The Subterranean Brotherhood Part 8

A man lately released has this to say: "The administration of the penitentiary is a sham and pretense. 'Reform' is a show, for the benefit of government inspectors and visitors, with, underneath, a callous and brutal disregard for the welfare of the convicts moral and physical. No tortures? I was trussed up, face to wall, with arms outstretched, for ten hours. When loosed, I just dropped to the floor from exhaustion, and did not rise till the next morning. That was during the present administration. When visitors and newspaper reporters go through the prison, 'there isn't any hole'; but the prisoner who thoughtlessly infracts a rule knows that there is one!

"In the Isolation Building there is a number of three-cornered cells where men are chained to the doors; they have little cots; these cells are shown. But down beneath there is the real hole. These underground cells have no cots; when a man drops, he drops on the cement floor. If they wish severely to discipline a man, they can make these cells practically airtight, and then turn on the steam through the pipes."

Let us have more testimony as to the dark hole. "The hole," writes another inmate, "is not a hole in the wall or in the ground, but it is a place to turn a man's cheeks white and to make his knees shake and his lips tremble, when, for some infraction of very strict rules, he is ordered to the hole. It is a row of holes; far down in the bottom of the big bastile is a row of little cells, six feet wide, nine feet long, and perhaps ten feet high. Solid concrete, with iron grating in the narrow door. Absolutely dark. Furniture, one iron rod, one blanket. The man is handcuffed between the rod and the wall, hands apart as far as he can hold them; at night the wall fastening is loosed, and he can lie down sliding the ring of his handcuff down the rod. No mattress or bed--just floor. Food, three ounces of bread and a gla.s.s of water at noon. The rules are said to be less severe than formerly; but two half-breed Indians, former friends, recognizing each other in Sunday school, ventured to whisper a greeting; they were put in the hole two days and nights, and one of them, a stout hardy boy, came out trembling and shaking as with mortal illness."

A man who served as guard in the prison under the present warden, but left in 1907, affirms that barbarities were not the exception at that time, but the "horrible custom. The dark hole is a reality; men were kept there weeks at a time, to my certain knowledge, within stifling walls, chained standing for intolerable periods, with great suffering.

The public understands 'solitary confinement' to mean a cell by one's self; but this cell is a dark dungeon below earth level. One convict had to be brought out on a litter, his legs swollen to a frightful size; he could not stand erect. I was reprimanded for entering his cell and helping him to sit up. A man named L. who had drawn back his hammer threateningly when a guard advanced upon him armed with a 'square,' but who ceased to resist when the guard drew his revolver, was sentenced to one hundred and forty-five days in the dungeon, with three slices of bread, with water, per day. Christian Endeavorers," this witness adds, "never have an opportunity to observe the real conditions. No outsider comes in contact with things as they are. No outsider in Atlanta has ever seen the dungeons."

G.W., formerly employed in the prison, says that "the hole near the plumber's shop was built while Morse, the banker, was in the prison, for I helped build it, and the warden, with another official, was down to see it at ten in the morning." Speaking of the statement that the dark hole was no longer in use, he adds, in his letter to me, "You know of the hanging up in the dark cell of the old Englishman, in October"--the month I left the penitentiary. I do know of it; the fight of this stubborn old fellow against the oppression of the prison authorities was the talk of the ranges just before my departure; he had done nothing worse than to use bad language; he would not give in; and I believe that it was found advisable at last to release him.

The case of poor little B. had a less agreeable sequel. He was dying of diabetes during the latter months of his confinement; he was an incorrigible little thief, a man of extraordinarily acute mind, and a sort of saturnine humorist withal. He had been repeatedly convicted and imprisoned, but "I can't let it alone," he would say. He was plump and flabby, ghastly pale, with protruding eyes, very clear and penetrating.

He was ridiculously impudent, but being so soon to die, as he himself well knew, none of the prisoners bore him a grudge. The authorities, however, thought it well to discipline him, and he was so repeatedly maltreated by them, and put in the dark hole, that his disease was greatly inflamed and the end hastened. I said something designed to be encouraging to him shortly before I left; but he fixed me with those singular eyes, and said, "I am doomed!"

