s have printed articles about the departure of the
laborers from Birmingham. On one page there is a story to the
effect that something should be done to prevent the exodus of
the negroes to other cities. And then on the same page there
appears a little paragraph stating that negroes were arrested
for failure to pay $2.50 street tax. The injustice of
arresting these negroes for the inability to have $2.50 ready
to turn over into the coffers of the city is obvious. While
they have been taken into custody, despite their protests that
they merely have not a sufficient amount of money with which
to meet the demand, you do not see that white men are arrested
for the failure to pay the tax. There is no gainsaying the
fact that there are thousands of men walking the streets who
have not paid a similar sum into the treasury of the city. The
negroes ought to get a square deal. When he is without funds,
you can not blame him for that. The city police ought to be
more reliable, or at least show no favoritism.[25]

The fee system in the courts of the South is one of the most effective
causes of the migration. The employers of labor fought this system for
eight years and finally got it abolished in Jefferson county,
Alabama. Under this system the sheriff received a fee for feeding all
prisoners. The greater the number of prisoners, the greater would be
the income for the sheriff's office. As a result, it became customary
in Jefferson county, Alabama, to arrest negroes in large numbers.
Deputy sheriffs would go out to mining camps where there were large
numbers of laborers and bring back fifty or more negroes at a time.
This condition became unbearable both to the employer and to the
employe. Calling attention to the evil of this fee system, Dr. W.H.
Oates, State Prison Inspector, said in his annual report for 1914:[26]

The vile, pernicious, pervading fee system beggars description
and my vocabulary is inadequate to describe its deleterious
and baneful effects. It increases in the management of our
jails greed for the almighty dollar. Prisoners are arrested
because of the dollar and, shame to say, are frequently kept
in captivity for months in steel cages for no other reason
than the almighty dollar.

During the fiscal year ending September 30, 1917, Jefferson county had
6,000 prisoners as follows:

In jail at the beginning of the year