4 Opinion of the Court. made prima facie thereon. He was fined $20 for each dollar of his debt, and in default of payment was required to atone for it by serving time at the rate of less than 9¢ per day. Especially in view of the undenied assertions in Pollock's petition we cannot doubt that the presumption provision had a coercive effect in producing the plea of guilty. The statute laid its undivided weight upon him. The legislature had not even included a separability clause.22 Of course the function of the prima facie evidence section is to make it possible to convict where proof of guilt is lacking. No one questions that we clearly have held that such a presumption is prohibited by the Constitution and the federal statute. The Florida Legislature has enacted and twice re-enacted it since we so held. We cannot assume it was doing an idle thing. Since the presumption was known to be unconstitutional and of no use in a contested case, the only explanation we can find for its persistent appearance in the statute is its extra-legal coercive effect in suppressing defenses. It confronted this defendant. There was every probability that a law so recently and repeatedly enacted by the legislature would be followed by the trial court, whose judge was not required to be a lawyer. The possibility of obtaining relief by appeal was not bright, as the event proved, for Pollock had to come all the way to this Court and was required, and quite regularly, to post a supersedeas bond of $500, a hundred times the amount of his debt. He was an illiterate Negro laborer in the toils of the law for the want of $5. Such considerations bear importantly on the decision of a prisoner even if aided by counsel, as Pollock was not, whether to plead guilty and hope for leniency or to fight. It is plain that, had his plight after conviction 22 The Florida Legislature has made use of separability clauses where separability was the desire. See Florida Laws 1919, cc. 7808, 7936. Opinion of the Court. 322 U.S. not aroused outside help, Pollock himself would have been unheard in any appellate court. In the light of its history, there is no reason to believe that the law was generally used or especially useful merely to punish deceit. Florida has a general and comprehensive statute making it a crime to obtain money or property by false pretenses 23 or commit "gross fraud or cheat at common law." 24 These appear to authorize prosecution for even the petty amount involved here.25 We can conceive reasons, even if unconstitutional ones, which might lead well-intentioned persons to apply this Act as a means to make otherwise shiftless men work, but if in addition to this general fraud protection employers as a class are so susceptible to imposition that they need extra legislation, or workmen so crafty and subtle as to constitute a special menace, we do not know it, nor are we advised of such facts. We think that a state which maintains such a law in face of the court decisions we have recited may not be heard to say that a plea of guilty under the circumstances is not due to pressure of its statutory threat to convict him on the presumption. As we have seen, Florida persisted in putting upon its statute books a provision creating a presumption of fraud 23 Florida Statutes (1941) § 817.01. 24 Florida Statutes (1941) § 817.29. 20 These statutes earry permissible maximum punishment such, however, that they may be prosecuted only in courts presided over by judges required to be lawyers and where presumably defendant's rights are more accurately observed. See Florida Constitution, Art. V, §§ 3, 17; Florida Statutes (1941) §§ 32.05, 33.03, 36.01. 26 Dr. Albert Bushnell Hart in The Southern South, after reviewing and unsparingly condemning evidences of peonage in some regions, says, "Much of the peonage is simply a desperate attempt to make men earn their living. The trouble is that nobody is wise enough to invent a method of compelling specific performance of a labor contract which shall not carry with it the principle of bondage." P. 287. 4 Opinion of the Court. from the mere nonperformance of a contract for labor service three times after the courts ruled that such a provision violates the prohibition against peonage. To attach no meaning to such action, to say that legally speaking there was no such legislation, is to be blind to fact. Since the Florida Legislature deemed these repeated enactments to be important, we take the Legislature at its own word. Such a provision is on the statute books for those who are arrested for the crime, and it is on the statute books for us in considering the practical meaning of what Florida has done. In the view we take of the purpose and effect of this prima facie evidence provision it is not material whether as matter of state law it is regarded as an independent and severable provision. III. We are induced by the evident misunderstanding of our decisions by the Florida Supreme Court, in what we are convinced was a conscientious and painstaking study of them, to make more explicit the basis of constitutional invalidity of this type of statute. The undoubted aim of the Thirteenth Amendment as implemented by the Antipeonage Act was not merely to end slavery but to maintain a system of completely free and voluntary labor throughout the United States. Forced labor in some special circumstances may be consistent with the general basic system of free labor. For example, forced labor has been sustained as a means of punishing crime," and there are duties such as work on 27 United States v. Reynolds, 235 U. S. 133, 149; Loeb v. Jennings, 133 Ga. 796, 67 S. E. 101, affirmed on other grounds, 219 U. S. 582; Dunbar v. Atlanta, 7 Ga. App. 434, 67 S. E. 107. Cf. Chicago v. Williams, 254 Ill. 360, 98 N. E. 666; Chicago v. Coleman, 254 Ill. 338, 98 N. E. 521. Opinion of the Court. 