‘One law for the rich and one for the poor’ is not a metaphor, it’s the law. Statues against vagrancy, the ‘crime’ of being houseless, are so obviously and inherently laws wielded only against the poor and working class that their mere existence tells us all we need to know about the level of ‘democracy’ and ‘equality’ possible under capitalism. They serve only one purpose–to discipline labor with coercion, threats, and sanctified state violence.

‘Vagrancy and Capitalist Justice’ from The Daily Worker. Vol. 7 No. 191. August 9, 1930.

VAGRANCY laws are class legislation. They are directed against the poorest of the poor, against the jobless, the moneyless and homeless workers. The outrageous character of the vagrancy laws is evident even when applied only to the intended victims. But capitalist justice is not satisfied with that. It uses its vagrancy laws as instruments of scab herding. It uses them to hunt down labor organizers and political antagonists.

In the state of Georgia the capitalist masters threaten the labor organizers with the electric chair. In the state of Alabama the capitalist masters have found what they consider a better method to meet the problem of labor organizers. They arrest them and charge and convict them of vagrancy.

In Birmingham, Alabama, the domain of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company, the organizers of the Trade Union Unity League, of the American Negro Labor Congress and of the Communist Party have been arrested, charged with vagrancy and sentenced to one year on the chain gang. At the same time these organizers were told that if they did not leave the domain of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company they would be arrested every five days and charged with the same crime.

The vagrancy laws make unemployment a crime. On the chain gangs in the South hundreds of persons may be found whose one crime is that capitalism could not provide them with a job. The gentlemanly and chivalrous Southern masters use the vagrancy laws in order to have their roads mended and then public works accomplished without touching their pocketbooks. The chain gang is the method of the Southern gentlemen to unload on the shoulders of the poorest of the poor the burden of taxation which otherwise would have to be instituted in order to have the necessary public work performed. Yet, these gentlemen glibly talk about forced labor in the Soviet Union.

In undisguised brutality the judges in the South perform their duty of providing slaves for necessary public work; and they utilize any pretense to get them.

The crime of the “vagrant” is that he is homeless and moneyless.

This crime is punished with twelve months on the chain gang. The boss who refuses the worker a job and who is annoyed at the persistency with which the worker asks for a job, gets rid of the job-seeking worker by calling the police and having him arrested as a “vagrant.”

In the case of the organizers of the T.U.U.L., of the A.N.L.C. and of the Communist Party in Birmingham we have an application of the vagrancy law truly bringing out the real spirit of that law.

It is a law against the working class. Anyone who dares to propagate organization among the workers falls under these laws. It is true that the mere letter of the law presupposes that a vagrant is homeless and without income, while the organizers who have been charged with vagrancy in Alabama are supplied both with home and income by their organizations; but such little things do not bother the conscience of the Southern gentlemen. Such little things do not bother the conscience of a capitalist. His God demands that he make profit; and the capitalists all believe in their God; they condemn enemies of their God, whether the letter of the law justifies it or not. They sentence labor organizers to the chain gang. They know that if not the letter then the spirit of their law justifies it.

The American working class must unite to fight against all vagrancy laws. The millions of unemployed must make a struggle against vagrancy laws an immediate objective in their movement.

The workers must stop the outrage of the ruling class in Alabama, which maintains it power only by lynching. It does not matter whether this lynching is that of outright murder or whether it is the dry method of lynching by arresting and sentencing labor organizers and political antagonists to the chain gang for non-existent and non-committed crimes.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1930/v07-n191-Nat-aug-09-1930-DW-LOC.pdf