the Delegation Appointed by the
Russian Timber Committee of the Timber Trade Federation
of the United Kingdom.
6. United States Daily, October 26, 1931.
7. New York Times, April 10, 1932.
8. New York Times, June 6, 1932.
9. Joseph Freeman, The Soviet Worker, International Publishers,
p. 254.
10. New York World-Telegram, July 30, 193 1.
11. Roger N. Baldwin, Liberty Under the Soviets, p. 248.
12. New York Times, January 19, 1931.
13. George M. Price, Labor Protection in the Soviet Union, p. 55 ;
see also Soviet Trade Unions by Robert W. Dunn.
14. Joseph Freeman, op. cit., pp. 188-189.
15. Ibid., pp. 188-189.
16. New York Times, July 5, I93l.
INDEX
Abramovitch, Rafael, 147.
Accidents, among prison workers,
52-54.
Adams, John, on wage-labor
under capitalism, 16.
Africa, slavery in, 18.
Age, of prison inmates, 25.
Agricultural Workers Industrial
Union, 117.
Alabama, value of prison goods
in, 34.
Allegheny County Workhouse,
32, 39.
American Civil Liberties Union,
161.
American Federation of Labor,
116, 117, 147, 170; attitude to-
ward prison labor, 62-63.
American Indians, as forced
laborers, 22.
American-Russian Chamber of
Commerce, 154.
Amtorg Trading Corp., 146.
Anti-unionism, I4#.
Arbitration, compulsory, 18.
Arlington Memorial Bridge,
prison labor on, 45.
Armstrong, Orland K., exposiure
of, 98, 106-107.
Asia, slavery in, 18.
Auburn prison, value of products
manufactured in, 36.
Baldwin, Roger N., 161.
Banana workers, strike of, 144.
Beet workers, 22; strike of, 117.
Bellamy, Willie, 69.
Black Codes, 85.
Blind, competition of prison labor
with, 48.
Bloodhounds, use of on chain
gangs, 72, 73-
Bolivia, 122.
Borderline types, of forced labor,
I9#.
Brandle, Theodore M., 27.
Bribery, in federal prisons, 28.
Brisbane, Arthur, 46.
Brushy Mountain Penitentiary,
53, 56, 58.
Brutality, of chain gang guards,
72ff.
Buell, R. L., 134.
Callas, Joseph, 100.
Camp Hill, 112-113,
Canada, embargo on United
States prison goods, 45.
Cannon, Bishop James, Jr., 28.
Capitalism, as system of exploita-
tion, i6#.
Capitalist opposition, to Soviet
Union, I45#.
Carlton, Gov. Doyle E., defense
of Florida prison system, 80.
Catastrophes, exposures of peon-
age through, 104-106.
Causes of crime, 26-27, 28.
Central America, forced labor in,
128-129.
Central Asia, forced labor in,
155.
Chain gangs, 25, Chap. V.
Charges, against Soviet Union,
148; answer to, I49#.
Chattel slavery, 10; in colonies,
ii9#.
Children, in state mstitutions, 61-
62.
Chinese Engineering and Mining
Co., shipping of coolies by, 122.
Class war prisoners, 29, 66, 81.
Clothing, prison made, 41-42, 44.
45, 47, 50, 62.
Coal Creek Rebellion, 48, 63-64,
65.
Colombia, strike in, 144.
Colonies, forced labor in. Chap.
VIII.
Colorado beet workers, strike of,
117.
Colored Farmers* Alliance, iia
187
188
INDEX
Commodities, prison made, 41-43.
Communes, labor, 160.
Communists, activities of, 113;
threats of chain gang against
organizers of, 82.
Communist Party, of Cuba, 144.
Commimist Party, of Soviet
Union, 166, 169; 13th Congress
of, 164.
Companies, profiting by prison
labor, 43.
Company stores, in Cuba, 125.
Company towns, I2#.
Competition, of free and prison
labor, 46-49.
Complaints, peonage, 100.
Connecticut, prisons of, 57.
Contract labor, in Cuba, 125.
Contract system, zgff.
Convict labor. Chaps. II, III;
status of in Soviet Union, I59#.
Convicts, forced labor among,
34#.
Coolies, Chinese, 122; in Hawaii,
137.
Cooper, Col. Hugh L., 152.
Corvee law, 128; revolts against,
143.
Costa Rica, 129.
Cotton growing, employment of
convicts in, 37.
County jails, convict labor in, 38-
39.
Courson, George W., 81.
Courts, 30.
Cowles, Genevieve, 57.
Cranford, Nevin C., 75-78.
Crimes, nature of under capital-
ism, 29#.
Criminal syndicalism, jailings
for, 29.
Crisis of 1929, effects of on
forced labor, 24.
Criticism of the Gotha Program^
164, 165.
