1. Peonage is a form of involuntary servitude, within the
meaning of the Thirteenth Amendment, and the Act of Congress of
March 2, 1867, is an appropriate implementation of that Amendment.
P.
315 U. S.
29.
2. A state statute making it a crime for any person to contract
with another to perform services of any kind, and thereupon obtain
in advance money or other thing of value, with intent not to
perform such service, and providing further that failure to perform
the service or to return the money, without good and sufficient
cause,
Page 315 U. S. 26
shall be deemed presumptive evidence of intent, at the time of
making the contract, not to perform such service
held
violative of the Thirteenth Amendment and the Act of 1867. P.
315 U. S.
29.
The necessary consequence of such statute is that one who has
received an advance on a contract for services which he is unable
to repay is bound by the threat of penal sanction to remain at his
employment until the debt has been discharged. Such coerced labor
is peonage.
191 Ga. 682, 13 S.E.2d 647, reversed.
Appeal from a judgment affirming a conviction for violation of a
state statute.
MR. JUSTICE BYRNES delivered the opinion of the Court.
Appellant was indicted in the Superior Court of Wilkinson
County, Georgia, for violation of §§ 7408 and 7409, of Title 26 of
the Georgia Code. Section 7408 provides:
"Any person who shall contract with another to perform for him
services of any kind with intent to procure money, or other thing
of value thereby, and not to perform the service contracted for, to
the loss and damage of the hirer; or after having so contracted,
shall procure from the hirer money, or other thing of value, with
intent not to perform such service, to the loss and damage of the
hirer, he shall be deemed a common cheat and swindler, and, upon
conviction, shall be punished as for a misdemeanor. [
Footnote 1]"
And Section 7409 declares:
Page 315 U. S. 27
"Satisfactory proof of the contract, the procuring thereon of
money or other thing of value, the failure to perform the services
so contracted for, or failure to return the money so advanced with
interest thereon at the time said labor was to be performed,
without good and sufficient cause and loss or damage to the hirer,
shall be deemed presumptive evidence of the intent referred to in
the preceding section. [
Footnote
2]"
The indictment alleged that appellant had entered into a
contract with R. L. Hardie to perform manual labor for $1.25 a day
until he had earned $19.50 at that rate, that he had done so with
the intent not to perform the services, that he had thus obtained
the $19.50 as an advance, that he had failed without good and
sufficient cause to do the work, that he had failed and refused to
repay the $19.50, and that loss and damage to Hardie had resulted.
Appellant demurred to the indictment, asserting that §§ 7408 and
7409, upon which it was based, were repugnant both to the
Thirteenth Amendment and the Act of Congress passed pursuant to it,
[
Footnote 3] and to the due
process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The demurrer was
overruled, exception was taken, and the case went to trial.
Hardie was the only witness for the State. He testified that the
agreement had been made, that he had advanced the $19.50, that
appellant had neither done the work
Page 315 U. S. 28
nor returned the money, and that, although appellant had said
something about being sick, he had given no visible sign of it, and
had not been confined to bed. Under the statutes of Georgia,
[
Footnote 4] appellant could
not testify under oath, but he was permitted to make an unsworn
statement in which he generally denied that he and Hardie had made
the agreement or that Hardie had paid him the $19.50. The trial
judge charged the jury in the language of §§ 7408 and 7409. He
refused to instruct the jury that these sections are repugnant to
the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution of the
United States.
The jury returned a verdict of guilty, and judgment of
conviction was entered. Appellant moved for a new trial on the
ground that §§ 7408 and 7409 violated provisions of both the
federal and state Constitutions, and the motion was denied. On
appeal, the conviction was affirmed by the Supreme Court of
Georgia. 191 Ga. 682, 13 S.E.2d 647.
Page 315 U. S. 29
We think the conviction must be reversed. There is no material
distinction between the Georgia statutes challenged here and the
Alabama statute which was held to violate the Thirteenth Amendment
in
Bailey v. Alabama, 219 U. S. 219.
[
Footnote 5] It is argued here,
just as it was in the
Bailey case, that the purpose of §
7408 is nothing more than the punishment of a species of fraud --
namely, the obtaining of money by a promise to perform services
with intent never to perform them. And the presumption created by §
7409 is said to be merely a rule of evidence for the trial of cases
arising under § 7408. Actually, however, § 7409 embodies a
substantive prohibition which squarely contravenes the Thirteenth
Amendment and the Act of Congress of March 2, 1867. [
Footnote 6] Its effect is to authorize the
jury to convict upon proof that an agreement has been reached, that
money has been advanced on the strength of it, that the money has
not been returned, that the appellant has failed or refused to
perform the services "without good and sufficient cause," and
nothing more. The necessary consequence is that one who has
received an advance on a contract for services which he is unable
to repay is bound by the threat of penal sanction to remain at his
employment until the debt has been discharged. Such coerced labor
is peonage. And it is no less so because a presumed initial fraud,
rather than a subsequent breach of the employment contract. is the
asserted target of the statute. It is, of course, clear that
peonage is a form of involuntary servitude within the meaning of
the Thirteenth Amendment, and that the Act of 1867 is an
"appropriate" implementation of that Amendment.
