The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1903-10-13
CHAIN GANG BLAMED
FOR NEGRO OUTRAGES
Continued From First Page.

men and women are in some camps,
not separated. Hardened criminals
and the boy convicted of his first
crime; the comparatively good and the
most depraYed, vile and abandoned
are chained together. One warden OF
state pentitentiary protests in his
report that under the present law and
custom the penitentiary is the school
of crime instead of being a reforma-
tory institution. OF the fifty boys I'M
der eighteen, nine-tenths of them leave
prison much worse than when they
came in.
Years ago, warden of the Ala
bama penitentiary bore witness to the
filth and vermin and horrors of these
prisons
"'Our filth said he, is a better
training school for criminals than any
of the dens of iniquity that exist in our
large cities'-a disgrace to the state
and reproach to civilization.
Convicts Bought and Sold.
"There is in these convict camps no
organized reformatory effort. Reform
does not enter into the system. 1t is
mater of barter and sale of convict
men and women to the highest bidder.
The aim of the state is not the moral
reformation of her criminal classes,
but the care of them without cost and
IL
the sale of criminals. 1t is one thing
to employ them on public works under
the care of the state in chain gang
system. 1t is quite another thing to
farm them out to the highest bidder
under the convict lease system.
The outcome of the careful inVesti-
cation of the convict lease system on
the part of the governor OF Georgia
was a revelation of inhumanity, bar
barity and shameless immortality.
Much of 1t was unfit for the public
press.
In period of two years over LOO
of these conVicts escaped from South
ern prisons. Think of LOO thieves,
murderers, thugs at large-lawIess men
roaming about in defiance of all law
and order Think of a system that
has no reformatory element, no sys-
tenn to cure men Of crime, but that
educateS young criminals in crime and
that by its barbarity brutalizes and
dehumanizes men and sends out those
that do not die under the horrors of
the system to debauch and degrade
society. From such criminals, what
wonder if there have come forth hun
dreds of moral monsters?
Even at the late session of the pris-
on congress in Atlanta, visitors went
to the city stockade where conditions
are under the oversight of enlight-
ened officials under the employ of the
city. The element of gain is here
eliminated, yet these humane people
entered a public protest against the
| inhumanity and immortality Of the
present system even under these ia
VorabIe conditions.
1.-The South should reform it's pres
ent system and thus stop the education
OF criminals. The present system is a
sowing to the wind and it is bound to
reap the whirlwind. Over against the
outcome of these schools Of crime is
the fact that of all the thousands of
graduates from the Christian schools
maintained by the beneYolence of the
North and South, not one graduate has
ever been accused of the crime against
the sacredness of WomanhOod."
He made a strong plea for the phil
anthropic and Christians of both the
South and North to join hands in ed
vocational and missionary efforts for the
solution of this gravest problem of the
races ever given any nation to solve.