d persons. Both races generally approve the
laws prohibiting inter-marriages between white and colored persons, which
seem to be uniform throughout the Southern States.

Florida seems to have gone a step further than the rest, and by sections
2612 and 2613, Revised Statutes, 1892, it is made a misdemeanor for a
white man and a colored woman, and vice versa, to sleep under the same
roof at night, occupying the same room. Florida is entitled to credit,
however, for a statute making marriages between white and colored persons
prior to 1866, where they continue to live together, valid and binding to
all intents and purposes.

In addition to this forced separation of the races by law, "from the
cradle to the grave," there is yet a sadder and more deplorable
separation, in the almost universal disposition to leave the negroes
wholly and severely to themselves in their home life and religious life,
by the white Christian people of the South, distinctly manifesting no
concern in their moral and religious development.

In Georgia and the Carolinas, and all the Gulf States (except Texas, where
the farm labor is mostly white) the negroes on the farms are held by a
system of laws which prevents them from leaving the plantations, and
enables the landlord to punish them by fine and imprisonment for any
alleged breach of contract. In the administration of these laws they are
virtually made slaves to the landlord, as long as they are in debt, and it
is wholly in the power of the landlord to forever keep them in debt.

By section 355, of the Criminal Code of South Carolina, 1902, it is made a
misdemeanor to violate a contract to work and labor on a farm, subject to
a fine of not less than five dollars, and more than one hundred dollars,
or imprisonment for not less than ten days, or more than thirty. It is
also made a misdemeanor to employ any farm laborer while under contract
with another, or to persuade or entice a farm laborer to leave his
employer.

The Georgia laws are a little stronger in this respect than the laws of
the other States. By section 121, of the Code of Georgia, 1895, it is
provided, "that if any person shall, by offering higher wages, or in any
other way entice, persuade or decoy, or attempt to entice, persuade or
decoy any farm laborer from his employer, he shall be guilty of a
misdemeanor." Again, by act of December 17th, 1901, the Georgia
Legislature passed a law making it an offense to rent land, or furnish