The last I heard of B. was in a letter from a lady who has done much to help and relieve the sufferings and wrongs of prisoners in the jail. "B.

is in a dying condition," she writes; "he was severely punished while suffering from his disease. W.," she goes on, "died three days after a ten-days' punishment. He had to be lifted from the dark cell and carried to the hospital by attendants." Upon the whole, one has grounds for believing that the dark hole is not a fairy tale, and that it still exists and is at work in Atlanta Penitentiary, in spite of the impression to the contrary of the humane warden and his officials.

The geography of the places is, however, obscure, and is known to the elect only; it is said by inmates of old standing that underground pa.s.sages connect the prison buildings and lead from one dungeon to another. This sounds romantic, but would be obviously useful in practise. A map of the premises, surface and subterranean, would be interesting, and may hereafter be achieved by some inspection which really inspects. I have not spoken of some features of the dark cells, as described by men who have experienced them, because they are so revolting that editors of newspapers would decline to print them. Human beings are compelled to endure many things which the fastidiousness of other human beings cannot tolerate even the hearing of.

A prisoner named Keegan was killed at Atlanta not long before I was released, not by a guard's bullet, but by means as sure though slower and more cruel. We were all conversant with his case at the time, but I will quote the man who knew him and his sufferings most intimately. Here is his crude narrative written to me on prison paper.

"William Keegan died in August of this year (1913) at the Pen. He was first taken sick with pains in the legs, hands and arms, and went to morning sick call, but could never get anything done, because he was a little deaf and could not hear what the doctor said, and so could explain no further, and he was in a very bad fix. They did nothing for him, and he was afraid to see the doctor, because he would have been impatient, and would have sent him to the hole, and then he would lose time. But he did go up to see him after the pains got into his back also, and he told him he would like to get out of the stone shed; and the doctor told him there was nothing the matter with him, but he was only faking and trying to get out of work--which I know and can swear to as being true.

"If ever there was a sick man, Keegan was him. He told M. the foreman about it one day, who told him to have the doctor look him over, and sent him up one afternoon; the doctor looked him over and told him he was only a crank--nothing at all the matter with him. Soon after he was taken very sick, and one night I called the prison nurse to his cell, and he had him taken to the hospital, where he stayed some time, but it did him no good, for he came back to the cell house in just as bad a fix as before. Then they put him to work in the paint-house, and after he had been there about a week, they said he was crazy, and put him in the hole. He was treated shamefully in the hole, for the prison nurse even told me so. Then he was taken again to the hospital, and he never came out of it, for he died there, and the prison nurse told me he suffered terribly before his death. This I will swear is true before G.o.d.

"Very near every man in the Pen had a bad stomach, and could get nothing for it, for if you went to the doctor, he would tell you you ate too much, and give you a big dose of salts, and if you did not take them, he would put you in the hole, and then you would lose good time. But if a man had a pull, he would get along right enough. There was A., a bank wrecker, he was clerk in the stone shed, and I have seen him have eggs right in the kitchen, when we had only rice to eat with cold water and bread which was sour. If he didn't want to work he didn't have to, for when I worked as runner for the plumber I have seen A. lying down and smoking and reading or pretty near anything he wanted to do; but if other men had done less than half the things he did, they would have been put in the hole and lost good time also. Things should be looked into, for it is sure run shamefully."

Readers would perhaps like to know more of the doctor, whose professional activities are so engagingly described in the above statement. He is a medical graduate of recent vintage, poor but aristocratic, engaged to attend four hours a day at the penitentiary at a salary of fifteen hundred dollars a year. "I need the money," he once admitted to a colleague in the prison. Keegan, as we have seen, was under his penetrating eye for months, and he died a few days after the young gentleman had a.s.sured him that there was nothing the matter with him. The doctor dresses well, and has an air; he has the use of an automobile, and sometimes escorts good looking young nurses, or other young ladies, about the prison grounds. He has a knack at surgical operations, and urges prisoners to be operated upon; they sometimes recover, and sometimes do not. His use of drugs in his practise seems to have been mainly restricted to prescribing salts, and the hole, both effective in their way, but not always happy in their application to the cases under consideration.

