The Ohio Daily Express

$35 a Head Paid For Negro Laborers

DETROIT, Aug. 23. (ANP)-- The importation of four truckloads of Negro laborers from Georgia here at $35 a head was reported here last week. Fresh from the welfare rolls of Georgia, 212 Negroes including 28 single women took a three day ride packed in vans to Michigan where they had been told that they would get jobs paying them $6 to $12 a day. Angry about the whole affair, James Moore, director of Michigan employment service, ordered the trucker, Clyde Thompson of Savannah, to take the workers back. Although the refugees had been in Michigan only a week, Thompson has been able to round up only 41 men for the return trip. He can find none of the single women. He said most of the men found things in Michigan much better than in Georgia. Conditions under which the migrants travelled as well as those met here in Michigan were described as very insanitary by Dr. R. L. Loftin, health officer of Bay county. He said that the Negroes were herded into the trucks living on straw with no lights, water or sanitary facilities. They cooked their food in pots and pans brought from Georgia. Men, boys and the women were assigned to three farm camps in Bay county including a pig barn. On the road to Michigan the two doors to each van were locked from the outside, and two peepholes provided the only fresh air. In the meantime nobody seems to agree on how much Thompson is being paid for the colored workers. Welfare Director Grover G. Stine of Saginaw county, said he learned that Thompson was paid $35 for each person delivered. Thompson said nothing. Thompson's contract was with the Bayview Food Products company of Linwood in Bay county. The Bayview company in turn is supposed to supply the workers to the farmers in the harvest of pickle cucumbers. F. J. Janicke of the Bayview firm said that all information should come from Thompson. The Negroes in the meantime, learning that they could make only $4 a day, are resting for the time being. They take to the jails or the welfare agencies for food. They came up on the strength of handbills passed out by the Georgia employment service promising them the $6 to $12 a day pay in Michigan.