Anarchism and Other Essays
that when the unfortunate citizen has been given the full "mercy" of
the law, and for the sake of safety is hidden in the worst of hells,
his real Calvary begins. Robbed of his rights as a human being,
degraded to a mere automaton without will or feeling, dependent
entirely upon the mercy of brutal keepers, he daily goes through a
process of dehumanization, compared with which savage revenge was
mere child's play.
There is not a single penal institution or reformatory in the United
States where men are not tortured "to be made good," by means of the
blackjack, the club, the straightjacket, the water-cure, the "humming
bird" (an electrical contrivance run along the human body), the
solitary, the bullring, and starvation diet. In these institutions
his will is broken, his soul degraded, his spirit subdued by the
deadly monotony and routine of prison life. In Ohio, Illinois,
Pennsylvania, Missouri, and in the South, these horrors have become
so flagrant as to reach the outside world, while in most other
prisons the same Christian methods still prevail. But prison walls
rarely allow the agonized shrieks of the victims to escape--prison
walls are thick, they dull the sound. Society might with greater
immunity abolish all prisons at once, than to hope for protection
from these twentieth century chambers of horrors.
Year after year the gates of prison hells return to the world an
emaciated, deformed, willless, ship-wrecked crew of humanity, with
the Cain mark on their foreheads, their hopes crushed, all their
natural inclinations thwarted. With nothing but hunger and
inhumanity to greet them, these victims soon sink back into crime as
the only possibility of existence. It is not at all an unusual thing
to find men and women who have spent half their lives--nay, almost
their entire existence--in prison. I know a woman on Blackwell's
Island, who had been in and out thirty-eight times; and through a
friend I learn that a young boy of seventeen, whom he had nursed and
cared for in the Pittsburg penitentiary, had never known the meaning
of liberty. From the reformatory to the penitentiary had been the
path of this boy's life, until, broken in body, he died a victim of
social revenge. These personal experiences are substantiated by
extensive data giving overwhelming proof of the utter futility of
prisons as a means of deterrence or reform.
Well-meaning persons are now working for a new departure in the
prison question,--reclamation, to restore once more to the prisoner
the possibility of becoming a human being. Commendable as this is, I
fear it is impossible to hope for good results from pouring good wine
into a musty bottle. Nothing short of a complete reconstruction of
society will deliver mankind from the cancer of crime. Still, if the
dull edge of our social conscience would be sharpened, the penal
institutions might be given a new coat of varnish. But the first
step to be taken is the renovation of the social consciousness, which
is in a rather dilapidated condition. It is sadly in need to be
awakened to the fact that crime is a question of degree, that we all
have the rudiments of crime in us, more or less, according to our
mental, physical, and social environment; and that the individual
criminal is merely a reflex of the tendencies of the aggregate.
With the social consciousness awakened, the average individual may
learn to refuse the "honor" of being the bloodhound of the law. He
may cease to persecute, despise, and mistrust the social offender,
and give him a chance to live and breathe among his fellows.
Institutions are, of course, harder to reach. They are cold,
impenetrable, and cruel; still, with the social consciousness
quickened, it might be possible to free the prison victims from the
brutality of prison officials, guards, and keepers. Public opinion
is a powerful weapon; keepers of human prey, even, are afraid of it.
They may be taught a little humanity, especially if they realize that
their jobs depend upon it.
But the most important step is to demand for the prisoner the right
to work while in prison, with some monetary recompense that would
enable him to lay aside a little for the day of his release, the
beginning of a new life.
It is almost ridiculous to hope much from present society when we
consider that workingmen, wage slaves themselves, object to convict
labor. I shall not go into the cruelty of this objection, but merely
consider the impracticability of it. To begin with, the opposition
so far raised by organized labor has been directed against windmills.
Prisoners have always worked; only the State has been their
exploiter, even as the individual employer has been the robber of
organized labor. The States have either set the convicts to work for
the government, or they have farmed convict labor to private
individuals. Twenty-nine of the States pursue the latter plan. The
Federal government and seventeen States have discarded it, as have
the leading nations of Europe, since it leads to hideous overworking
and abuse of prisoners, and to endless graft.
Rhode Island, the State dominated by Aldrich, offers perhaps the
worst example. Under a five-year contract, dated July 7th, 1906, and
renewable for five years more at the option of private contractors,
the labor of the inmates of the Rhode Island Penitentiary and the
Providence County Jail is sold to the Reliance-Sterling Mfg. Co. at
the rate of a trifle less than 25 cents a day per man. This Company
is really a gigantic Prison Labor Trust, for it also leases the
convict labor of Connecticut, Michigan, Indiana, Nebraska, and South
Dakota penitentiaries, and the reformatories of New Jersey, Indiana,
Illinois, and Wisconsin, eleven establishments in all.
The enormity of the graft under the Rhode Island contract may be
estimated from the fact that this same Company pays 62 1/2 cents a
day in Nebraska for the convict's labor, and that Tennessee, for
example, gets $1.10 a day for a convict's work from the Gray-Dudley
Hardware Co.; Missouri gets 70 cents a day from the Star Overall Mfg.
