Improving Prison Conditions, Negroes Lured North Returning Home, Says Maxwell Gorman, May 24, 1923

Improved Prison Conditions. . . Negro Exodusters Been Fooled and Coming Back

By Maxwell Gorman

Raleigh, May 22—“Flabbergasted” victims of Governor Morrison confined to a few newspaper offices, are gradually recovering form the last shock (administered last Friday) when the Governor announced the adoption of the new system of State Prison management, under Superintendent George Pou, and for the reception of which they were totally unprepared.

The new departure has met with universal commendation of people and press (even including the few papers that couldn’t do otherwise under the compelling influence of public approval).

Now let the 100 counties of the State show like zeal and determination with regard to county convict camps and “chain gangs” (whereat the complaints of flogging were chiefly directed), and there will be a genuine and satisfying improvement.

Negro Exodusters Fooled

Some of the negro “unskilled laborers” who have recently left North Carolina for industrial points in the North are already beginning to drift back, dissatisfied and humbugged. Most of the exodusters were induced to leave by “emigration agents” who were paid so much per head for every negro landed at he Northern industrial centers concerned.

Some of the North Carolina negroes who landed in the Pennsylvania steel district (the scene of the hardest kind of work where foreigners most abound) are back with the statement that they were deceived and have had enough. They state that the labor agent told them they would receive from $4 to $7.50 per day, have a comfortable home to live in, work only eight hours, and be treated royally. He went—and quickly came back. He said he was paid $4 a day all right—but it was taken up by his board, wash, insurance, transportation, etc., that all he saw of his two weeks’ work was $2 given him for spending money. He said a fellow laborer told him it would take 10 weeks before he would begin drawing any real money, and for this reason and because the men were guarded at night to prevent their departure before the company account was squared, he slipped away and came back home.

From the front page of The Alamance Gleaner, Graham, N.C., May 24, 1923