Daily tobacco leaf-chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1890-1895, 1891-09-07
Dead Against the Lease.
% the Tobacco Loaf.Cnronicle.l

in your journalistic faculty for all
that tends to harmony and prosperity
among the people.
Now that Squire Brad Martin has
made it plain that the people are en-
titled to free bridges, opposition to
them is apt to diminish, and even if
there were no other reason the gen
eral welfare of the people and special
welfare of GAINESVILLE call for free
bridges and free pixies.
The towns everywhere shackled
by toll pixies are clamorous for free
pixies, and the people, as rule, who
cannot get to the main towns in their
respective counties and to their court
house towns particularly, are every
where anxious for free pixies and fle
bridges.
Not only as to bridges are you cor
rect, but also as to convicts.
Any political party in ascendency
in any State owes it to their own re-
spectability to have the State con-
victs managed by State agents and
State officers, and to have them
worked where their labor will least
conflict with laboring classes and
equitable enterprise, and where null
tiplied aggravations and murderOus
exposures will not be contriVed by
the barDarous avarice of cruel lesses.
Any political party that permits
penitentiary convicts to be worked
outside of the prison walls, except for
State and county purposes, must be
retired. Humanity demands it.
Justice to the men whose circum-
stances compels them to labor for
wages demands it. Fair play for
private enterprise demands it. Civ
ilization demands it. The well being
of society demands it. Every con-
sideration that ennobles manhood,
that diminishes crime, that strength
ems tenure 10 property and that gives
security to life, calls for the repeal of
all statutes allowing the unfortunate
men who, from various causes, be-
come convicts to be placed in posi-
tions of opposition to the welfare of
the laboring classes and under the
hellish impulses of the heartless
leSseS.
That it.infiuences men to exercise
inhumanity, at least in the case Of
Tennessee, is established by the
treatment of the convicts in the
mines at Coal Creek.
The whipping post, compared to
such compulsory exposure to all that
is loathsome and life-destroying, is
as the spank of maternal love COM
pared to the crushing coils of the
anaconda.
1t is not the whipping post that at
taches disgrace, but the commission
of some crime for which the law
subjects the party committing the
crime to the whipping post. The
truth is, neither the whipping post
nor the law in the abstract forms thu
disgraceful part of the matter in the
whipping post business. Atrocious-
ness inherent in the act-iniquity
melting to the commission of theft,
brutality-and not the punishment
constitute the disgrace there is about
it.
The additional fact is just as clear
that if the law fixed no penalty to
the act of stealing horse or break
ing into a house and stealing from
the house the hard earnings of the
toiling owner--the theft in either
case would lose none of its
wickedness, disgrace and infamy.
All the noise of barbarism inhereing
in the whipping-post comes from the
manipulating contrivances Of merce-
nary parties. But if any think 9th
erwise let them show that cOnvicts I'M
der the leasing system are simply
subjected to a lighter punishment
for ten or fifteen minutes, and then
given choice of employment on vol
untary contracts. This they must do
or retire from the discussion, for
scarcely will stupidity say that the
whipping-post punishment corporal
ly continues longer than ten minutes,
or that the man thus whipped may
not choose employment for himself
and at such rate of wages as he vol
untary accepts. The number of
lashes should be adjusted to the
amount stolen. Very few would
agree that man should receive as
many lashes for stealing dozen eggs
or a dozen chickens as the man
should receive who steals a dozen |
hogs or dozen cows. This arrange |
ment would largely reduce the num-
Der of convicts and lessen trouble
and expense of management.
AS all men are more or less con-
trolled by circumstances, it may be
said that the surroundings that
would surround the fellow after be-
ing dashed at the whipping post