The Washington times., 1925-07-23

were graves, three feet three
inches wide.
Imagine yourself shut into
stone box three feet three inches
wide, seven feet long and six and
a half feet high for years and
years, perhaps for life, with
heavy latticed iron door only five
feet high, so that you had to
crouch, like an animal entering
its lair, to get through it.
Dc you realize what a width
of three feet three inches is?
Measure it off and see. Many
of these cells housed two victims,
because Sing Sing was over
populated.
Imagine yourself confined in
such a trap with a fat man, per-
hsps with a man who snored,
perhaps with one who spat on
the floor-confined there for
hours at a stretch every day.
Do you think you could stand
it? Do you think any crime on
the calendar justifies such in
human torture of human beings
sons, brothers, husbands, fathers?
II you ask yourself the question
and answer it honestly you can
begin to imagine how felt about
it. 1 didn't have to imagine what
it meant knew.
And when the weather was
damp, as was frequently the case
there on the river level where the
mountain and tide waters met and
mingled and formed fogs, the cell
walls sweated moisture. Water
stood out on them profusely. With
cupped hand one could collect a
pint of it in short time.
Yet, with that innate courage
characteristic, of men undergoing
punishment, the convicts made
joke of the matter.
Visitors were solemnly assured
that the millions of bedbugs in
Sing Sing we're amphibious; that
they could swim like ducks.
Prison bedbugs, you know, don't
secrete themselves in the bed
crevices like their Outside"
brethren do; they hide in the cell
walls. In damp weather at
Sing Sing they had to swim for
their victuals. It's bad enough to
be awakened in the dead of night
by ordinary dry bedbugs, but to
wake up and feel them crawling
over you with wet feet is provok-
ing.
Some of the prisoners forgot
themselves to such an extent that
they actually swore out loudS This
terrible admission, 1 know. will
shock many persons, but facts are
acts and am trying not to dodge,
them.
Several men showed such utter
lack of fortitude and self-control
as to go ''bedbug crazy" scream
ing and disappearing violently and
awakening their comrades through
out the prison. Some of the So
called or self-tyled penologists and
psychiatrists would doubtless pro-
claim such men paranoiacs or
morons or perhaps just plain de-
fectives. / don't profess to know
anything about that.
Reaction.
All 1 know is what know, in
GLIDING all the knowledge that
nine.tenths of the human beings
on earth, if subjected to such
treatment, would react in an "ab-
normal manner thus becom
ing fit subjects for psychic vivi-
section by the advanced think
ers." Let me say this: human
beings are human beings and you
can't treat human beings like
beasts and expect to produce
saints.
In Sing Sing cells two wire
woven slabs served as beds"
They were hinged to the wall, one
above another, so they could be
raised and swung upward when
not in use, giving the inmate or
inmates of the Gel a promenade"
seven feet long and three feet wide.
Notwithstanding this cramped
space, hundreds of the men
walked back and forth in their
cells every night, wearing hollows
in the stone floor where footsteps
had fallen in the same spots year
after year, decade after decade.
A walk along the tiers at night
disclosed three-fourths of the
number of men pacing like Gagged
animals.
D.