Morning journal and courier., 1882-04-01

DALlu HAO VI d4L lO put L4DEtF 4LEO new road. What ails these half ripe and vision ary projects is that they are not gotten up by people who want to put money into them, but simply to get money out of them.
 Siberian Prisons.
 From Review Of an EnglishrnAnTs Rsoeat Book Of
 Trsvsls.l
 Like Siberian houses in general, the Sibe- rian prison is usually built of logs calked with moss to keep out the cold. Near the principal building, but generally detached, are the kitchen. the bath-house the exercise yard, stores for provisions, outhouses, etc, and inclosing the whole is a high palisade of wooden poles pointed at the top Tn Russia the new prisons have arrangements for sep arating convicts into different cells as in other parts of Europe. But in Siberia the old method of herding continues Usually the prisons are divided inside into large rooms or wards, in each of which the princi- pal feature is an inclined wooden plane re- sembling that in guard rooms as temporary couch for the guard. On this the prisoners sit and lounge by day and sleep by night In a square room this platform is placed against three of the walls, or, if it is oblOng, there may be passage up the center from which the sleeping places ascend to the walls on either side. If the room is very large there are also two platforms in the center, whose tops form low gable. Thus as many as forty or fifty or even at times one hun dred. men are packed into one room There are usually few separate cells for political and special offenders and one or two for pun ishment The rooms have little or no furui- ture. Each has an ikon sacred picture, and sometimes shelf on which the inmates put their spoons, combs and toilet requisites. Connected with the large prisons are usually a hospital, one or more chapels sometimes school room and a.few workshops As to food and attentions frem the charitable, SIbe-
 
 than English. Local committees are allowed to help the inmates with supplies of food and money, and even of luxuries. Some super intend, clothe and educate the children of prisoners. In more than one place MT Lsns- dell found admirable asylums built for this purpose. Prisoners wives, who often elect to go into exile in order not to break a committee had given to the prison library. If the highest scale of the diet of Siberian prisoners be compared with the highest scale in the prisons of Eng | land and Wales, as printed fer 1878, 1t Is found that the English prisoner gets per week of bread 10 pounds, against the Rus sian's 25 the Englishman has ounces of cooked meat and II pints of soup, against the Russians pounds of meat, while the Russian has besides l 1-2 pounds of buck | wheat and tea, against the Englishman's | pounds of potatoes, l 1-2 pounds of suet l pudding, If pints of porridge and cocoa In | fact, the Englishmsn has per week r pounds of solid food, pints of soup. It l pints of porridge and cocoa, while the Rus | sian has 33 pounds of solid food and tea 1 Comparisons of this kind give some sort of idea imperfect though it be, of the actual state of affairs in the prisons of Siberia as against similar places in the land where | prison reform is supposed, with good reason | to have gone furthest- At any rate, 1t throws suspicion on modern accounts of ex- | cessive cruelty to prisoners in the matter of food. Perhaps it shows that the Russian su- thorities are more generous than is good for | their prisoners. Full diet in connection with the deplorable scarcity of hard work report ed by Mir. Lansdel in Siberian prisons must have bad effect on the conviets- In some of the prisons, however, prisoners are al lowed to sell the rations they do not consume. As to the work: T met at different places two Poles who came to the East con- demned to hard labor, but who got of ex- ceedingly lightly. What one said amounted to this: That if he liked to work he worked. but if not he let 1t alone. The authorities told me, in one instance, that they cannot now find enough work for the exiles- Many of the mines have passed from government into private hands. and some of those re maining are exhausted Hence part of the Russian criminals, who of old would prob ably have been eIiled, are now detained ID large prisons in European Russia, such as al Pskof. Wilma, Khgrkof, Orenberg, Simbirsk Perm. etc When it is remembered that 6 large number of the criminals cannot read and for those who can there has hitherto been, to say the least, but a poor supply oi books. the tedium of imprisonment without work in Siberia can be easily imagined Ac
 cordingly, it was little matter for surpris' that we heard at Alexandrefsky of prisoner
 begging for work
 ConYicts put to hard work are divided intC three classes varying in intensity, the fabric l the zavod and the mines. The first includes
 the various work of mechsnics-carPenters | shoemakers, blacksmiths etc ZavOd means according to NIT. Iansdel, works for found ing and casting metals. The class includes
 other heavy work, such as road making ! brick making and manufacturing salt In ! aiming is of three sorts, gold, silver and coal
 TI.s gold mines are surface; the silver anS i coal E2ines shaft works. Prisoners shOrtei
 the terra of their sentences according to
 fixed tariff by good behavior. In some case
 they receive 15 per cent of what they earl
 by labor At some prisons friends may sup
 ply conyicts with money. The rule often ! that urisope=s shall not write to their friends
 hut it is seldom enforced. Political prisoners ! it seems, are not subject to this Zule Air
 Esnsdell describes minutely the chains worI ba the severely treated Except in Elnlar d, b fouad few chains as heavy as those used in tn Tinted States and in most cases they wer
 I1phter than the English letters The whip , l used now and formerly are also described
 the method Of using them and the appearanc 1 of the convict after the beating He corrot
 orates the killing of cOnyicts at the will C [ the expert and his leniency if well bribed
 but the most atroeious features of this pun , { ishment seem to be already things of the pa. | and fast becoming legendary. Yet eases stl occur particularly when the sksn Is not CT s 1 and no blood flows. Modification then se' | in pretty surely and the convict dies. A ma i so thrashed had died within 24 hours juat th | week before NIT. Dansdell reached Nlkolaeps ! He was assured however. that by Russia law no man can be condemned to corporl . pupishment for the first Odenss. But | does not tell us that there iS any redress fc prisoner illegally whipped or that there any control exercised over governor t 1 of prisons The Siberian defense of th 1 whip is reflected in his pages when he not 1 that the inhabitaSts are few and surronnde
 with hundreds of COZ Eicts and ex-conviets ( 1 the lowest class, who eAu only be touche e by strong arguments The conyicts kno
 that murder will only be punished by mol :, i inlprisonment, they will nOt be hanged; t ' | whiHpinC which can be made far more pan q full than hanging and just as fatal, Is, ther l. fore. considered by the inhabitants sal - ! tary deterrent from brutal crimes NeTe , | theless, Mir LauSdeil does not regard SibeT Il an prisons as the black holes they have bee l. 1 painted EsOn the whole, my conviction I that if Russian exile behaves himse 1 decently well he may in Siberia be more con , fortable than in many, and as comfortable II in most. of the prisons of the world"
 nh;Idrongo nnrrioro.