rs, to
grade its road where the people were too poor to pay for it. The rest
of the convicts the governor was authorized to lease to three
penitentiary companies for twenty years for $500,000, to be paid in
annual installments of $25,000. In a test case by two of these
companies, in the Supreme Court of Georgia it was decided that the
lessees acquired a vested right of property in the labor of these
convicts, which the legislature could not disregard unless their labor
was required by the State, in which case the lessee demanded
compensation. The Supreme Court consequently granted an injunction
restraining the keeper from delivering said convicts to said railroad
company, thereby securing to the lessees a legal right of property in
the labor of the convicts till the contract is legally terminated.

In an investigation of 1896, presided over by Governor Atkinson, Capt.
Lowe, a lessee, testified:

"We do not think ourselves liable for the conduct of whipping bosses.
They are given their commissions by the State, and we insist that they
are answerable to the State alone. We cannot direct the whipping of
convicts; it must be done by the bosses. If all the convicts were
disabled by whipping, we think the State would be liable to us for
loss of time, because the whipping bosses are the agents of the
State."

Lessee Lowe admitted he was a close corporation, being president,
secretary, treasurer, boss and everything else of the company, which
held no meetings, had no stock, and declared no dividends.

Attorney-General Terrell held that the convicts were under the care of
the lessees, whose duty it was to see that they were treated humanely,
citing the order of 1887 by Governor Gordon, to prove that while the
whipping bosses were appointed by the governor, they were under the
control of the lessees. Governor Atkinson said that he did not dream
for a moment that the lessees did not consider it their duty to see
that the convicts were properly treated.

Mr. Huff, addressing the legislature, said, that "any attempt at
reformation of the present system is an absurdity, a swindle and a
fraud. It is a damnable outrage. The lessee contract would not stand
fifteen minutes before a petit jury. I could hang any of the lessees
before a petit jury in two and a half hours," said he.

One convict testified that in his case the skin came off with every
blow inflicted by a soaked strap drawn through sand; that twenty
bastard children we