58 HISTORY OF THE WHEEL AND ALLIANCE. 



him until the limit of the value of his crop is reached. 



4 ' The hard-working and fortunate tenants are in this 

 way forced to pay the debts of the idle and vicious and the 

 unfortunate. At the end of the crop gathering time there 

 is no difference in the financial condition of the two 

 classes. We are told that one shall not plant and another 

 eat, but it was not given to the prophet Isaiah even, to 

 look down the vista of time for 2,500 years and read the 

 Statutes of Arkansas. Under them every man who exe- 

 cutes an anaconda mortgage is considered to plant and eat 

 not; for them the heavens might as well be brass and the 

 earth iron. Those that now sow not, reap; and those that 

 plant not, eat. As originally enacted, this law made it a 

 felony, punishable by imprisonment at hard labor in the 

 penitentiary, for not less than one nor more than two years, 

 for the mortgagor to remove beyond the limits of the 

 county, or sell, barter, exchange or otherwise dispose of 

 any part of the mortgaged property." 



The same writer says by way of illustration, ( | Samuel 

 N. Beard executed an anaconda mortgage on his stock 

 and crop to be grown; he drew $43 worth of supplies at 

 the usual price in such cases. His stock and crop were 

 worth more than that amount. His wife languished on a 

 bed of sickness during the summer, and at last was too 

 weak to digest any longer the strong and coarse food which 

 her husband had, and her doctor ordered beef tea. The 

 door of the cabin in which he lived had no shutter; the 

 chill November winds were sweeping through it, imperil- 

 ing his wife's life. In this extremity he bartered seventy 

 pounds of his cotton for lean beef to make soup for his 

 wife and for a shutter to the door. For this, Beard was 

 indicted and sent to the penitentiary one year. He offered 

 to show that the property covered by the mortgage 

 exceeded in value the mortgage debt, and that he could 

 have no intention to defraud; but the Court said that the 



