"Only since I am working in this shop."
"Oh, he is all right, Doctor," the officer interposed. "He's only been here a week."
Mr. Rankin cast a quizzical look at the guard.
"You want him here?"
"Y-e-s: we're short of men."
"Well, I am the doctor, Mr. Hoods." Then, turning to me, he added: "Report in the morning on sick list."
III
The doctor's examination has resulted in my removal to the hosiery department. The change has filled me with renewed hope. A disciplinary shop, to which are generally assigned the "hard cases"—inmates in the first stages of mental derangement, or exceptionally unruly prisoners—the mat shop is the point of special supervision and severest discipline. It is the best-guarded shop, from which escape is impossible. But in the hosiery department, a recent addition to the local industries. I may find the right opportunity. It will require time, of course; but my patience shall be equal to the great object. The working conditions, also, are more favorable: the room is light and airy, the discipline not so stringent. My near-sightedness has secured for me immunity from machine work. The Deputy at first insisted that my eyes were "good enough" to see the numerous needles of the hosiery machine. It is true, I could see them; but not with sufficient distinctness to insure the proper insertion of the initial threads. To admit partial ability would result, I knew, in being ordered to produce the task; and failure, or faulty work, would be severely punished. Necessity drove me to subterfuge: I pretended total inability to distinguish the needles. Repeated threats of punishment failing to change my determination, I have been assigned the comparatively easy work of "turning" the stockings. The occupation, though tedious, is not exacting. It consists in gathering the hosiery manufactured by the knitting machines, whence the product issues without soles. I carry the pile to the table provided with an iron post, about eighteen inches high, topped with a small inverted disk. On this instrument the stockings are turned "inside out" by slipping the article over the post, then quickly "undressing" it. The hosiery thus "turned" is forwarded to the looping machines, by which the product is finished and sent back to me, once more to be "turned," preparatory to sorting and shipment.
Monotonously the days and weeks pass by. Practice lends me great dexterity in the work, but the hours of drudgery drag with heavy heel. I seek to hasten time by forcing myself to take an interest in the task. I count the stockings I turn, the motions required by each operation, and the amount accomplished within a given time. But in spite of these efforts, my mind persistently reverts to unprofitable subjects: my friends and the propaganda; the terrible injustice of my excessive sentence; suicide and escape.