He was always civil to me, and put me under the obligation of saving my life, for he ordered me a milk diet when I was succ.u.mbing to the influences of prison hash and "hot dog." It was part of his duty to visit the dining room every day--or was it every other day?--and inspect the food served to the prisoners. During my six months' stay, he appeared twice in the doorway, where he exchanged amenities with the guard; and once he traversed the aisle between my row of tables and the next, accompanied by some very nice looking girls. He had other duties, which he discharged with similar punctuality and fervor. And all for fifteen hundred a year.

There was a hearty, full-blooded, good natured young fellow, with red hair, who worked in the blacksmith's shop, and worked well. His overseer was a negro--this often happens in Atlanta Penitentiary. The heat in the forge room during summer was intense, and the red haired boy used to get rush of blood to the head, and finally asked a high official for leave to step out in the open air occasionally and cool off. It was granted.

But on one of these outings his negro master ordered him to go back and do a job of work for him; the other quoted his official permission; there was a wrangle, ending in an appeal to a higher official still. The latter, in the face of the lower official's testimony that he had authorized the recess, supported the negro, and the young blacksmith was sentenced to five days in the dark cell and thirty days' loss of good time. Discipline must be preserved.

Are such conditions as I have described general? The newspapers during my stay at Atlanta described a discussion in local prison circles as to the propriety or expediency of whipping female prisoners in the Georgia female prison (not connected with the federal penitentiary), and confining them in the dark hole. The warden of the prison, a gentleman named Mitch.e.l.l, and his guards, said that women did not mind confinement in the dark hole, and got no harm from it--though it was shown that after being so confined for a day or two, they were scarce able to stand and wholly unfit for work. The guards declared that the women could not be effectively disciplined except by flogging, and threatened to quit in a body if the practise were disallowed. Dr. MacDonald, of the prison, testified that although some wardens might abuse the power of flogging, and had lashed women on the bare back instead of over covering of one garment, as prescribed by the rules, still he favored whipping for them; he said the use of the "leather" was really more humane than the dungeon. Secretary Yancey, of the Prison Commission, also favored the lash.

On the other hand, State Representative Blackburn said that it was "a dangerous policy to give such wide discretionary powers to wardens scattered about the state. It would give rise to terrible abuses and mistreatment. The sovereign power of the state should not be delegated to individuals only remotely accountable. The punitive system should be carefully guarded, and the line of punishment mapped out, otherwise evils will creep in; no corrective measures that border upon cruelty should be used." Representative Smith added that if we "put the power to use the whip on women in the hands of brutal and incompetent wardens, the same cruelties and atrocities which have shocked the civilized world will be repeated. Wardens, drunk with power, abuse their positions; they are appointees of a system, inexperienced and incompetent in many cases; chosen, not because of their fitness, but more likely to repay some political favor. When a good warden is found, it is more or less an accident. Give permission to whip, and the public would be horrified at the result, if ever they should learn the circ.u.mstances."

That is fine; but the concluding words mean more than they say. How is the public to know? If you had a mother or a sister or daughter in that jail, would you feel entirely rea.s.sured by the declamations in the legislature of these kindly gentlemen? Would it not occur to you that, when this little flurry had blown over, the warden and his guards might possibly, and as quietly as might be, revert to what they held to be the only effective means of keeping order? It is easy, in a prison, to gag a woman so that she cannot scream, and to take her down to a secluded place, and there to lay on the leather heartily, with or without first removing the inner garment. Who is to know, or to tell? We are not Russians, to boast of these things openly.

At the turpentine camp at Atmore, Alabama, thirty-five convicts whose contract had been annulled by Governor O'Neal, were brought to Mobile October 10th, 1913, and placed in the county jail. All but fourteen had been whipped with heavy straps loaded with lead, and affidavits were offered showing that two of them had been whipped to death. But Superintendent of Prisons Riley of New York, in a letter to Warden Rattigan of Auburn prison, writes: "I do not believe that any one was ever reformed by physical torture." This was not the view taken, apparently, in Jefferson City (Mo.) prison, for there, a few weeks ago, a negro was given a very hard task each day (says the _Post-Dispatch_ of St. Louis), more than he could perform. At evening he would be taken out, strapped to a post and beaten with a heavy strap. There were cuts and sores all over his body. Favored prisoners were allowed to break rules, while others were severely punished for the same thing. The penitentiary there is described as a "small h.e.l.l entirely surrounded by masonry and incompetent officials." Dozens of men were brutally whipped for minor offenses.

