The negro is not
only not permitted to be idle, but he is positively prohibited from
working or carrying on a business for himself; he is _compelled_ to be in
the "regular service" of a white man, and if he has no employer he is
_compelled_ to find one. It requires only a simple understanding among the
employers, and the negro is just as much bound to his employer "for better
and for worse" as he was when slavery existed in the old form. If he
should attempt to leave his employer on account of non-payment of wages or
bad treatment he is _compelled_ to find another one; and if no other will
take him he will be _compelled_ to return to him from whom he wanted to
escape. The employers, under such circumstances, are naturally at liberty
to arrange the matter of compensation according to their tastes, for the
negro will be compelled to be in the regular service of an employer,
whether he receives wages or not. The negro may be permitted by his
employer "to hire his own time," for in the spirit and intent of the
ordinance his time never properly belongs to him. But even the old system
of slavery was more liberal in this respect, for such "permission to hire
his own time" "shall never extend over seven days at any one time." (Sec.
4.) The sections providing for the "_summary_" enforcement of the
penalties and placing their infliction into the hands of the "chief of
patrol"--which, by the way, throws some light upon the objects for which
the militia is to be reorganized--place the freedmen under a sort of
permanent martial law, while the provision investing every white man with
the power and authority of a police officer as against every black man
subjects them to the control even of those individuals who in other
communities are thought hardly fit to control themselves.
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