The Isle of Strife. By Frederick J. Haekin
Christiansted, St. Croix, D. W. I., March 10. - St. Croix is in a condition that borders upon anarchy. The nearest thing to a ruling power is a negro who has organized his fellows against the handful of Danish and Irish land owners. This man, Hamilton Jackson, has made himself easily the most feared and famous individual in this island world. To his followers he is a god and king, a bringer of hope where there was note before. The planters see him as a menace to life and property; he is safe chiefly because if anything happened to him every black on the island would rise to revenge him.
Nor would it be the first time the blacks of St. Croix have risen against their masters. That is what gives the situation here its keen tension. That is why the Danish gunboat Valkyrien patrols the islands. That is why everyone here demands of every visiting American when the islands are to be formally transferred to the government of the United States. No more peaceful-seeming spot than St. Croix could be found, and yet fear on one side and unrest on the other are the emotions that lie just below the surface.
Seen in perspective, the story of this island has been that of one long struggle between the blacks and the whites. Always the land here has been owned by a few white men. At present there are only eleven separate holdings of sugar land, and there were never more than a hundred. Long ago slaves were brought from Africa to cultivate these lands. They always outnumbered the whites a hundred to one, and their condition was always peculiarly hopeless because their tiny island offered no hope of either escape or of bettering their condition. It is recorded that 1733 the slaves revolted against their masters and killed and burned them. When the revolt had been put down the royal council issued a proclamation which contained among others the following articles:
"The leaden of runaway slaves shall be pinched three times with red hot irons and then hung. Each runaway slave shall lose one leg, or if pardoned by his master, one ear, and shall receive 150 stripes. Slaves who steal to the value of four rix-dollars shall be pinched and hung. One white person shall be sufficient witness against a slave, and if suspected he may be tried by torture."
Despite the measures taken to hold them under the spell of fear; the slaves of St. Croix rose in revolt in 1848, and forced the governor of the islands to read a proclamation setting them free. This, however, made little change in their actual condition, They owned no land and were dependent Upon the planters for a roof. A contract labor law was passed which made their condition much the same as before. In 1879 they revolted against the contract- labor law, killed many of the planters and burned Christiansted to the ground. The contract labor law was abolished. Yet the condition of the people was little changed.
Only in the light of this troubled past can the present problems of St. Croix be understood. The organization of a labor union here is but a revolt of slaves in another form. For although freemen in name these people are still practically peons. But they have gone to the schools and found a leader, and they know of better ways to assert themselves than did the generation that burned Christiansted. They have twice gone on strike, have forced their wages up from 25 to 40 cents a day, and are now demanding shorter hours of work.
The planters charge that Hamilton Jackson has organized this union solely for his own profit; that he is preaching race hatred and the doctrine that the whites must be dispossessed; that he has told the people they must not work hard enough to sweat. The advance in wages they do not be grudge, they say, since profits in sugar are higher this year, but they assert that their field hands tell them they have instructions from Jackson not to work hard enough to "sweat their shirts." As a result they cannot get the new crop planted on time, and cultivation cannot be extended at all. They assert that although wages are 70 cents a day in Porto Rico, it costs less to cut and haul a load of cane there than in St. Croix, where wages are but 40 cents. The St. Croix field hand, they say, does just about one-tenth of what would be considered a fair day'i work in the United States.
The situation is greatly complicated by the fact that the Danish government, never effective, seems to have gone out of business. It is charged by many persons in the islands that the Danish government deliberately tolerated and encouraged the activities of Jackson before the sale in order to make conditions bad and foster pro-sale sentiment. Now he has gotten beyond their control if they wished to exercise it. .
The difference in viewpoint between black and white men here is well shown in their respective attitudes toward the living quarters furnished for the field hands. The latter owning no land, in accordance with ancient custom, the master furnishes each field hand with a room ten feet -by twelve. These rooms have stone walls, board floora and cast iron roofs. The negroes are allowed to cultivate patches of land, and they all own a few chickens, pigs and goats.
The planter shows you his happy village and asks if his negroes are, not indeed well off. Hamilton Jackson points out that the houses have no sanitary appliances, that whole families live in single rooms, that it is impossible to raise standards of morality and decency until the people are housed in a civilized way. The planter sees his negroes as child-like creatures, incapable of a different life, to whom he is kind and lenient. Jackson sees in them a people of possibilities, who have as much right to hope and progress as any other people. He has a complete plan of social reform, which he hopes to enact with the help of the United States government, just as the planters expect to put him in jail with our help.
(Omaha Daily Bee 22. marts 1917).
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