Cuba, forced labor in, 124-128;
struggles against forced labor
in, 143-144.
Cultural pursuits, of Soviet pris-
oners, 160.
Culture, in Soviet Union, I73#.
Deaths, from prison fires, 52.
Debt slavery, 86, 88.
De Bekker, L. J., 127.
Definition, of forced labor. Chap.
Department of Justice, inactivity
of, 100.
Discharge of workers, in Soviet
Union, 171.
Discipline of Russian masses,
168.
Dnieprostroy, 152.
Doctors, false reports of, 78.
Doll, Myron G., 154.
Dorsey, Gov. Hugh M., 103.
Du Bois, W. E. B., 113.
Duranty, Walter, 152, 161.
Eddy, Sherwood, 170.
Education, of prison population,
25; in Soviet Union, I73#.
Eight-hour day, in Soviet Union,
172.
Emergency Immigration Bill,
114-11S.
Emigrant Agency Law, 94-95.
Employers, tactics of, I2#., iii.
Entertainments, for prisoners, 60.
Exploitation, methods of under
capitalism, 16 ff.
Exploitation, of convict labor.
Chap. III.
Export, of prison made goods,
45.
Factory committees, in Soviet
Union, 171.
Fall, Albert B., 27.
Farmers' Alliance, no.
Farms, prison labor on, 42.
Farm laborers, ntmiber of in
Philippines, 139.
Farm states, prison labor in, 37-
38.
Federated Press, 20, 125.
Firestone Rubber Co., I32#.
Fire hazards, in prisons, 52.
Fish Committee, 147.
Five Year Plan, 146, 150, 158,
166, 167, 169, 171, 179, 180.
Florida, peonage in, 103.
Food, on chain gangs, 71 ; cost
of in prisons, 58.
Foreign intervention, against
peonage, loi.
Foreign Policy Assn., 134.
INDEX
189
Frame-up charges, 29, 89.
"Free" labor, io#., 18.
Freeman, Joseph, 154, 163.
Gentile, Peter J., torture of, 57.
Georgia, peonage in, 102-103, 104 ;
profits from chain gang opera-
tions in, 70; value of prison
goods in, 35.
Georgia Nigger, 70, 74.
Gill, Howard H., 46, 50.
Good, Harry, 55, 56.
Gorsky, A. L., 158.
Government work, peonage on,
107-109.
Great Southern Lumber Co., 112,
^ 157.
Green, William, 63.
Guatemala, peonage in, 129-131;
revolts in, 144; wages in, 130-
131.
Guggenheims, slave conditions in
mines of, 122.
Haiti, forced labor conditions in,
127-128.
Hammond, J. H., 17.
Harlan strike, 29.
Hart, Hastings H., 38.
Hart, Robert W., 140.
Haskell, William N., 174.
Hawaii, contract labor in, 136-
139.
Hazardous occupations, hours of
work in, in Soviet Union, 172.
Hines, W. D., 133, 134.
Hitchman Coal and Coke Co.,
methods used against militant
workers, 14.
"Home" life, in prisons, 58-59;
on chain gangs, 70#.
Honduras, 129.
Hoover, Herbert, disregard for
native lives, 121 -122, 132.
Hoover, Hiram F., 109.
Hours, in Czarist Russia, 172; in
Soviet Union, 171.
Hours of work, of convicts, 54-
55; on government construc-
tion, 108.
Housing conditions, in chain
gang camps, 71.
Houston, Cecil, 72.
Hyde, Arthur M., 88.
Illiteracy, abolition of in Soviet
prisons, 160.
Immigrants, conditions of, loi.
Immigration Commission, peon-
age investigation, loi, 102.
Imperialism, ii8#., I29#.; forms
of labor under, 17 ff.; struggles
against, I44#.
Imperial Valley, 117. '
Imports, made by forced labor,
120-121.
Indiana State Prison, 44.
Indictments, for peonage, ioo#.
Injunctions, 18.
Interest rates, charged tenant
farmers, 88.
International Labor Defense, 82,
113.
International Longshoremen's
Assn., 117.
Interstate commerce, value of
convict labor in, 35.
Investments, in Philippines, 139.
Irons, use of on chain gangs, 74.
"Jumping Contract" law, gsff-
Justice, under capitalism, 30.
Kautsky, Karl, 147.
Kentucky, value of prison goods
in, 35.
Killings, on chain gangs, 72, 78-
82; of Negro tenant farmers,
no; of prisoners, 41; of share
croppers, 103.
Kirby Lumber Co., 157.
Kulaks, exile of, 153, I58#.
Labor camps, 102.
Labor Code, in Soviet Union,
I54#.
Labor communes, 160.
Labor turnover, in Soviet Union,
I54#.
Lashmg, of prisoners, 55, 56, 59,
69#M 73, 7^-77, 79#.; on gov-
ernment jobs, 107.
