Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1912-04-11

engaged rs operators. etc, i nave
| personally seen the dried sputum
scraped off shirts in the packing de-
| partment before shipment, and | have
| witnessed men ground 10 their ma
! chimes until two days before DEATH
which was officially pronounced by
| the pententiary physician as due to
/ tuberculosis. Men suffering from
| these diseases are not isolated, even
| III the dning-room ana never in the
shops.
Now this prison alone sends out
about four million shirts year, which
are sold all over the country undet
hundreds of different labels. How
many messages of disease and death
do these four million shirts carry into
unsuspeeting homes2
Last December | saw, in a dark.
unventilated cell in the Eastern Peni-
Tertiary at Philadelphia, three con-
sumptive looking negroes feverishly
licking the wrappers on cigars that
they We're making.
NO one can possibly estimate ae-
curately. the quantity of prison made
goods shipped into the various mar
kets ef the country, and capable Of
carrying with them the prison diseas-
es: but I figure. roughly, that iii 1906
the last year for which we have any
federal records-the leading prisons
sent out about seven million pairs Of
shoes of every description, twenty
one million cigars, ten million pairs of
stockings, two million pairs Of over
aIls. one million pairs of trousers. in
GLIDING about $4,000 boys kniekers.'
five million shirts and half million
petticoats. Within the last five years
the production of these goods, with the
possible exception Of cigars, has in
creased enormously.
The average prison is no less than
a tubereular death-trap. It has been
estimated officially by DR. ]. b. Ran
som. eff Clinton Prison. New York |
generally regarded as the leading au-
thority ON prison hygiene in the TINT
ed States-.that from forty TO sixty
per cent of all the deaths in prison +!
are due to tuberculosis And autop-
sizes. he adds, show that nearly all the
prisoners have i'll some degree been
infected
The causes of this are only too
plain. The average prisoner starts in
life with bad heredity He spends
his youth in a bad environment This
combination predisposes him to dis
ease even when in freedom. In fact,
there is a grounded suspicion in
the minds of many observers that
most men are driven to crime by weak
bodies rather than weak souls; that
the breakdown of moral bikes can be
traced, ultimately. to some weak stone
il the physical foundation. But this
remains merely suspicion. Nobody
knows There are no medical exami- /
ners attached to our courts to deter /
mine whether the men on trial belong
in hospital or il a prison. They are
packed away Unfortunately
In prison everything conspires to
break down what little power of re- |
sistanee the prisoner has. He is |
dressed in unwashed. laden |
stripes that may have been but recent
~ removed from the dead body of
some inmate in the tubercular ward.
He works AT binder Irvine making. at
shirt and overall making. or stone cut
ting, hosiery knitting or some other
VIGOROUSLY tubercnlar occupation. His
food is whatever the warden, who is
only toe often graduate of the school
of graft. finds it convenient to supply
out Of an appropriation originally IN
adequate. :