322 U.S. highways 28 which society may compel. But in general the defense against oppressive hours, pay, working conditions, or treatment is the right to change employers. When the master can compel and the laborer cannot escape the obligation to go on, there is no power below to redress and no incentive above to relieve a harsh overlordship or unwholesome conditions of work. Resulting depression of working conditions and living standards affects not only the laborer under the system, but every other with whom his labor comes in competition. Whatever of social value there may be, and of course it is great, in enforcing contracts and collection of debts, Congress has put it beyond debate that no indebtedness warrants a suspension of the right to be free from compulsory service. This congressional policy means that no state can make the quitting of work any component of a crime, or make criminal sanctions available for holding unwilling persons to labor. The federal statutory test is a practical inquiry into the utilization of an act as well as its mere form and terms. Where peonage has existed in the United States it has done so chiefly by virtue of laws like the statute in question. Whether the statute did or did not include the presumption seems to have made little difference in its practical effect. In 1910, in response to a resolution of the House of Representatives, the Immigration Commission reported the results of an investigation of peonage among immigrants in the United States.29 It found that no general system of peonage existed, and that sentiment did not support it anywhere. On the other hand, it found sporadic cases of probable peonage in every state in the Union except Oklahoma and Connecticut. It pointed out that "there has probably existed in Maine the most com 28 Butler v. Perry, 240 U. S. 328. 29 Report on Peonage, Abstracts of Reports of the Immigration Commission, Vol. II, p. 439, Sen. Doc. No. 747, 61st Cong., 3d Sess. 4 Opinion of the Court. plete system of peonage in the entire country," in the lumber camps.30 In 1907, Maine enacted a statute, applicable only to lumber operations but in its terms very like the section of the Florida statute we are asked to sep 30 The operation of the system is described as follows: "In late years the natives who formerly supplied the labor for the logging concerns in that State have been engaged in the paper mills, and the lumber companies have been compelled to import laborers, largely foreigners, from other States. Boston is the chief labor market for the Maine forests. The employment agents misrepresent conditions in the woods, and frequently tell the laborers that the camps will be but a few miles from some town where they can go from time to time for recreation and enjoyment. Arriving at the outskirts of civilization the laborers are driven in wagons a short distance into the forests and then have to walk sometimes 60 or 70 miles into the interior, the roads being impassable for vehicles. The men will then be kept in the heart of the forest for months throughout the winter, living in a most rugged fashion and with no recreation whatever. A great many of them have rebelled against this treatment, and they have left their employers by the score. The lumbermen having advanced transportation and supplies have appealed to the legislature for protection. In February, 1907, a bill became a law making it a crime for a person to enter into an agreement to labor for any lumbering operation or in driving logs and in consideration thereof receive any advances of goods, money, or transportation, and unreasonably and with intent to defraud, fail to enter into said employment as agreed and labor a sufficient length of time to reimburse his employer for said advances and expenses. Judges in municipal courts and trial justices were given jurisdiction to try cases under this law, and the act provided that it would take effect immediately upon approval. When this bill was before the legislature, requests were made by citizens interested in factories and other industries that the provisions of the statute be made to protect all employers of labor. The attorney who introduced the bill on behalf of the lumber interests which he represented, has stated that he had refused to accede to these requests, inasmuch as he believed the provision should not be extended. The protection granted by the statute, therefore, was restricted to a favored class, persons interested in 'lumbering operations and in driving logs.'" Peonage Report, supra note 29, p. 447. |