The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-10-13
REFORM WAS URGED
OutrageS of Southern Negro
 Due to Chain Gang.
Charged in Cincinnati Speech That Existing Criminal Con iition Can Be Traced to Governing Bodies
 That Farm Out Prisoners.

Methodist Freedmen's and Southern Ed ucational Society, to-day in delivering the opening address of the evangehcai alliance, charged that the outrages or negroes in the South was due to the chain gang prison system. He said ih part:
 Far be it for me to utter one word Tn attenuation of the unspeaKable crime of which some black men are guilty. Let us keep in mind, however, that oniy about twenty per cent of the black men whom are lynched have even been rhareed with the unspeakable crime against the sacredness of womanhood. Let black men bring every influence to bear to make such crimes lmpossioie' Let there be prompt execution or the law against those and all crimes or all men. , Lynch law, however, is anarchy. It brings in the reign of barbarian; It pru- taliCes members of the mob; 1t under mines government; it does not stop crime.
 A School of Crime.
 Tn estimating criminality among the black people. we should keep in mind that since Appomattox nearly every Southern State has maintained a scnooi of crime-an organized institution for the training @ criminals. This l charge against the convict lease system Of the South. This system, with its thousands of victims has been the cause of much of the -outbreaking crime among black people through it's brutalizing and dehu- manixing influence on thousands of me- sroes.
 'Under this system both prison and prisoners are farmed out under the con- trol of private corporations-sold to the highest bidder. To the lessees the bodies and souls of convicts are assigned. The motive of both State and lessee is not morals, but money; not reformation, but pxploitation of criminals for gain. It is crime turned intosa source of revenue; the brawn and blood of criminals bar tered for gain. >- Chained Together. !, ss Criminals are generally scattered in branch prisons-quartered in rude stock ndes, without proper sanitation, food or clothing. - average life of these con- victs is less than. ten years. Old and young are promiscuously chained and banded together. Even men and women are in some camps. not separated. Hard enea criminals and the boy convicted Of hls first crime; the comparatively good and the most depraved. vile and aban- doned. are chained together. One war den of a State penitentiary pro- tests in his report that 'Un- der the present law and custom the penitentiary is the school of crime, in stead of being a reformatory institution. Of fifty boys under IS, nine-tenths of them leave prison much worse than when they came in.
 Alabama Warden Talks.
 Wears ago a warden of the Alabama nenitentiafy bore witness to the filth and vermin and horrors of these prisons. Our system,' said he, Is a better training school for criminals than any of the dens of iniuuity that exist in our large cities a disgrace to the State, and reproach to civilization
 organized reformatory effort The aim of the State is the care of convicts without cost. and even the reduction of taxes through the sale of criminals. It is one thing to employ them on public works under the care of the State. in a chain gang system. It Is quite another thing to farm them out to the highest bidder under the convict lease system.
 A Revelation of Barbarity.
 ''The outcome of the careful investiga- tion of the convict lease system on the part of the Governor of Georgia was a revelation of inhumanity barbarity and shameless immortality. Much of it was unfit for the public prints.
 ''In a period of two years aver HOO of these convicts escaped from Southern prisons Think of HOO thieves, murder CTS, tnuSS dL ldTSo-ldWlcSS HIGH ing about in defiance of all law and order! Think of a system that has no reforma- tory clement no system to cure men of crime but that educates young criminals fin crime, and that by its barbarity, bru- talizes and dehumanizes men that do not die under the horror of the system to debauch and degrade society. From such criminals what wonder If there have come forth hundreds of moral monsters.
 at hN a ta Prison Congress in Atlanta, visitors went to the city stockade, where conditions are under the oversight of enlightened officials un- der the employ of the city. The element of gain is here eliminated, yet these hu- mane people entered a public protest against the inhumanity and immortality of the present system, even under these fa- vorable conditions. The South should re- form its present system and thus stop the education of criminals. The present system is a sowing of the wind, and it is bound to reap the whirlwind.
 lover against the outcome of these schools of crime is the fact that of all the thousands of graduates from the Chris tian schools maintained by the benevo- fence of the North and South, not one graduate has ever been accused of the crime against the sacredness of woman hood"
 MT, Thirkield made a strong appeal for the philanthropic and Christian people both of the South and North to join hands in educational and missionary ef- forts for the solution of this gravest problem of the races ever given any na- tion to solve.