approval of contracts for service, instruments of apprenticeship, licenses, fines, penalties, forfeitures, and wages of convicts, for the relief of indigent Negroes. If this fund was insufficient, the board might impose a tax of one dollar upon all male persons of color between eighteen and fifty, and fifty cents upon each female between eighteen and forty-five. This tax had to be paid on the day fixed or the person rendered himself liable to pay a double tax. It was the duty of every occupant of premises to make a report to the magistrate of any indigent colored person thereon, and the magistrate had to make inquiry into the condition and wants of such Negroes so reported. Moreover, the magistrate had to make a semiannual report of the condition of such Negroes to the chairman of the Board of Relief. The machinery for taking care of Negro paupers was worked out in more detail than it would be profitable to go into here.
South Carolina made also these very humane provisions: Where, upon any farm or lands, there were, on December 21, 1865, persons of color who were formerly the slaves of the owner, lessee, or occupant of the farm or lands present there on November 10, 1865, and had been there six months previous, helpless, either from old age, infancy, disease, or other cause, and unable to maintain themselves and had no parent or other relative able to maintain them or to provide other houses or quarters, it was not lawful for the present or any subsequent owner, lessee, or occupant before January 1, 1867, to evict such helpless person of color, under penalty of a fine of fifty dollars, or imprisonment of one month.
The law of Mississippi[61] provided that the same liabili-