Co.; West Virginia 65 cents a day from the Kraft Mfg. Co., and
Maryland 55 cents a day from Oppenheim, Oberndorf & Co., shirt
manufacturers. The very difference in prices points to enormous
graft. For example, the Reliance-Sterling Mfg. Co. manufactures
shirts, the cost of free labor being not less than $1.20 per dozen,
while it pays Rhode Island thirty cents a dozen. Furthermore, the
State charges this Trust no rent for the use of its huge factory,
charges nothing for power, heat, light, or even drainage, and exacts
no taxes. What graft!
It is estimated that more than twelve million dollars' worth of
workingmen's shirts and overalls is produced annually in this country
by prison labor. It is a woman's industry, and the first reflection
that arises is that an immense amount of free female labor is thus
displaced. The second consideration is that male convicts, who
should be learning trades that would give them some chance of being
self-supporting after their release, are kept at this work at which
they can not possibly make a dollar. This is the more serious when
we consider that much of this labor is done in reformatories, which
so loudly profess to be training their inmates to become useful
citizens.
The third, and most important, consideration is that the enormous
profits thus wrung from convict labor are a constant incentive to the
contractors to exact from their unhappy victims tasks altogether
beyond their strength, and to punish them cruelly when their work
does not come up to the excessive demands made.
Another word on the condemnation of convicts to tasks at which they
cannot hope to make a living after release. Indiana, for example, is
a State that has made a great splurge over being in the front rank of
modern penological improvements. Yet, according to the report
rendered in 1908 by the training school of its "reformatory," 135
were engaged in the manufacture of chains, 207 in that of shirts, and
255 in the foundry--a total of 597 in three occupations. But at this
so-called reformatory 59 occupations were represented by the inmates,
39 of which were connected with country pursuits. Indiana, like
other States, professes to be training the inmates of her reformatory
to occupations by which they will be able to make their living when
released. She actually sets them to work making chains, shirts, and
brooms, the latter for the benefit of the Louisville Fancy Grocery
Co. Broom making is a trade largely monopolized by the blind, shirt
making is done by women, and there is only one free chain factory in
the State, and at that a released convict can not hope to get
employment. The whole thing is a cruel farce.
If, then, the States can be instrumental in robbing their helpless
victims of such tremendous profits, is it not high time for organized
labor to stop its idle howl, and to insist on decent remuneration for
the convict, even as labor organizations claim for themselves? In
that way workingmen would kill the germ which makes of the prisoner
an enemy to the interests of labor. I have said elsewhere that
thousands of convicts, incompetent and without a trade, without means
of subsistence, are yearly turned back into the social fold. These
men and women must live, for even an ex-convict has needs. Prison
life has made them anti-social beings, and the rigidly closed doors
that meet them on their release are not likely to decrease their
bitterness. The inevitable result is that they form a favorable
nucleus out of which scabs, blacklegs, detectives, and policemen are
drawn, only too willing to do the master's bidding. Thus organized
labor, by its foolish opposition to work in prison, defeats its own
ends. It helps to create poisonous fumes that stifle every attempt
for economic betterment. If the workingman wants to avoid these
effects, he should INSIST on the right of the convict to work, he
should meet him as a brother, take him into his organization, and
WITH HIS AID TURN AGAINST THE SYSTEM WHICH GRINDS THEM BOTH.
Last, but not least, is the growing realization of the barbarity and
the inadequacy of the definite sentence. Those who believe in, and
earnestly aim at, a change are fast coming to the conclusion that man
must be given an opportunity to make good. And how is he to do it
with ten, fifteen, or twenty years' imprisonment before him? The
hope of liberty and of opportunity is the only incentive to life,
especially the prisoner's life. Society has sinned so long against
him--it ought at least to leave him that. I am not very sanguine
that it will, or that any real change in that direction can take
place until the conditions that breed both the prisoner and the
jailer will be forever abolished.
Out of his mouth a red, red rose!
Out of his heart a white!
For who can say by what strange way
Christ brings his will to light,
Since the barren staff the pilgrim bore
Bloomed in the great Pope's sight.
[1] CRIME AND CRIMINALS. W. C. Owen.
[2] THE CRIMINAL, Havelock Ellis.
[3] THE CRIMINAL.
[4] THE CRIMINAL.
[5] THE CRIMINAL.
PATRIOTISM: A MENACE TO LIBERTY
What is patriotism? Is it love of one's birthplace, the place of
childhood's recollections and hopes, dreams and aspirations? Is it
the place where, in childlike naivety, we would watch the fleeting
clouds, and wonder why we, too, could not run so swiftly? The place
where we would count the milliard glittering stars, terror-stricken
lest each one "an eye should be," piercing the very depths of our
little souls? Is it the place where we would listen to the music of
the birds, and long to have wings to fly, even as they, to distant