We have all heard about Blackwell's Island, New York City, where "beatings by officials, and much worse, resulted in the death of a man."

Trustee Hurd found two men in dark cells, one stupefied, the other hysterical and sobbing. They had been punished for whispering. The dark cells had been ordered discontinued some weeks before. Warden Hayes, on being asked by the official why he had permitted them to be used, replied, "Well, the fact is, I've been so busy I haven't had time to get round to it!" What is his business?

In Atlanta we do not use the leather; we find the club handier, and some guards are skilful in so applying it to the bodies of their patients that, while the external evidences are negligible, it occasions internal troubles which can be ascribed to "natural" causes. And there are indications that we do use the dark cell, described by Dr. MacDonald, above, as more inhumane than the lash. If this expert be correct, he gives us a standard whereby to measure how inhumane they must be.

I cannot go on, though I have used only a fraction of my notebook.

Moreover, I am inclined to think that the physical punishments I have instanced are not the worst that are administered in Atlanta and perhaps in other prisons. Great ingenuity is shown in the application of mental tortures, which have their outcome in insanity, but which never can be investigated by commissions and inspectors. An insane man is as safe as a dead man--if he tells tales, no one will pay attention to him. The cat-and-mouse game is a favorite with the inhumane type of wardens. Give your man alternations of hope and despair, and the results will soon reward your pains. Then there are the insults, the gibes and threats, the obscure forms of tyranny and outrage, the degradation of manhood--there are a hundred subtle ways of destroying and corrupting the spirit of a man. To be compelled to occupy the same cell with certain types of criminals is a most successful form of inhumanity; and when, as often happens, one of the two is a comparatively innocent boy, the results are awful. "Insufficient number of cells" is the explanation given; and at Atlanta at least there are the unfinished cell houses, which might have been finished years ago, had the appropriations been properly applied.

"Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner!" we pray in our churches. But He says, "With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured unto you again."

We do not set the Lord a good example of mercy in our prisons.

XI

THE GRASP OF THE TENTACLES

I have spoken of punishments inside the prison. When a man has served his time and is set free (as it is called) another punishment begins, which may be worse and more disheartening than the suffering endured inside the walls.

As I listened, on Sat.u.r.day afternoons, or at other times, to the stories hurriedly and guardedly told me by my fellow convicts who had served more terms than one, I said to myself, "The wrong of prison is bad enough; but this of what happens to a man after prison is worse, and monstrous." The endless tentacles follow him, reach out after him, surround him, fasten upon him, and draw him back whence he came. And not that only, but they mark him and isolate him, disable him from free action, make honesty impossible for him. No citizen of whatever integrity and standing, if so pursued, maligned and undermined, would have any choice left him but either to perish or to break the laws. The spies of the government, with the prestige and power of the government behind them (however despicable and vicious they may be in themselves), can ruin any man; but ex-convicts are their staple food.

In the latter part of June, 1913, a federal judge named Emory Speer was accused of evil deeds on the bench, and a congressional investigation was announced. The judge was taken ill, and at this writing the investigation still hangs fire. Now, the evidence against him had been collected, it would appear, by the agency of government spies, and this fact caused great indignation in some quarters. Here was a man not convicted of felony, but a pillar of the state, being pursued by detectives just as if for all the world he were an ordinary person--an obscure private citizen, say, or an ex-convict! The judge himself was very indignant, and his friends on the local press were rasping in their comments. In a long editorial ent.i.tled "The Shadow of the Spy," one Atlanta paper denounced the proceedings root and branch. It affirmed that the governmental spy system had a.s.sumed such proportions during the past few years as to threaten one of the mainstays of free government.

All this interested my comrades, not because the spy system was news to them, but because no public notice had been taken of it until it began to wring the withers of persons who had hitherto supposed themselves to be in the position of promoters instead of victims of the practise. A federal judge had never protested against pursuing with spies men suspected of crimes, or men who, having served time upon conviction, had then gone out into the world and attempted to lead a new life. The spy system, so conducted, seemed to such persons proper and normal. But the moment they found their own acts investigated, their own footsteps dogged, they became indignant, and denounced the whole principle of the thing.

