KEPT BACK BY FRAUD

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 7, 1870

KEPT BACK BY FRAUD.

James speaks of a certain class of rich oppressors, who, in the last days, keep back by fraud, the hire of their laborers. It is not an open refusal to pay just debts, but a fraudulent transaction, a resort to the many dishonest ways which selfishness may devise to keep back wages, or cheat the laborer out of his just dues. Is not this emphatically fulfilled in the cases of very many of the freedmen of the South? In the report of the Agricultural Bureau of Washington, for April, 1870, we find the following statement:—

“Ouachita County, Louisiana.—The freedmen are working ‘on shares’; they get on an average one-third of the crop, and are at no expense (at least they are offered this). At the end of the year, however, in too many cases, the planter brings in a bill for goods sold the laborer, which takes up all his cotton; the corn is generally sold to the planter or employer at a nominal price, and the poor negro commences a new year’s work without a cent.”