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the lease system, exist. There’s not 3. man of them
but ought to know that the tendency of the system
is not to degrade only the prisoner, but also those
who administer it. all who witness it, and the entire
community as well.
The newspaper dispatches disclose the fact that
there is strong opposition in some quarters to an
immediate abolishment of the lease system on ac
count of the revenue which is raised by the selling
of the convicts into bondage for the periods of their
sentences. The prison commission in its report to
the present session of the legislature says that since
1899 a revenue of over $2,000,000 has been paid into
the State treasury and that nearly $400,000 will
be raised in 1908. The commission sees no reason
why a value of $450 per annum should not be placed
on each able-bodied male, since, under sub-contracts,
they are now being let out at $570 per year.
Great and just God! Open the eyes of the people
to Ihe true situation and arouse them to a sense
of their duty. Thine own image bought and sold —
Georgians driven to market and bartered off for so
much gold, as if they were no more than cattle!
Oh, Holy Light and Liberty, how much longer
shall the writhing slaves of their own and our wrong
plead vainly for their plundered rights? Shall the
agony of their silent prayers be intercepted in its
thrilling march to our hearts by reason of our lust
for gold ?
And we are they who minister and worship at the
altar of the God of Right—we who preach and pray,
and who claim to be the servants of the merciful
Jesus -we- it is us —we plunder and we fetter down
for gold the wicked and helpless who, instead of
being our slaves ought to be our wards, and the
objects of our mercy and Christian charity.
We can exercise a spirit of mercy and charity
and still do justice byway of inflicting punishment.
All will admit that society must be protected, that
penitentiaries must be maintained and men confined
in them at hard labor. It is because this is not done
in Georgia that crime is on the increase and more
men every year are being degraded, tortured and
brutalized. It is not true that we have any right to
do this. We have a right to punish, but that right
carries with it a duty to reform the object punished.
There can be no reformation in a convict camp.
Once there the average prisoner is no longer treated
as a human being—the same motive that induced
the State to sell him gain controls the lessee in
using him and all that can be gotten out of his
hands: all that can be gotten out of his body: all
the toil, and more than he is able to render, will be
exacted under the ceaseless swinging of the slave
whip and the roaring of the noisome gun. Nothing
is done to improve him. nothing looking to his re
form. At night loaded down by ball and chain:
under lock and key in a dark room, with no ray of
light or hope, his desolation could not be more
complete.
For years and years he bears up under these con
ditions. only to be turned out in the afternoon of life
branded as a criminal, shunned by the society of
others and denied employment wherever known.
The only thing left for him to do is to drift back
into the society that his first (“rime placed him in.
■with the result that he is again sent back to the
convict camp. ITe feels that his life is a failure and
that there is no longer any hope for him, and so
resolves to sink to the lowest depths of degradation.
THE REASON
Is there not some remedy for these unfortunate
men ?
Whv cannot the State enlarge and improve the
Penitentiary at M illedgeville ? Establish industries
in connection with the farm, such as cotton mills,
shoe factories. Hour mills, etc? Surround these with
such influences as would contribute to a wholesome
reform of all who entered, at the same time inflict
ing such punishment as would be a deterrant to
crime in the future.
In order that convict labor might not come in
competition with free labor, as it does so injuriously
under the lease system, arrange to pay each laborer
a small salary each day. This could be put aside
each week and at interest, and when a man’s time
ran out he would have not only money with which
to buy a ticket home, but a little capital to rest up
on and start a little business with after being re
leased. The products might thus be produced at a
lesser cost, but their superiority over free-labor prod
ucts would not cheapen their market value, and so
the labor of free men would not be interfered with
in the least.
Just think of it, with a population of less than
3.000.000. we have confined in prison 4.996 people.
In 1850 the population of the United States was
23,000.000, eight times the present population of
Georgia: but wo had only 6.500 prisoners in the
whole country at that time. Tn other words, Geor
gia has today one prisoner for every 500 people,
whereas the Fnited States had only one prisoner in
1850 for every 3.000 people.
Are we getting worse? Going backwards instead
of forwards? It would seem so. in spite of all the
cruelty and inhuman treatment meted out to the
criminal class. Does this not prove that our system
is wrong; that instead of reforming the vicious and
the bad we are only encouraging and helping them
to become more so? AVill society find its greatest
protection in further cruel attacks on the men in
bondage, or find it in a more humane and charitable
use of its right to imprison and punish?
There is only one lamp to be guided by and that
is Patrick Henry's lamp of experience. This lamp
shows that there was never so many murderers as
when men were drawn and quartered—when they
were butchered alive and'tortured in every conceiv
able way—when their limbs were torn from their
bodies and given to the fury of mobs and their
bodies to the madness of flames. These frightful
tortures, causing us to shudder and become sick at
heart, may pale into insignificance our tortures of
the present day. but the crimes for which we prac
tice our cruelty will go on apace, just as the crimes
of earlier days multi])!ied and increased, unless we
reform our system in such away as to cause men
who happen to break into our penitentiaries to leave
them better men than when they went in. Revenge,
imprisonment, torture and cruelty by all the lights
of history has proven their impotency to do away
with vice. The same light declares that kindness,
charity and mercy which insures to every man in
bondage all rights consistent with the safety of
society, have never failed to bring their reward.
The increase in the number of prisoners in United
States penitentiaries, the rules of which give the
warden less rights in the punishment of the men
than a guard of a Georgia convict camp not infre
quently enjoys, is less by 100 per cent than the in
crease in the penitentiaries of Georgia.