Elmore County Republican. [volume] (Mountain Home, Idaho) 1910-1915, 1912-04-13
From The Magazine Press.
Excerpts Of Opinion from the Leading Writer'S of Today
Rev. John A. Peake.

own state, do nevertheless, retallate
upon US in their own weak way. Here
is an extract from an affidavit made
by Patrick McManus, former inma
of the Maryland Penitentiary 1t has
been Incorporated in the hearings OF
the House Committee on Labor (suh'
committee on Competition of Penal
Iato) fer 1908, and its truth has
Teen yorched for publicly by a for
ner claI lain, the Rev. J. j. Burk-
hart, and privately to me, by the
former ply stefan, DR., Cooke.
Anyone who calls at the Maryland
penitentiary, runs this affidavit, land
requests several negroes | could
name, will find them covered over
with running sores, and he may well
shudder frCm fear that perhaps the
ilirt he is wearing was handled over
ard over again by these men in diff
lerent operations-Then again there
ale many consumptiye inmates-en-
gagged as operators, etc.--I have per-
st nallJ seen the dried sputum scrap
ed eff shirts in the packing depart
ment before shipment, and | have wit
messed men ground to their machines
until two days before their death,
which was officially pronounced by
the penitentiary physician as due to
| tuberculosis. Men suffering from
these diseases are rot isolated even
in the dining room, and never in the
Shops
! Now this prison alone sends out
about four million shirts a year, which
ale sCld all over the country under
hundreds Of different labels. How
many messages Of disease and death
do these four million shirts carry in
to unsuspecting homes?
Last December, | saw, in a dark,
unventilated cell in the Eastern Peni-
Tertiary at Philadelphia, three con-
sumptive looking negroes feverishl.
licking TIE wrappers ON cigars. that
they were making | asked the guard
If these cigars We're sold on the open
market. "Oh, yes, he answered,
but not in amy high class shops, you
know; only in saloons and such
places"
No one can possibly estimate, ac-
curately, the quantity of prison made
goods shipped into the various mark
cts of the country, and capable Of
carrying with them the prison dis
eases; but | figure roughly, that in
l905-the last year for which we
have amy federal records-the leading
prison sent about seven million pairs
of shoes of every description, twenty
one million cigars, ten million pairs
OF stockings, two million pairs of
overalls,one million pairs of trousers,
including about 100000 boys "knck-
ers," five million shirts and a half
million petticoats. Within the last
five years the production of these
goods, with the possible exception of
cigars, has increased enormously. AS
rule, too, these goods are of the
cheaper grades in evry line, grades
which go into the homes Of the Door
whose overworked and unfed bodies
provide natural breeding gfolnd for
whatever germs these might carry.
And every day hundreds of o,.son-
ers themselves come out, many with
death written upon their faces. Into
how many homes they carry their
grim message in person no one may
say. But with this steady influx
from the prison source alone do you
wonder that the white plague i'm ey-
cry community, increases at rate
greater than all the preventive and
curative agencies combined?
An editorial in the Review of Re-
views has the following on the re-
cent coal strike in Fnpland ..e