having such propensities, and all such people should be dealt with justly by law.  Our present contention is that throughout the period of which we are now speaking the dominant social system was not only such as to accentuate criminal elements but also such as even sought to discourage aspiring men.  A few illustrations, drawn from widely different phases of life, must suffice.  In the spring of 1903, and again in 1904, Jackson W. Giles, of Montgomery County, Alabama, contended before the Supreme Court of the United States that he and other Negroes in his county were wrongfully excluded from the franchise by the new Alabama constitution.  Twice was his case thrown out on technicalities, the first time it was said because he was petitioning for the right to vote under a constitution whose validity he denied, and the second time because the Federal right that he claimed had not been passed on in the state court from whose decision he appealed.  Thus the supreme tribunal in the United States evaded at the time any formal judgment as to the real validity of the new suffrage provisions.  In 1903, moreover, in Alabama, Negroes charged with petty offenses and sometimes with no offense at all were still sent to convict farms or turned over to contractors.  They were sometimes compelled to work as peons for a length of time; and they were flogged, starved, hunted with bloodhounds, and sold from one contractor to another in direct violation of law.  One Joseph Patterson borrowed $1 on a Saturday, promising to pay the amount on the following Tuesday morning.  He did not get to town at the appointed time, and he was arrested and carried before a justice of the peace, who found him guilty of obtaining money under false pretenses.  No time whatever was given to the Negro to get witnesses or a lawyer, or to get money with which to pay his fine and the costs of court.  He was sold for $25 to a man named Hardy, who worked him for a year and then sold him for $40 to another man named Pace.  Patterson tried to escape, but was recaptured and given a sentence of six months more.  He was then required to serve for an additional year to pay a doctor’s bill.  When the case at last attracted attention, it appeared that for $1 borrowed in 1903 he was not finally to be released before 1906.  Another case of interest and importance was set in New York.  In the spring of 1909 a pullman porter was arrested on the charge of stealing a card-case containing $20.  The next day he was discharged as innocent.  He then entered against his accuser a suit for $10,000 damages.  The jury awarded him $2,500, which amount the court reduced to $300, Justice P.H.  Dugro saying that a Negro when falsely imprisoned did not suffer the same amount of injury that a white man would suffer—­an opinion which the New York Age very naturally characterized as “one of the basest and most offensive ever handed down by a New York judge.”