Lawes, Lewis E., 25, 36.
Laws, used to enforce peonage,
9iif.
Lease system, 40, 49, 65.
Leavenworth, strike of prisoners
in, 59, 65.
Leavitt, Julian, 47, 61.
190
INDEX
Lee Memorial Boulevard, prison
labor on, 45.
Lee, Yuel, 31.
Legalization, of peonage, 9i#.
Lenin, 147, 162.
Liberia, forced labor in, 131 -136.
Local jails, convict labor in, 38-
39.
Loudon County, strike of prison-
ers in, 65.
Love joy, C. E., 160.
Lumber, Soviet, 148-149, I56#.;
in U. S., 157; manufactured by
prisoners, 42.
MacCormick, Austin H., 25, 26.
Man hunting, 73.
Maillefert, Arthur, 69, 80, 81.
Maine, peonage in, loi.
Marine Corps, 143.
Marines, in Haiti, 128.
Marketing, of prison goods, 43-
45.
Marx, Karl, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 21,
162, 164, 181.
McDonald, J. E., 81.
Medical aid, in Soviet Union, 172.
Methods of coercion, under capi-
talism, 12ff.
Mexicans, peonage among, in
United States, ii4#.
Militia, use of against farm
union, 109.
Minnesota, peonage in, 102.
Minors, hours of work of in
Soviet Union, 172.
Mississippi flood, peonage ex-
posed through, 104.
Mississippi, peonage in, 103.
Montgomery, Mrs. W. A., 82.
Mooney, Tom, and Billings, War-
ren K., 29, z6, 56.
Moros, struggles of, 141.
Munro, Dana G., 129.
Mutilation (self), by prisoners,
55, 56.
Nashville State Penitentiary,
profits of, 37.
National Association for Ad-
vancement of Colored People,
113.
National Civic Federation, 170.
National Guard, 104.
National Workers' Federation of
Cuba, 144.
Negroes, arrests of as vagrants,
112; discrimination against, 30;
imported into Cuba, I24#., 128;
persecution of, 28, 31, 69, 72,
83, 84, 88, 96, 99, 103, 107, hi;
in prisons, 68, 70, 74, 76, 77 \
slavery conditions of, 40;
struggles of, 64, 65, 109, no,
114.
North Dakota, peonage in, 102.
North, peonage in, 87-88, loi.
Obligatory labor, in Soviet
Union, 155, 156.
Occupational diseases, among
prison workers, 52-54.
O'Connor, Harvey, 125.
October Revolution, 157, 160, 172,
179.
O'Hare, Kate Richards, 47, 55.
Oppenheimer, Jacob, torture of,
60.
Organization, among tenant
farmers, I09#.
Orphan Jones, 31.
Overcrowding, of prisons, 26,
52.
Pacific Northwest, peonage in,
115-116.
Padrone system, 87-88, 102.
Panama, 129.
Paris Commune, i8r.
Patriotic labels, on prison goods,
44-45.
Pawning, 132. ^
Penal methods in Soviet Union,
159.
Pennsylvania, prison labor in, 38-
39.
Peonage, Chaps. VI, VII.
Peterson, Willie, 31. ^
Philippines, peonage in, 139-141J
struggles in, 141.
Pickens, William, 113.
Piece price system, 44.
Piggott, James E., 107.
Piatt, Thomas C, 63-64.
Police, help of in securing forced
laborers, 92.
Political prisoners, 32, 81.
Price, George M., 170.
INDEX
191
Prisoners, treatment of in Soviet
Union, I59#.
Prison farms, tortures on, 82.
Prison goods, value of, 34.
Prison Industries, 46, 47.
Prison population, 24#.
Products, of convict labor, 36£f.;
of forced labor, 120-122.
Profits, from chain gangs, 70.
Property crimes, 26.
Prosecutions, for peonage, looff.
Public works, forced labor on, 20.
Public works system, 40.
Punishment, of prisoners, 5S-6i,
68#.
Rack, use of to break convicts, 75.
Rahway Reformatory, strike of
prisoners in, 65-66.
Rainey Amendment, 114, 115.
Rainey, Henry T., 151.
Real wages in Soviet Union,
171.
Rebellion, against peonage, I09#.
Red Cross, 21, 104, 105, 106.
Revolts, against prison labor,
62#.
Rewards, for recapture of es-
caped convicts, 72.
Road work, 102 ; of prisoners, 37.
Roller, Arnold, 124,
Rope, prison made, 42.
Sacco and Vanzetti, 29.
Salmon, Peter J., 48.
San Quentin prison, 36, 53, 56,
60.
Schools, in Soviet Union, 173-
174.
Scottsboro case, 29.
Sedition, jailings for, 29.
Sex perversion, in prisons, 59- ,
Share-croppers, 85, 105; organi-
zation among, 109.
