and proceeded to the
North.[81]

A few days later Savannah reached a crisis in the labor movement
agitation, when over 100 negroes were placed under arrest at the Union
Depot and sent to the police barracks. Several patrol wagon loads of
police arrived at the station and immediately a cordon was formed by
the police around all negroes in the lobby and every exit from the
station was guarded. By this unusual sight many persons were attracted
to the station and excitement ran high. Many negroes were arrested
with a view to finding out the leaders of the movement, but upon
failure to discover the facts in the case the lieutenant in charge
ordered the men in custody to be incarcerated on charges of loitering.

To show how groundless these charges were, one need but to note
the character of some of the persons arrested. Four carpenters from
Lumpkin, Georgia, had just arrived and were waiting for a contractor
for whom they had agreed to work a short distance from the city.
Another young man entered the station to purchase a ticket to
Burroughs, Georgia, to see relatives, but he was not only incarcerated
but had to give a bond of $100 for his appearance next morning.
Another young man, working for the Pullman Company, entered the
depot to cash a check for $11 when he was arrested, sent to jail
and searched. Still another, a middle-aged man of most pleasing
appearance, had just arrived from Jacksonville, Florida, and was
waiting in the station until the time to proceed by boat that
afternoon to New York. On one occasion, J.H. Butler, manager of the
_Savannah Tribune_, a negro newspaper, was arrested charged with
violation of the city and State law of sending labor out of the city.
He was obliged to give bond of $400 to appear in court the next day.
At the same time seventeen college boys who were waiting at a New York
steamer dock were also apprehended. The trial of the men before the
recorder proved farcical, not a single one of the hundred or more
prisoners being required to testify. After the chief of the detective
force and several police lieutenants had testified, Recorder Schwartz
ordered the men all released, but not before he had taken occasion
to upbraid the police force for the unnecessarily large number of
arrests.[82]

Alabama was equally alive to the need to suppress the migration
propaganda among negroes. To this end the Montgomery City Commission
on September 19, 1916, passed an ordinance to the effect that