Southwest Washington labor press. [volume] (Hoquiam, Wash.) 19??-19??, 1925-08-21
Prison Labor For Private Profit


| which includes all Of our emotional
life from the most elemental sex at
traction to the highest religious ex-
preston. There is another vitality i'm
portant urge, but of which the psy-
biologists have said little, possibly
because they have not suffered its re-
preston, and that is the desire for
J freedom of action.
Prison Workshops.
Our prisons ali violate all Of these
natural urges. Convicts are always
hungry because they are chronically
underfed. Mentally starved because
they are shut away from all normal
human relations of education and cul-
ture. Prisoners are not only always
hungry but they are prevented from
earning their food by their labors,
and they are robbed of the food for
which the taxpayers pay by corrupt
politicians. The state Legislature of
Missouri appropriated more per day
to feed each prisoner than have
ever spent to feed my four growing
children, now all college students, yet
my children have always been well
nourished and the convicts in the Mis-
souri, penitentiary are always in a
state of semi-starvation. And no de-
cent citizen can escape the RESPONSE
bility for the fact that two hundred
thousand human beings in he United
States are being starved into a state
of animal ferocity, while at the same
time these hungry, brutalized con-
victs driven to inhuman labor as chat
tel slaves for the private profit of
few prisoner labor contractors and
corrupt politicians.
Maxim Gorky in his story of Rus
sian working class life, Mother"
draws a vivid picture of the moral
efftcs of slavish labor and under
feeding which should be read by ev-
cry Judge before pronOuncing the
penalty of ''hard labor" and by every
citizen when he is tempted to buy a
prison made garment, He says:
"In the evening when the sun is
setting and the red rays languidly
glimmered upon the windows of the
houses, the factory elected its peo-
pie like burned out ashes. -. The
servitude of hard toll was over for
the day. The day had been swallowed
up by the factory; the machines had
sucked as much out of mems muscles,
as much vigor as it needed. The
day was blotted from life, not trace
was left. The accumulation Of ex-
hausted years robbed them Of their
appetites, and to be able to eat
they drank long and deep, goadint
on their feeble, jaded stomachs with
burning vodka. Exhausted with
toll they drank deeply and swiftly,
and in every heart there awoke and
grew an incomprehensible, sickly irri-
tatlon. It demanded an outlet. Clutch
ing tenaciously at every pfetext for
unloading themselves of disquieting
emotions, they fell upon each other
for trifleh with the spiteful ferocity
of beasts, breaking into bloody quar-
rels which often led to injury.
and even sometimes to murder. This
lurking malice increased, inveterate
as the incurable WEAKNESS Of their
bodies. They were born with this
disease of the soul inherited from their
fathers. Like a black shadow it had
accompanied them from the cradle to
the grave, squirting on their lives to
hideous. crimes soul sickening in their
aimless cruelty and barbarity."
Our prison workshops are full OF
men and women sucked dry by the
vampires of the task" and under
feeding, and they cannot be trained
in useful labor under such conditions,
nor can they acquire habits of indus
try.