Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 122, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 May 1913 — HAD A REAL KICK COMING [ARTICLE]

HAD A REAL KICK COMING

Sam Jackson Rightly Indignant at Mean Trick Played on Him by Fellow Convicts. „ Sam Jackson* worked in the coal mines in Alabama. The company seined to think so much of Sam’s services that it put a striped suit on him, kept him in a stockade, with a pack a bloodhounds prowling around in case he tried io get away. Moreover, it contracted with the state, which had A year’s lien on Sam's labor because he had mistaken somebody elses’ property for his own and had been caught, to have Sam stay for that length of time. In short, Sam was a convict miner. It is the mle- that a convict has a stint to do —so many tons a day. He may earn extra money, and must do so to pay fqr the tools given him. The tools are then his own property. Sam paid for his, served out his year, and went back to Birmingham. Thoughtfully he cached his pack, drill, and lamp in a “dead” entry. In two weeks Sam had been caught at his old tricks, and the judge had sent him up for another year. The sheriff took him out to the mines, ’and Sam went straight to the place where he had hidden his tools. They were gone, somebody had stolen them. Sam went to the super. “What they take them tools for?” he asked Indignantly. “I axes you, ain’t they knowa man gwine need them tools again?”