Another “meanest man in the world” has been found. He is Sonny Springs, negro, who was convicted on a charge of cruelty to animals in the police court Saturday morning. Judgment was held up. It was brought out in the evidence that Springs owns a regular menagerie. Goats, dogs, horses, chickens and other dumb brutes, both quadruped and biped, eke out a miserable existence on his premises. He makes it a policy, it was alleged, to train every living thing he comes in contact with.
And probably the goats fare worse. So menacingly has he wielded the leather strap over the hollow-horned ruminant mammals closely allied to the sheep that he declared the goats would get up on their hind legs and dance for him. When he says stop, they stop. When he says butt, they butt. When he says lie down, they lie down. Occasionally they don’t In such an instance they seldom live to tell the tale.
“Once one of de ole goats butted my little boy,” he said on the witness stand. “I got de whip and wore him out. He ain’t butt since.”
Springs has even trained his chickens. Every evening when the fathered tribe grew weary and sought solace in nocturnal oblivion, Springs would stand by the chicken coop with a whip and, as his little boy drove the mal-treated poultry through the front door of the chicken boudoir, the “animal trainer,” as Solicitor Guthrie called him, would administer such licks as he deemed necessary for discipline.
So thoroughly had the method worked that, according to the defendant, he could almost make the chickens keep house for him in his absence. Not a rooster dared crow unwarranted. Not a hen dared refuse to lay. The little biddies could almost work algebra. Perfect order reigned in the barn yard.
Then there was a horse in the case. He was trained to the minute, and could be called upon for any kind of aid in an emergency. The hose was the general foreman of the goats, dogs, chickens and other inhabitants of the place. He held a consultation with Springs each night.
But not so with the dog. The rebel springs up wherever subjugation reigns. The dog decided to have his own way aobut things. He sprad chaos in the hen house by sucking eggs, and, in dog language, told Springs to go to ---- and stay put.
One day Springs saw him sucking an egg. The court room was as still as death as Springs told of the murder of the arrogant canine. “I went to dat dog,” explained, “and I said, ‘What de hell you mean by dis? Aint you got no better sense?’”
“Did the dog say anything?” asked Solicitor Guthrie, as a howl of laughter went up in the court room.
“I didn’t give him time to say any thing,” replied the defendant. “I crowned him in the h4ead with a rock and drug him to de street. I went back a little while later, but he wasn’t dead, so I hit him agin with a piece of iron. Dat laid him out for fair.”
And this was what brought Springs into court. Several people saw him strike the dog and reported the matter to the police.
The trial lasted almost two hours as Springs told of the way he managed his domestic animals.
An argument arose between Attorney Stancill for the defense and Solicitor Guthrie as to whether a chicken was an animal or not. So complicated became the explanations that the judge said;
“Well, call it an insect and continue the case.”
Judge Jones declared at the conclusion of the trial that he wished he had the power to order some policeman to whip the defendant as he had whipped the dumb brutes he owned. A sick wife was the only thing that kept Springs from being sent to the roads. Judge Jones postponed his decision until he could find time to think up a fitting punishment for the defendant.
From The Charlotte News, July 9, 1921
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