On the Levees

From the South last week ugly stories seeped up to Washington of peonage and brutality among workers on the Government's flood control jobs around Vicksburg on the Mississippi. President Hoover received complaints from the Vicksburg Chamber of Commerce. Major General Lytle Brown, Chief of Army Engineers, began a personal investigation on the spot. The American Federation of Labor received a formal report from two investigators of its own.

Along the Mississippi near Vicksburg the War Department has contracted with 19 different companies to move 30,000,000 cu. yd. of earth for new levees at a cost of $6,000,000. On this unskilled, backbreaking work some 4,500 men, black and white, have been employed. They live mostly in contractors' camps, often deal with company commissaries.

Thomas Carroll and Holt Ross, A. F. of L. investigators, charged that: 1) "slavery in its most hideous form" existed in these camps; 2) workers were flogged with plow lines, beaten with pistol butts to maintain discipline; 3) men were compelled to work up to 18 hr. per day, often without overtime pay; 4) wages ranged from 75-c- to $2 per day; 5) workers were forced to deal at company commissaries, pay exorbitant prices; 6 ) from each man's weekly wage $4.50 for food, $1 for tent rent, 50-c- for cook hire were arbitrarily deducted by the contractors.

Other observers on the spot declared that conditions varied in the different contract camps but that all were livable, with ample and substantial food. Commissaries were maintained only at isolated camps. Levee contractors often carried their workers over long periods of unemployment.

Congress, sitting this week, cocked an inquisitive eye toward labor on the levees. William Green, A. F. of L. president, asking for a thorough investigation, exclaimed: "Exploitation of defenseless workers has been practiced in a most vicious and reprehensible way."

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