The Civil War killed slavery as an institution, but not as an occasional form of criminal behavior. The U.S. Department of Justice from time to time finds violators of the anti-peonage act of 1867; since mid-1950 it has successfully prosecuted ten. Last week Federal Judge Seybourn H. Lynne in Birmingham sentenced Farmers Oscar and Fred Dial to 18 months in prison for holding Negroes in involuntary servitude.
The Dial brothers got their slaves from jails. They paid the Negroes' fines, drove them home to work on the Dial farms near Boyd, Ala., and...
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