No man convicted in a federal or state court, or set free after having done his time in prison, but is abundantly conversant with the methods of the American spy.

As we all know, the first thing done with a new prisoner is to take his bertillons, and the record of these measurements and observations, together with two photographs of him, or with four, if he had a beard when convicted, is sent to every police office in the country, and is there studied by the detectives and police. The intention, of course, is to render easier the recognition of "old offenders," and to curtail their future industries. It is generally affirmed that bertillons cannot be mistaken; but in a Detroit court, on January both, 1914, an expert declared that "a difference of one-eighth of an inch in the laying on of the fingers made an entirely different impression"; and "judgment was awarded against the bank," which, relying upon the infallibility of the finger record, had brought the action. At any rate, the bertillon is still a potent weapon with the police, and when they want a man for a crime committed, or when they desire to drive out of any given place on the face of the earth a man who has been previously a convict, they have but to point to his bertillons, and the thing is done.

Let us see how this may work out in practise. A convict, having served his term, is presented by the United States (or a state, as the case may be) with a suit of new clothes, and with a five dollar bill. He also gets a ticket on the railway to the place of his destination, and, though he is in theory a free man from the moment that he pa.s.ses the prison gates, as a matter of fact an official is a.s.signed to take charge of him and put him on his train; he cannot remain in Atlanta (supposing for the once that Atlanta Penitentiary has been his abiding place during his sentence) on penalty, if he do, of forfeiting his ticket and having to pay his own way. This may be a provision of the law, or it may be simply a measure to prevent ex-convicts from talking to newspaper reporters or other enquiring persons. The thing is invariably done, unless the man's residence happens to be Atlanta itself.

In my own case (to cite an instance) the regular procedure was observed, with only one accidental modification. I received my suit of clothes, my five dollars, and my railway ticket--at least, the latter was given to the guard detailed to accompany me to the station, to be by him delivered to the conductor of my train. But I had previously made up my mind to say a few things to the reporter of a certain local newspaper, and I was ready, in case of necessity, to abandon my eleemosynary ticket and to pay my own way to New York on a later train. I had money of my own to do this with; most ex-prisoners, of course, have not. But the sacrifice was avoided by the circ.u.mstance that Mr. Moyer, the warden, was absent at the moment in Indianapolis, and the deputy incautiously let me out an hour or more before my train started. I lost no time in meeting my reporter, and during the next forty minutes, in an automobile provided for the occasion, we drove about the streets of Atlanta, while I imparted to his astonished ears my reasons for thinking that the penitentiary was not the paradise on earth that it had hitherto been believed to be. He brought me to the railway station in season for my train, and I got safely away, leaving mischief behind me.

That was my good luck. On the other hand, a friend of mine recently released told me that the warden had called him into his office at the last moment, and had extracted from him a promise not to talk to any reporter in the town before leaving. That is the usual way; but it is the exception, sometimes, that counts.

Let us return to our average convict, just out, and with the world before him, where to choose to display his prison-made garments and to spend his five dollars. It not seldom happens, to begin with, that he is not so much out as he had imagined. Our present method with convicts has peculiarities. Here is a common example.

A man was convicted and jailed for robbing a postoffice. The sentence was five years. The specific charge was of stealing postage stamps.

Having done his bit in the federal penitentiary, he was given his outfit and the gates were opened. He was proceeding joyfully on his way, when a sheriff laid a hand on his shoulder, and informed him that he was his prisoner. What for? The sheriff smilingly explained that the sentence he had just served was for a federal offense; he was wanted now on a state charge of breaking into the grocery store in which the postoffice was housed. For this, the state prison accommodated him with lodging for five years more. The man outlived that, and fatuously imagined that his payment of that debt was fully discharged. He was awakened by the hand on his shoulder again. What was the matter now? Why, he had, while in the grocery store, and in addition to stealing the federal postage stamps, possessed himself unlawfully of a box of matches, thereby committing a second state crime, involving a further detention in the state prison of five years more.

