Prisoners are very quick to find out a bad or a good keeper, an honest or a grafting keeper.
Humane keepers always and invariably get the best results. They maintain discipline with very little effort, and the prisoners themselves see to it that the attitude of such keepers is not changed or embittered by malicious and silly conduct on their part or that of their companions. The foul-mouthed, brutal keeper never seems to be able to maintain discipline, and when he revenges himself by inflicting unjust punishments the men retaliate by all kinds of persecutions.
An unjust and exceedingly brutal keeper was waylaid one night on his way home by some released convicts, who "beat him up" in such a manner that he was sent to a hospital for almost a month.
The Jewish and Italian convicts are often victims of the persecutions of some keepers, who heap ridicule and injustice and punishment upon them. The "guineas," the "wops," the "sheenies" and "kikes," find no mercy at the hands of these keepers, who consider men of these races as inferior, fit only to be brutalized, slowly but surely, into superior races.
An Irish keeper said jokingly to an Italian convict who could not understand something in connection with his work:
"Let an Irishman show you. You dagoes don't know nothing. How does it come that they pick Popes from among the wops, I wonder?"
"Yes, sir," answered the Italian, "and never in two thousand years did they pick out an Irish Pope."
XXIV
The outlook from the windows of our hospital is a source of never ending interest.
We can watch the grass grow and the trees, the birds hunting for food, the hospital cat waiting patiently under a bush for a stray sparrow, the orderly of the warden, haughty and always in a hurry, followed by a yellow dog. Another orderly is a red-headed young man who is called a "sugar man." He and two other men are the "goats" for the higher officials of the Sugar Trust.