The prison mirror. [volume] (Stillwater, Minn.) 1887-1894, 1890-08-21
South ern. Convict System.


horrors of the penal convict system in the
Southern states. The disclosures of over
work, of insufficient food and of inhuman
barbarities inflicted. especially upon the
negro convicts, throw the cruelties of Rus
sian prisons, and the sufferings of Siberian
exiles quite in the shade. In many of the
Southern states the refusal of Legislatures
to provide money to build and maintain
penitentiaries has necesstated system of
farming out convict labor to contractors. 1t
is needless to say that the system is sbad in
principle and worse in practice. The sys-
tenn has for many years-it antedates the
war-been in practice in Georgia, Alabama.
Florida. Mississippi and Texas. and for a
shorter period in other states, notably Ten
nessee and Louisiana. The cOnvicts are
employed on cotton. sugar and rice planta-
tionS and in the pineries; but the severeSt
hardships and privatiOns appear to be borne
by those under lease to railroad contractors
The poor wretcheS are let out to contractors
at so much per month.
They are nearly all OF them negroes, and
are let at very low sum. indeed; much
less than the contractor would have hired
them for under the old slave system. Then
their owner would have taken care that he
had the proper interest for the money he
had invested in them. and would have taken
care, too, that they were not worked. beaten
or starved to death. Unfortunately the
state which hires them now has no money
invested in them, and it is to its interest,
as well as to the contractors that the larg-
est amount of work shall be got out of
them, and that the cost of keeping them
shall be crowded down to as low notch as
possible. Neither the state nor contractor
is bound to make the slightest effort to i'm
prove the morals or minds of the poor
wretches. Their sickness or death involves
no loss to anybody. All the elements and
conditions of the cruelest tyranny of the
most brutal in humanity is inherent i'm thesys-
tenn itself. The supply of convicts for pub
lie work is easily kept up. Negroes have
been sentenced for life in Georgia for steal
ing Chickens while sentence of years is
common for the most trif1ing theft. When
the miserable darky is once chained and at
work. whose interest is it to remember that
his sentence has expired? Not the contract
Or's nor the states, aSsuredly.
When once at work. too. the cruelty of
his treatment surpasses anything ever
known in the old days of slavery. The
gangs are kept upon starvation diet; they
are housed in stOckades or prison cars, in
which the filth and foul air equal the under
ground pens of AndersOnvile and Sails
bury. In the hot season they die by the
hundreds of typhoid and cholera mOrbus,
and nobody cares. The armed guards, u.s.
ually white cOnvicts. shoot them at their
own discretion, on the first sign of insub-
ordination, and are responsible to nobody
dead nigger-a black lump of flesh, of
whom nobody takes cognizance. nobody, in
fact, but his Gods dropped into hole
dug by the side of the road where the gang
is at work. and that is the end of it. If
anybody doubts this to be the condition of
affairs, let him go now through the section
Of country in Georgia or the CarOlinas
worked by these men. They crowd about
the cars. begging for food with wild eyes
and hunger bitten faces, and run to buy
bread with the pennies thrown to them.
devOuring it like famished dogs. When
ever it is practicable they are allowed to
beg, as it lessons the cost of keeping them
alive. Not long ago a white man and
negro were sentenced in North Carolina for
the same Offense. the white man being the
ringleader and the more guilty of the two.
He was in short time appointed overseer,
and set. whip in hand. to guard his com.
iouC dIIu OCHcIS. 1uc HoStO UolIlS IcllOW
of some shrewGness and education sent in a
protest against the injustice. and the over
seer, on hearing of it. shot him dead. The
Overseer was retained in his place, un-
harmed.
This is but one instance of the iniquitieS
of a general scheme by which the negro is
kept in worse bondage than he was before
the proclamation of emancipation. There
are some differences it is true; he gives his
time and labor now to the state instead of
to the individual. He is now actually
starved to death, while their policy dictated
that ha shoald ho kant aliua Ha il hohhlod