Atlanta Georgian. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1912-1939, 1913-10-26
INSURGENTS
Gus TED BY
MO YER At
i. s. PRISON
Secret Report Is That Six Guards
and Another Officer Have Been
Discharged, but the Warden
Refuses to Discuss the Matter.
Graphic Description of the "Hole"
Is Written by a Man Who De-
clares He Knows All the Terrors
of the Underground SOLITARY


While calmly asserting that an in.
vestigation would be welcomed, the
administration at the, Atlanta Fed.
eral prison has taken the first impor
tant steps to crush the Insurgents"
within the penitentiary walls.
1t was reported with some secrecy
to The American Saturday that six
guards and another officer had been
peremptorily discharged Warder.
Meyer declined to discuss the mat
ter He would neither deny nor ar.
firm the report, but It is declared that
the prison is passing through a cri~,
sis and the charles first made by Ju-
Ian Hawthorne are to result In i'm,
portant changes-those the warden
makes and perhaps some his Ops.
nents may bring about.
The men discharged last week arc
said to have been singled out by the
warden as being in sympathy with
the prisoners or in talking to,s
William Schley Howard may possibly
use information derived from these
sources in basing the investigation ne
has promised. Howard Is determined
on thorough inquiry. Some of tho
former prisoners, as well as dis
charged employees, are willing
enough to talk, but are very careful
to see that their names are not made
public.
More About Hole.
As an example Of this interest ia
the affairs of the prison, held by men
who have left Its walls, the following
description of "the hole" is given
from an account furnished The Amer
lean by q man who asked, for obvi
Gus reasons. that his name be with
held, but who says he has been in It.:
The hole is not hole in the
wall; neither is it Mole in tho
ground" he says. But it is a place
to turn mans cheeks white and
make mans knees shake, and cause
his lips to tremble, when, for some
infraction of the very strict rules az
the prison, he is ordered to the
hole
Solitary confinement is the righs
term for 1t, and certainly 1t isn't ons
hole; rather a row of holes--one fols
every candidate that may be nomi.,
mated.
Away down in the bottom OF the
big bastile,' whose foundations ex-
tend twenty feet under ground, there
is row of little rooms or cells. They
are six feet wide and nine feet long,
and maybe ten feet high. Walls,
floor, ceiling-soiid concrete, with an
iron grating in the narrow door.
Dark? In one of those cells q
man can see nothing but the stars
and those stars aren't real. He has
to imagine them.
Furniture? One blanket and an
iron rod, and two chairs. In the
daytime the blanket Is not in use,
but the iron rod is-and the chains.
The man condemned to solitary con-
tinement Is hand-cuffed between the
iron rod and oRe wall, his hands being
spread apart about as far as he can
hold them. At night the wall fasten-
ing is mercifully loosed, so he can lie
down with very little difficulty on
half Of his blanket. folding the other
half over him. The concrete floor is
his mattress and bed.
Just Bread and Water.
Food About three ounces OF
bread and glass of water at noon
each day while in the hole
For what prison crimes do they
put man in the 'hole?' Well,
sometimes for one thing, sometimes
for another. The rules are not quite
so severe and strict as they used to
be. But l have seen two half-breed
Indians, old friends, from the same
reservation, who recognized each 9TH
er In Sunday school and dared to
whisper a greeting-those two half
breeds, for that offense, were put in
the hole for two days and two nights.
And one of them, as stout and hardy
a boy as | could wish to see, came out
of that relic of the Dark Ages trem-
bling and shaking as il from mortal
illness
And that's the kind OF a place the
hole is--the hole that is getting to
be so much talked about"
The American has other communi-
cations of this nature. The American.
Of course, does not vouch In any way
for the information. Visitors are noe
shown the hole" 1t appears. And the
warden politely but firmly declines to
say word about anything connected
with the prison, for the benefit of tho
newspapers.
And as for the guards that talk too
much. Well, II seems some OF them
have lost their official heads. The
convicts can't talk until they get out,
and, anyway they couldn't be dis
charged