payments after this or not?”
“Dat’s whut Ah wuz sayin’. Jus’ as soon as Monday come, an’ dat fellah----”
Harshly: “Who you working for now?”
“Doctah Hollandah----”
“You cooking for him?”
Sullenly, with unfathomable negro mournfulness: “Yassuh.”
“How much is he paying you?”
“Three dollahs.”
“And you mean you can’t keep up? You can’t pay fifty cents a week?”
Still sullen, dark, and mournful, as doubtful and confused as jungle depths of Africa: “Doan know…Seem lak a long time since Ah started payin’ up----”
Harshly, cold as poison, quick as a striking snake: “You’ve never started paying up. You’ve paid nothing. You’re only paying interest, and behind in that.”
And still doubtfully, in black confusion, fumbling and fingering and bringing forth at last a wad of greasy little receipts from the battered purse: “Doan know, seem lak Ah got enough of dese to’ve paid dat ten dollahs up long ago. How much longer does Ah have to keep on payin’?”
“Till you’ve got ten dollars…All right, Carrie: here’s your receipt. You bring that extra dollar in next week.”
Others, a little more intelligent than Carrie, would comprehend more dearly what had happened to them, but would continue to pay because they were unable to get together at one time enough money to release them from their bondage. A few would have energy and power enough to save their pennies until at last they were able to buy back their freedom. Still others, after paying week by week and month by month, would just give up in despair and would pay no more. Then, of course, Clyde Beals was on them like a vulture. He nagged, he wheedled, and he threatened; and if, finally, he saw that he could get no more money from them, he took their household furniture. Hence the chaotic pile of malodorous junk which filled the shop.
Why, it may be asked, in a practice that was so flagrantly, nakedly, and unashamedly usurious as this, did Judge Rumford Bland not come into collision with the law? Did the police not know from what sources, and in what ways, his income was derived?
They knew perfectly. The very store in which this miserable business was carried on was within twenty yards of the City Hall, and within fifty feet of the side entrance to the town calaboose, up whose stone steps many of these same negroes had time and again been hauled and mauled and hurled into a cell. The practice, criminal though it was, was a common one, winked at by the local authorities, and but one of many similar practices by which unscrupulous white men all over the South feathered their own nests at the expense of an oppressed and ignorant people. The fact that such usury was practised chiefly against “a bunch of niggers” to a large degree condoned and pardoned it in the eyes of the law.
Moreover, Judge Rumford Bland knew that the people with whom he dealt would not inform on him. He knew that the negro stood in awe of the complex mystery of the law, of which he understood little or nothing, or in terror of its brutal force. The law for him was largely a matter of the police, and the police was a white man in a uniform, who had the power and authority to arrest him, to beat him with his fist or with a club, to shoot him with a gun, and to lock him up in a small, dark cell. It was not likely, therefore, that any negro would take his troubles to the police. He was not aware that he had any rights as a citizen, and that Judge Rumford Bland had violated those rights; or, if he was aware of rights, however vaguely, he was not likely to ask for their protection by a group of men at whose hands he had known only assault, arrest, and imprisonment.
Above the shambles of the nigger junk, upon the second floor, were Judge Bland’s offices. A wooden stairway, worn by the tread of clay-booted time, and a hand-rail, loose as an old tooth, smooth, besweated by the touch of many a black palm, led up to a dark hallway. Here, in
“Dat’s whut Ah wuz sayin’. Jus’ as soon as Monday come, an’ dat fellah----”
Harshly: “Who you working for now?”
“Doctah Hollandah----”
“You cooking for him?”
Sullenly, with unfathomable negro mournfulness: “Yassuh.”
“How much is he paying you?”
“Three dollahs.”
“And you mean you can’t keep up? You can’t pay fifty cents a week?”
Still sullen, dark, and mournful, as doubtful and confused as jungle depths of Africa: “Doan know…Seem lak a long time since Ah started payin’ up----”
Harshly, cold as poison, quick as a striking snake: “You’ve never started paying up. You’ve paid nothing. You’re only paying interest, and behind in that.”
And still doubtfully, in black confusion, fumbling and fingering and bringing forth at last a wad of greasy little receipts from the battered purse: “Doan know, seem lak Ah got enough of dese to’ve paid dat ten dollahs up long ago. How much longer does Ah have to keep on payin’?”
“Till you’ve got ten dollars…All right, Carrie: here’s your receipt. You bring that extra dollar in next week.”
Others, a little more intelligent than Carrie, would comprehend more dearly what had happened to them, but would continue to pay because they were unable to get together at one time enough money to release them from their bondage. A few would have energy and power enough to save their pennies until at last they were able to buy back their freedom. Still others, after paying week by week and month by month, would just give up in despair and would pay no more. Then, of course, Clyde Beals was on them like a vulture. He nagged, he wheedled, and he threatened; and if, finally, he saw that he could get no more money from them, he took their household furniture. Hence the chaotic pile of malodorous junk which filled the shop.
Why, it may be asked, in a practice that was so flagrantly, nakedly, and unashamedly usurious as this, did Judge Rumford Bland not come into collision with the law? Did the police not know from what sources, and in what ways, his income was derived?
They knew perfectly. The very store in which this miserable business was carried on was within twenty yards of the City Hall, and within fifty feet of the side entrance to the town calaboose, up whose stone steps many of these same negroes had time and again been hauled and mauled and hurled into a cell. The practice, criminal though it was, was a common one, winked at by the local authorities, and but one of many similar practices by which unscrupulous white men all over the South feathered their own nests at the expense of an oppressed and ignorant people. The fact that such usury was practised chiefly against “a bunch of niggers” to a large degree condoned and pardoned it in the eyes of the law.
Moreover, Judge Rumford Bland knew that the people with whom he dealt would not inform on him. He knew that the negro stood in awe of the complex mystery of the law, of which he understood little or nothing, or in terror of its brutal force. The law for him was largely a matter of the police, and the police was a white man in a uniform, who had the power and authority to arrest him, to beat him with his fist or with a club, to shoot him with a gun, and to lock him up in a small, dark cell. It was not likely, therefore, that any negro would take his troubles to the police. He was not aware that he had any rights as a citizen, and that Judge Rumford Bland had violated those rights; or, if he was aware of rights, however vaguely, he was not likely to ask for their protection by a group of men at whose hands he had known only assault, arrest, and imprisonment.
Above the shambles of the nigger junk, upon the second floor, were Judge Bland’s offices. A wooden stairway, worn by the tread of clay-booted time, and a hand-rail, loose as an old tooth, smooth, besweated by the touch of many a black palm, led up to a dark hallway. Here, in
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