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Title: Peonage
The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 15

Author: Lafayette M. Hershaw

Release Date: February 17, 2010 [EBook #31300]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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OCCASIONAL PAPERS, NO. 15.

The American Negro Academy.

PEONAGE

--BY--
LAFAYETTE M. HERSHAW

PRICE : : 15 CTS.

WASHINGTON, D. C.:
PUBLISHED BY THE ACADEMY
1915

PEONAGE

BY LAFAYETTE M. HERSHAW

The Negro was kidnapped from the shores of Africa and brought into the
Western Hemisphere at the beginning of the sixteenth century in order to
meet the conditions growing out of an acute labor problem. The greedy and
adventurous Spaniard had come to these shores in quest of gold, and after
years of experiment he discovered that the Indian who lived in the islands
and on the coast of the New World, either would not or was not physically
able to perform the heavy labor of extracting gold from the mines. To meet
his greedy quest, it was then necessary to look elsewhere to find the man
who was feeble enough in will and strong enough in body to meet the
conditions which then presented themselves. The African was that man. It
is not the purpose of these reflections to deal with the institution of
slavery other than to point out that what slavery is appears altogether
from the point of view of the one who discusses it. It is common nowadays
to refer to it as a practical institution by means of which the savage
African was brought under the beneficent influences of Christianity,
taught the English language, and the joy of intelligently directed labor.
But before the beginning of the institution as a means of meeting the
needs of work, the moralist considered it as the sum of all villanies, the
reformer termed it the negation of all right. But the economist looks at
it as a system of labor, and the historian and philosopher, as a step in
the progress of the human race from the t