. "all who have no fixed residence or cannot
give a good account of themselves," . . . "or are loitering in or
about tippling-houses," "to give security for their good behavior for
a reasonable time and to indemnify the city against any charge for
their support, and in case of their inability or refusal to give such
security, to cause them to be confined to labor for a limited time, not
exceeding six calendar months, which said labor shall be designated by
the said mayor, aldermen, and common council, for the benefit of said
city."

It will be observed even by the least intelligent that the charge made
in this city ordinance was, in substance, the poverty of the classes
quoted--a poverty which was of course the inevitable result of slavery.
To make the punishment for no crime effective, the city government was
empowered "to appoint a person or persons to take those sentenced to
labor from their place of confinement to the place appointed for their
working, and to watch them while at labor and return them before
sundown to their place of confinement; and, if they shall be found
afterwards offending, such security may again be required, and for want
thereof the like proceeding may again be had from time to time, as
often as may be necessary." The plain meaning of all this was, that
these helpless and ignorant men, having been robbed all their lives of
the fruit of their labor by slavery, and being necessarily and in
consequence poor, must be punished for it by being robbed again of all
they had honestly earned. If they stubbornly continued in their
poverty, the like proceeding (of depriving them of the fruits of their
labor) "may again be had from time to time, as often as may be
necessary." It would, of course, be found "necessary" just as long as
the city of Mobile was in need of their labor without paying for it.

It has been abundantly substantiated, by impartial evidence, that when
these grievous outrages were committed under the forms of law, by the
joint authority of the Alabama Legislature and the city government of
Mobile, the labor of thousands of willing men could be hired for the
low wages of twenty-five cents per day, with an allowance of a peck of
corn-meal and four pounds of bacon for each man per week. It does not
change the character of the crime against these humble laborers, but
it certainly enhances its degree that the law-makers of Alabama
preferred an oppressive fraud to the honest payment of a