Southwest Washington labor press. [volume] (Hoquiam, Wash.) 19??-19??, 1925-10-30

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In all Of the discussions Of prison
labor the prisoner IS usually over
looked entirely, but when you buy
prison made garment you cannot
escape your responsibility for the
conditions under which they are made.
Some prisons are . little better, some
4 little worse. but in real essentials
there are the same abuses wherever
prieon labor is exploited for private
profit.
The outstanding fact IS that the
convict Is utterly helpless. and helps
lessness on one side and despotic
power On the other always breeds
abuses. Stone walls shut in barbara
ties and cruelties that are denied
free expression BY civilized society.
They also shut out ell intelligent un-
derstanding and social supervision.
The convict Is first branded as totally
depraved, and shut away from the
sight Of his feIlowmen. There is no
way he can make bis voice heard,
no one to whom he can appeal, and
any redress for the most terrible
abuses must be through the very men
who commit them. The average nor
NAL citizen never knows what goes on
behind prison walls, and prison Off
cials ten only what pleases them.
Control Of Prison. Labor
In SEXUAL practice the control Of
practically every prison where con-
Wet labor is exploited for private pro-
fit is vested in the contractors agent.
And his sole object is to make profits,
and that means that the last atom
Of productivity must be ground out Of
the convict. He has been committed
to prison under sentence of hard
labor" and sold into slavery, and the
contractor has not even the interest
in his welfare that the white master
had in black slave. If black slave
were killed by overwork or brutality
the master lost his money value, his
selling price ON the slave market, but
If a convict is killed the state supplies
the contractor with another without
cost.
Mr.. C. E. Hoffman, Of Rutledge,
Mo-, was for many years prison
guard at the State Penitentiary at
Jefferson City where served. In his
book Buried Alive he says: ~After
man has been convicted Of an often
Sc, and sent to some place Of revenge
for that is all prisons really are
he is, to all intents and purposes,
buried alive, SO, completely is he shut
away from the outside world
In the majority Of our prisons much
the same systems Of management are
exercised as was In vogue a century
ago. The same rules and modes Of
punishment; where she dungeon, the
weighing machine, cat-o-nine-tails
and other inhuman methods are re-
sorted to, and with as relentless hand
as ever welded the lash in darkest
slavery days"
Guards and Contractors FOsemen
Both guards and contractors fore
men are paid criminally low wages,
but they can always earn generous
bonus by getting more than the task
out Of the prisoners, and there is no
curb to the methods they may use.
have seen every sort Of punishment
that the degenerate and sick minds
and souls Of men could invent IN
flicted on the women in the prison,
and almost without exception is was
inflicted, not for bad behaviour nor
disorderly conduct, but for failure to
make the task that was utterly be-
yond their powers. Al Jennings in
his book Through The Shadows With
o. Henry" gives a vivid picture Of the
methods used toe force the task, and
unfortunately they are not unusual,
but ordinary practices in American
prisons. He says:
"Only q man who has been in Hell's
mouth--who has seen blood squirt as
men, stripped and chained, and beaten
until their flesh is storm and bleeding,
now the deparvity Of prison beat
ing.-- ! had seen d man beaten to
death over the trough. The awful
debauchefy Of that murder is scared
into my brain. The convict, strapped
across the trousA. bis ankles drawn
under It, his arms ACROSS the top, was