This is an example of our cat-and-mouse way with convicts, and is, of course, much more destructive to the victim than an outright sentence of the same length would have been. But in what manner it tends to reform a man, or to protect a community, does not clearly appear.

Sometimes, the sheriff is dilatory in arriving to make the second or third arrest, and it would seem that the prisoner might have a chance to escape. But in such a case the warden himself would take a hand in the game. In an instance of which I heard a good deal, the man's sentence expired, we will say, on June 1st. The warden had been apprised that he was to be re-arrested, but the sheriff was not on hand--could not get there for two days. But the law, or prison regulations, or something, enables a warden to detain a prisoner beyond his fixed time, in the event of his committing some prison irregularity. The warden informed the man that he was reported to have broken a plate in the dining room, the penalty for which was three days more in his cell. Before the three days were up, the sheriff had arrived, the man was re-arrested, and justice was satisfied. We will suppose, however, that our man has no second or third or other indictments hanging over him, and that he really does get clean away. What will be his adventures?

If the weather be not rainy he reaches his train unscathed. But if that new suit, with "jail-bird" written all over it in characters which all detectives and police, at least, can read as they run, chance to get wet, the raw shoddy forthwith shrivels miserably up, and the wearer's ankles and wrists stick out so betrayingly that a mere child might recognize the sinister source of the garments. But, anyhow, a few days'

wear will so wrinkle and crease and deform the suit that it becomes unwearable, and the man might as conveniently and more prudently go about in shirt and drawers. Should he present himself in it requesting a job from some virtuous citizen, the latter is less likely to grant it than to step to the 'phone and call up the police station. "There's a suspicious character here--better look him over!" The officer looks him over accordingly, and either advises him to betake himself promptly elsewhere, or, if a crime happen to have been committed recently in that neighborhood, the perpetrators of which are still at large, he takes the man into custody on suspicion.

That the man is utterly innocent makes small difference; his status as an old offender is readily established, and the rest follows almost automatically. "You did the job all right; but, if you didn't, you're a vagrant, without visible means of support, and they'll put you in the lockup for six months or a year. And let me tell you, our lockup is no joke! Likely you'll get on the chain gang, and then, G.o.d help you! If they don't take a fancy to you, they're liable to croak you any time.

Now, I'd like to see you get out of this easy, and here's what you'd better do. You own up to the crime, and I'll have a word with the judge, so he'll let you off with a short sentence in a place where they treat men right, and you'll get out in about three or four months. That's what you'd best do; and if you don't, I wash my hands of you! What do you say?"

What would you do? Stand on your rights, demand a full and fair trial, prove your innocence, and be acquitted without a stain on your character? That is the proper and righteous course for a free and independent American citizen.

But you are not a citizen, in the first place; your civic rights are gone for good, and instead of your innocence being a.s.sumed till your guilt is proved, it is the other way about. Your friend the detective is prepared, for one, to swear that to the "best of his knowledge and belief," you are the culprit; and there is commonly a number of other easy swearers hanging about the court room to support him. You have no friends; on the contrary, every eye you meet is hostile. You have no money to hire a lawyer, for that five dollars had gone before you had mustered courage to ask for the job that got you into this trouble. And above all, your spirit is cowed and prostrate from years in prison; you have known the long, sterile bitterness of penal servitude, and you have no stomach for a fight. No, you will not fight--you cannot. You will stand up in the dock and confess to something you never did, and throw yourself on the mercy of the court. Your friend the detective whispers to the judge--"He's an incorrigible--he ought to get the limit!" And His Honor gives you ten years. It is less than a week since you put off stripes, and went out into the world resolved to make good. If you outlive your undeserved sentence, will you ever resolve to make good again?

Can such things be? Indeed they can, and they are. There is poor C. in Atlanta now, the victim of such a deal; and S., and H., and many more.

C., indeed, told me, and I believe him, that he never committed any crime at all, other than to get drunk and to sleep out on the road; he was apprehended for vagrancy, then charged with a post-office robbery in another state (which he had never visited), advised by the detective who "took an interest" in him to confess, upon the promise of being let off with a light sentence; he got the limit, and will wear out his youth in jail, while the detective is complimented for his efficiency.