Share Croppers Union, 113-114.
Shock-brigades, 167 ff.
Sickness, care of workers during,
in Soviet Union, 173.
Sinclair, Harry, 28.
Sing Sing factories, prosperity
of, 36.
Six-hour day, in Soviet Union,
172.
Slavery, iigff.
Slaves, in colonies of imperialist
powers, 18.
Slave trade, in Cuba, 125; in
Liberia, 132.
Smith, William H., 57.
Social insurance, in Soviet Union,
Socialist competition, i67#.
Socialist labor vs. capitalist
labor, i62#.
Sodomy, in prisons, 59.
Soldiers, use of in prison revolts,
64.
Solitary confinement, 56-57, 60.
Southern Worker, 68.
South, peonage in, 84#.; prison
labor in, 38, 42.
Soviet trade, measures against,
120.
Soviet Union, gff., 46, Chap. IX.
Speed-up, in prisons, 51, 54; on
chain gangs, 72.
Spivak, John L., 70, 74.
Stalin, Joseph, 166, 168.
State account system, 40.
State prisons, convict labor in,
36-38.
State, role of, 15.
State use system, 40, 47.
Stimson, Henry L., 19.
Stimuli, for increasing produc-
tion in Soviet Union, 166.
Stocks, use of in prisons, 60.
Stone, Edward B., 25.
Strait- jacket, 59-61.
Strike-breakers, use of convicts
as, 48-49-
Strikes, against peonage, i09#.;
of Japanese workers in Hawaii,
138; restrictions against right
to engage in, 18.
Struggles, against forced labor in
colonies, 141-144; in prisons,
1931-32, 65-67.
Struggles, against peonage, I09#.
Sugar industry, in Cuba, 124.
Sugar prices, reduced by peonage
in Cuba, 126.
Supreme Court, upholds yellow
dog contract, 14.
Surplus labor, 10.
Surplus value, 11, 163.
Sweat box, 60, 73-74, 75.
Swor, A. D., 83.
192
INDEX
Systems, of employing prisoners,
39-41.
Tabert, Martin, 68-69.
Tampa prisoners, 81.
Tansey, Michael, 80.
Tasks, of convicts, S4-SS.
Task system, 54, 56.
Tayug peasants, uprising of, 141-
Tenants, number of in Philip-
pines, 139.
Tenant system, in South, 84^.
Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad
Co., 40-41.
Texas, peonage in, 103.
Textile industry, in Alabama
prisons, 36.
Third degree, 30#.
Timber, Soviet, 156; in United
States, 157.
Tobacco Workers' Industrial
Union, 81.
Tortures, on chain gangs, 72#.;
of female prisoners, 62; of
prisoners, 30#., 55#.> S9-6i,
68#.
Trade unions, in Soviet Union,
i7off.
Trade Union Unity League, 112,
117; threat of chain gang for
organizers of, 82.
Trusties, use of, 72.
Tuberculosis, among prisoners,
S3-
Twine, prison made, 42.
Tzetlin, Michael, 153.
Unemployment, as cause of crime,
2S#.
Unemployment relief, as forced
labor, 19-20; in Soviet Union,
^73.
Unions, of tenant farmers, 109F.
United Fruit Co., 124-125, 144-
Vagrancy, as excuse for forced
labor, 20, giff., 94, io3, 112,
119.
Value of commodities, produced
by convict labor, 34#.
Van Waters, Miriam, 61.
Venereal diseases, among prison-
ers, 59.
Venezuela, 122.
Vocational training, 50.
Wage labor, 10, 16, 17, 118.
Wages, for cotton picking, 93;
effect of prison labor upon, 48;
on government construction
jobs, 108; in Guatemala, 130-
131; in Hawaii, 137-138; of
Mexican farm workers, 116; of
prisoners, 51-52, 65; in Soviet
Union, 156, 158.
Wales, Henry, 152.
West, peonage in, 102.
West Indies, forced labor in, 122-
123.
Whalen Documents, 146.
Wheeler, Burton K., 21.
Whippings, 69#., 73, 7^-77, 79#.;
of young girls, 62; on govern-
ment jobs, 107.
Wichita prison, tortures in, 57.
Wickersham Commission, 26, 27,
30, 31, 44, SI, 61.
Williams, Spencer, 154.
Woll, Matthew, 147, 170.
Women prisoners, 62.
Women workers, in Soviet
Union, 173.
Worcester, Dean C, 139.
Workers, under capitalism, io#.;
under fascism, 18; in prison,
24; under serfdom, 11; under
Socialism, i62#.
Work relief, 121.
Yankee imperialism, use of forced
labor by, 122-123.
Yazoo County, 106.
Yellow dog contracts, 14, 18.
Young workers, in prison, 61-
62.
Zeigler, Wiley, 82-83.
Zinoviev letter, 146.
THE END
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