Los Angeles herald., 1910-04-17
WOMEN FAINT
BENEATH LASH
Whip BrutaIIy Applied in Convict
Camps in State of
Georgia
BACKS CUT OPEN BY THONGS
Arizona Penitentiary Typical of
BarbarouS Days-CeIIs
Foul Beyond Telling
BY VIM. c. OWEN

an interview with Col. Griffith J. Grif-
fifth, in which attention was called to
the improved treatment Of prisoners
a San Quentin. an article by Fred Il.
Bechdolt, author of mo. 9009." being
referred to as evidence. We have
heard of the women convicts being
granted, for the first time in the
PRISONS sixty-year history, a spring
time holiday, on which they were per-
mitted to pick the wild flowers grow
ing ON the hills within the prison
grounds; and it seems certain that
under the present warden, John E.
Hoyle, there is an increasing tendency
| to acknowledge that the convict is
| human being.
So far so good: with the reservation,
| however that as Col. Griffith said,
| improvement will be precisely in pro-
portion to the pressure of public opin-
| ion. and that the basic conditions that
| make for crime and monstrous injus-
tice remain unchanged. AS yet there
is not apparent any serious intention
| of abolishing the unspeakably iniqui-
tous fee system, under which the live
! lihood of officers depends on the nem-
| ber of arrests and convictions they
|
| any serious attack on the Siamese-
twin connection between prison man
agement and party politics, which cor
rupts the administration of criminal
| law to the marrow of its bones. Every
| where, as Col. Griffith has shown,
want of work drives men to crime, and
neither California nor other states
show any sign of tackling in a busi-
nesslike way that most serious fea-
ture of the problem.
For my part therefore, l do not in
tend to be deluded by optimistic
dreams; and as 1 have access to the
| correspondence that pours in on the
Prison Reform league, l propose to
give one or two illustrations which
seem to me to justify my attitude.
WHITE WOMEN FLOGGED
Before me is a most indignant letter
from New York, calling the attention
of the league to a front page picture
in the Georgian, the leading paper of
Atlanta. Ga, which led to the expos
ure of the frightful conditions pre-
Valent in southern convict camps. The
picture represents the flogging of two
white women, and the account gives
specific details of how they were
chained up, whipped until they faint
ed, revived, whipped again, tainted. re-
vtved and whipped once more. When
this delectable ceremony was complete
| the women's backs were said to have
been as though they had been torn by
| a wild beasts claws. The same issue
of the paper contains a "boom" article
in which Atlanta is described as the
hub of southern culture, and a church
center from which light and religion
radiate.
] shift the telescope to Arizona,
where l am interested in the condi-
tions under which certain Mexican po-
litical prisoners-Magon, Villareal and
Rivera-are held in durance most vile.
PACKED LIKE sARDINEs
Yuma recently grew ashamed of the
fact that she was a penitentiary town
and procured the erection of a new
building at Florence, to which all the
| Yuma prisoners have been transferred.
This, mark you, is a new building,
put up as one might suppose under
the influence of the more humanitar-
ian ideas of the day. Apart from the
fact that it is said to be a fine in
stance of political jobbery, here is a
feature. The steel cells measure 7X9,
are Z feet high, and each contains four
hunks. At 5 o'clock every evening
four men, a slop bucket and q water
pail are locked in each of these holes,
and there the men remain until 6
o'clock the following morning. The
men simply have to go to bed, for
there is no room to sit up: they are
unable to read or otherwise occupy
themselves, for there is no light save
that which filters in through the bars
from the corridor. Three times every
| day these men have been fed on
beans, the most trying of diets even
where the beans have been most thor
oughly cooked. and the insanitary con-
ditions that result L need not specify.
What do Mrs. Maud Ballington Booth
and all that army of alleged reformers
which everlastingly insists that condi-
tions have improved immensely, thanks
of course to their charitable efforts,
think of this-this new JAIL mind you?
Are you aware that the Prison Re
form league is the only institution in
this allegedly Christian land that is
crying these infamies aloud, the 9TH
ers, as in the case of the American
| Prison associations congress i'm Sc
attic last fall maintining the discreet
est silence. Read the full report of
that congress and outside of Colonel
Griffith's address you would not mag
Inc there was such thing as torture in
prisons. Torture is inflicted. let us not
forget, on men who are often innO-
1 cent; more often the victims of cruel
circumstances; sometimes merely polit-
| lcdl pflSOneIS-l1dL Is 10 say, luedIlSlS.
JUSTICE 4 FARCE
l desire to ad a word about the fee
system and to end this article with a
sting, in the hope that it may prove
effective, not with the rhinoceros- -hided
American public, but with some excep-
tional individual. I am convinced that
throughout Arizona. as i'm California,
the administration of justice, thanks to
this fee system, is the most pitlful
farce that ever dared to parade itself
before the world as justice. Last night
/ was reading aloud selections from
the testimony that has come to the
Prison Reform league as to the work
ings of this system in Arizona. testi-
mony that tells of men bounded down
year by year, kidnapped from across
the Mexican border because they hao
made themselves obnoxious to officials
held in filthy prisons for months or
bogus charges, and so forth. MY audi
ence was a highly educated Japanese
well known in business circles, anC
presently he said with a sigh: ''All thi,
is what l used to read of condition.
in my own country seven or eight hun.
dred years ago." What stings me /.
the discovery that we are the barbar'
ians.