The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-03-16
IN JAIL IN THE FAR EAST.
Life Among Prisoners at Montgomer!
 In the Puniab.

 Life Among Prisoners at Montgomery,
 In the Punjab.
 The visitor to one of the large jails of India, the great one at Montgomery, in the Punjab, for instance, where more than two thousand native prisoners ar corralled by way of punishment for their misdeeds, would come away with the impression that far worse fate might befall the inmates than incarcer- ation in such a clean, roomy, busy place. Indeed, some of them like to wear the notched bangle which indi4 cates the "haoitual." The story is told of one old fellow who had grown so fond of his lot that when released at the end of fifteen years he proceeded to make off with bag of corn which had been grown upon another's land. As he had hoped, he was arrested on a charge of theft. Gleefully he heard the just judge recommit him to the penal institution which had become home to him. Being the best instructor in car pet making prison industry which is fruitful in cash returns and in which
 
 turn was not looked upon by the jail authorities with the degree of sadness which one would expect to find in the ideal penologist
 While practically everything in the way of work about the jail, including the gardening, the cleaning, the sweep ing, the washing the tailoring, etc., is done by the prisoners, and occupations are found in useful arts for those not otherwise employed, yet the caste prej- udices of each are respected. As for food, their diet is as carefully arranged as that for the training table of foot ball team. The superintendent aims to keep all his prisoners up to a certain standard of weight and in a perfect state of health. It must be admitted, however, that this is for the purpose of getting maximum amount of work out of them, at a minimum of loss by death or sickness. Each prisoner is weighed at regular periods, and when necessary his work and his diet are changed, or he is sent to the hospital and generally looked after as if he were an only child in a delicate state of health. Extra food Is supplied to those who are employed on especially hard labor.
 There are factories in the different jails, in which respect the Indian prls- ons are like some of those in America. Carpets woven after the manner of Gobelin tapestries, bit by bit, are made at Montgomery. The factory in which these much desired carpets are woven Is not a place filled with humming mas chinery, as the name would suggest. It is an open pavilion, in which the chief sound is that of human voices. It is a veritable Babel. What with men read ing out the patterns and conveying in- structions in voluble manner, one wonders why the directions do not be- come as inextricably tangled up as they fly through the air as other wireless messages are said to do, and fail to reach the ear for which they are in- tended. The machinery consists of a number of crude looms worked by hand. One of them is wide enough to make a fifty foot carpet. Twenty-Five men sitting in row In front of it weave in the bits of colored wool or silk and bring out the pattern. Out in the yard are cloth weavers, their rough looms of poles set up in the ground. Before these the weavers sit as in their yards at home with their feet in holes in the ground, and tell with all the en- ergy they possess to exceed the days stint and thereby receive much prised marks on their historic sheets," which mean reduction in their sentences.
 The hardest work any of the prison CTS are called upon to do is that of grinding corn by hand in the solitary cells and pumping water. Pumping water is the most disliked task. The men who do this are herded in two iron