Connecticut western news., 1880-12-01
THE CHAIN GANG.
Scene in a Southern City-At Work
 in the Streets and in the Mines.

A newspaper correspondent writing from Atlanta, Ga., tells us about the chain-gang, made up of men, women and children, which work on the streets of the city. Their work is mending roads, loading carts, or shoveling dirt; the women and girls chained together with the men, and often for first offenses. This chain gang is Georgia's training school for her penitentiaries, for since she has leased out her convicts to li- censed slave-drivers, it pays her we'll to have criminals. have heard that white men and women are put in the chain gang. l never saw this chain-gang with out shudder. Men who can daily bear this sight have found it easy and very profitable to lease the lives of their fel- low creatures for long terms of years. These lessees are irresponsible private people, whose only interest is to get as much labor out of their slaves for as lit tie outlay as possible. While in Geor- gia paid a visit to the Dade coal mines, where three hundred convicts are worked by lessee who is an ex-Confederate Governor. The stockade in which the men are kept covers an acre, and is fenced with great rails fifteen feet high. The gates are guarded by armed men, and by fierce blood hounds. The houses in which the convicts sleep are built of logs with apertures of about an inch wide between them. The logs stand perpendicular, and are not laid in the usual horizontal fashion, and none but those who have lived in log houses can understand the difference this makes. Logs laid horizontally suggest the home, the church, or the school-house; huts made of upright logs, the calaboose and the slaye-pen.
 The room of this convict house is about one hundred feet long, and the doors and windows are of grated iron. They have no bedsteads; shelf the length of man, and raised few feet from the floor, answers that purpose. The filthy condition of the wretched beds on these shelves is beyond descrip- tion something of it may be understood from the fact that the miners sleep in the clothes in which they work. As far as cleanliness and comfort are concerned, @ hole in the coal seam would be prefer able. At the foot of each shelf is chain, to which at night the chain which the convict wears is fastened.
 The floor of this stockade is also of logs, and there is the usual opening between them, except under the beds, where it is boarded; but I can not see what great comfort is gained in this partial flooring, because the whole stockade is raised several feet from the ground, and the freezing mountain winds find entrance through the whole centre of the floor. In the winter months this place, though boasting of five stoves, must be cold hell. Even in summer, rain storms will drive right through the unchinked walls, and deluge the wooden shelf which serves as the sleeping place of the convicts. They claim that the walls are left open for ventilation, and by order of the doctor, but I noticed that his owD house was not ventilated after this fashion. The hospital is 8 room built on the same plan, excepting that the floor is wholly boarded, the walls being all open as in the stockade.
 I saw no means of cleanliness any where about the stockade, although I was told that there was tub at the en- trance of the mine, where the men could wash themselves as they came out-over one hundred men to tub 1! There is no excuse for this shameful neglect, for Captain Evans, who had charge of the mine, and who is 8 prac- tical miner, told me, when I pointed out the filthy condition of the men and the stockade, that "by the loss of very little time to the company, morn ing and evening, the men and the stock ade could be kept as clean as either he or his own house was "-and I never saw man more scrupulous]y neat for his position, nor asweeter, cleaner home than the one he inhabited. The men are, however, compelled to bathe on Sundays, when it is no loss to the con- pany.
 Both Captains Reese and Evans asked me to lay before the public the case of a colored boy called Charles Davidson. They told mehe had been in the mine for five years, and was then fifteen years old-his sentence being term of forty years for burglary Brown, the lessee, | has since claimed that "he is serving out a sentence for three distinct crimes" although was told by famous Georgian lawyer that man could not be sentenced for more than one crime at 8 time; that is, he would have to be re- arrested, tired, and sentenced for each separately. Brown also claims that this boy of ten years old was a confirmed desperado. Reese and Evans spoke highly of the boys docllity and general good behavior.
 The mines, as matter of course, are dark, damp, dreadful places. Each man is required to fill five carloads day :; and I should think this is not very hard work, for many do it in less than the prescribed hours. The injustice comes in here, that they cannot leave the mne until six at night, and for the extra work they do they get no money, but simply an order on the commissary for extra food, clothing, or tobacco. But of what use is extra food and clothing to men who ought to have sufficient from the lessee? And if he paid them for their extra work in money, they could buy their tobacco.