Clyatt v.
United States, 197 U. S. 207.
We are told that the manner in which these sections have been
interpreted by the courts of Georgia rescues
Page 315 U. S. 30
them from invalidity. It is urged that the phrase "without good
and sufficient cause," which appears in § 7409, in effect requires
proof of fraudulent intent at the time of making the contract and
obtaining the money. But this argument is wide of the mark. The
words "without good and sufficient cause" plainly refer to the
failure to perform the services or to return the money advanced.
Since the subsequent breach of the contract by the defendant,
however capricious or reprehensible, does not establish a
fraudulent intent at the initial stage of the transaction, the
content which has been assigned to the phrase "without good and
sufficient cause" by the Georgia courts is immaterial.
See
Bailey v. Alabama, 219 U.S. at
219 U. S.
233-234.
Moreover, as the Court observed in the
Bailey case,
"the controlling construction of the statute is the affirmance of
this judgment of conviction." 219 U.S. at
219 U. S. 235.
The most that the jury could have found in the evidence here was
proof that the contract had been made, that $19.50 had been
advanced, that the appellant had failed to do the work or to return
the money, and perhaps that this failure had been "without good and
sufficient cause." The presumption created by § 7409 was thus
essential to the conviction.
It is true that it appears from the record that the Supreme
Court of Georgia regarded it as unnecessary to determine the
sufficiency of the evidence to support the verdict because "the
defendant relies solely on constitutional grounds." And it is also
true that it appears from the record that, in his brief in that
court, the appellant stated:
"Inasmuch as the defendant, in seeking to set aside his
conviction, relies solely on constitutional grounds, the evidence
set out in the record is material only insofar as it relates to
these grounds."
However, the only possible construction of this statement, in
the light of appellant's consistent attack upon the presumption
created by § 7409,
Page 315 U. S. 31
is that appellant agreed to waive any contention that the
evidence was insufficient to establish the factors declared by that
section to warrant the presumption of an initial intent to defraud.
He cannot fairly be said to have conceded more. Consequently, the
Georgia Supreme Court could not escape the necessity of passing
upon the validity of the presumption raised by § 7409 in order to
sustain the conviction.
We are aware that, in
Wilson v. State, 138 Ga. 489, 75
S.E. 619, the Supreme Court of Georgia held that
Bailey v.
Alabama does not require the invalidation of these sections.
Its error in so doing arose from a misconception of the scope of
the
Bailey decision. To be sure, a judicially created rule
in Alabama denied to a defendant the opportunity to make any kind
of statement as to his uncommunicated motives, and this
circumstance drew the notice of the Court, 219 U.S. at
219 U. S. 228,
219 U. S. 236.
In Georgia, on the other hand, a defendant is permitted to make an
unsworn statement if he chooses. But the opinion in the
Bailey case leaves no doubt that this factor was far from
controlling, and that its effect was simply to accentuate the
harshness of an otherwise invalid statute.
We think that the sections of the Georgia Code upon which this
conviction rests are repugnant to the Thirteenth Amendment and to
the Act of 1867, and that the conviction must therefore be
reversed.
Reversed.
MR. JUSTICE ROBERTS took no part in the decision of this
case.
[
Footnote 1]
Section 1065 of the Georgia Penal Code (Ga.Code (1933), Title
27, § 2506) provides:
"Except where otherwise provided, every crime declared to be a
misdemeanor shall be punishable by a fine not to exceed $1,000,
imprisonment not to exceed six months, to work in the chain gang on
the public roads, or on such other public works as the county or
State authorities may employ the chain gang, not to exceed 12
months, any one or more of these punishments in the discretion of
the judge. . . ."
[
Footnote 2]
These two sections were enacted as sections one and two of the
Act of August 15, 1903. Ga.Laws 1903, p. 90.
[
Footnote 3]
The Thirteenth Amendment reads:
"Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as
a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly
convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place
subject to their jurisdiction."
"Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by
appropriate legislation."
U.S.C. Title 8, Section 56, reads:
"The holding of any person to service or labor under the system
known as peonage is abolished and forever prohibited in any
Territory or the United States, and all acts, laws, resolutions,
orders, regulations, or usages of any Territory or State, which
have heretofore established, maintained, or enforced, or by virtue
of which any attempt shall hereafter be made to establish,
maintain, or enforce, directly or indirectly, the voluntary or
involuntary service or labor of any persons as peons, in
liquidation of any debt or obligation, or otherwise, are declared
null and void."
U.S.C. Title 18, Section 444:
"Whoever holds, arrests, returns, or causes to be held,
arrested, or returned, or in any manner aids in the arrest or
return of any person to a condition of peonage shall be fined not
more than $5,000, or imprisoned not more than five years, or
both."
[
Footnote 4]
Georgia Code (1933), Title 38, §§ 415, 416.
[
Footnote 5]
And cf. State v. Oliva, 144 La. 51, 80 So. 195;
Ex
parte Hollman, 79 S.C. 9, 60 S.E. 19.
[
Footnote 6]
See note 3
supra.