The present struggle of the steel workers vividly calls back to my memory the great steel strike of Homestead, in 1892, when the Pinkertons hired by Carnegie and Frick shot the strikers down wholesale for demanding living conditions. In connection with the Homestead strike I served fourteen years in the Western Penitentiary of Pennsylvania. We have made some progress since then. The workers, especially, have learned a good deal since the days of the Homestead strike. They have learned the most important lesson of all, and that is that labor has an invincible weapon in solidarity. That is also the lesson that is being impressed on American labor today by the workers of England. Soon the American Federation of Labor will realize that it is folly to call a strike of steel workers, without at the same time securing the solidaric support of all the other key industries—the railway men and the miners, for instance. As long as the workers in those industries strike separately, at different times, they run the risk of defeat. But a simultaneous strike of all the three key industries would quickly bring our Garys, Morgans and Fricks to their senses.
But whatever the immediate outcome of the steel strike, it is but a question of a short time before American labor will make solidaric cause throughout all industries and assert the right of the toilers to the ownership of the full product of their toil. The day of capitalistic autocracy is gone. The future belongs to the proletariat of hand and brain.
The present labor situation in the United States is full of promise for the future. The war and its results have proven a great education for the peoples of the world. They are sick of the high-sounding phrases about political democracy and self-determination that are in practice like so many scraps of paper. It is industrial autocracy that the workers of the world seek to destroy. This country, the alleged champion of democracy, is being daily changed more and more into the régime of Prussian militarism. The Government of the United States has taken advantage of the alleged necessities of the war to crush the spirit of liberty and to deprive the people of the last vestige of freedom. It has now become dangerous, in this free country of ours, to express an independent opinion upon any subject, except perhaps about the weather. Free speech and press are a thing of the past. The American junkers and plutocrats are swamping the country with propaganda for a strong militarism. Our industrial autocrats see the handwriting on the wall and hope to crush the gathering forces of labor by the bayonet and the machine gun. The voice of liberty is being stifled in the prisons. Our jails and penitentiaries are full of political and industrial prisoners who have dared to hold an opinion of their own and to express it. Men like Debs and others are immured behind iron bars because they love liberty more than they do patrioteering. It is to the eternal disgrace of this country that conscientious objectors, political and industrial prisoners have not yet been given an amnesty, though even some of the reactionary countries of Europe have long since restored their social protestants to liberty. If there is any manhood left in the people of America, they should immediately voice the most compelling demand for a general amnesty for all political and industrial prisoners.
Rebels against industrial autocracy, such as Debs, Kate Richards O’Hare, and others, should be the pride of the United States instead of being kept in dungeons. Woe to a country that has no Debs, Kate O’Hare or Emma Goldman! They are the voices that cry out the best aspirations of humanity, even in the face of the gravest danger to themselves.
Speaking of Debs, I was happy to have the opportunity this morning, before leaving the Federal Prison at Atlanta, to shake hands with the Grand Old Man of the New Day. If there ever was a martyr to liberty, Debs is that man. How stupid it is of the Government to jail men of his type! Prison cannot crush their spirit, nor iron bars and brutality change their conscience. Their love of humanity transcends the fear of punishment or death. There are times when the scaffold is the most elevated position for an honest man. Ideals cannot be imprisoned, nor can the eternal spirit of liberty be exterminated by shutting up its champions in dungeons or deporting men and women out of the United States. I feel, I am convinced, that the future belongs to us—to us who strive to regenerate society, to abolish poverty, misery, war and crime, by doing away with the causes of these evils. And even in prison, where we cannot fight for liberty, we can always struggle for principle.
It is this attitude of the political prisoners in all prisons that makes their lot even harder than that of the average prisoner. It is time the United States Government should take its head out of the bushes and recognize the existence of political prisoners in this country. Even in Czarist Russia the political prisoner was recognized as a man suffering for his ideals. Benighted America still considers the political just the same as the so-called common criminal. In the Atlanta Federal Prison the politicals fare even worse than the average prisoner. A banker who got away with the savings of poor widows and orphans receives the highest consideration, while the man who loves humanity more than his own safety is subjected to special persecution and discrimination.
I find that very few essential changes have taken place in the administration of our prisons within the last 25 years. The same system of brutalizing and degrading the prisoners still prevails. Only the forms differ slightly. The dungeon (known as “the hole”), chaining up by the wrists, clubbing and shooting, are the dominant methods of reformation in Atlanta. Men are chained to the doors for eight and ten hours consecutively, without even the opportunity of answering the most pressing demands of nature. I have known men in the Federal Prison to be kept 21 to 30 days at a stretch in “the hole,” which is a filthy, dark kennel, not fit for a respectable dog, and fed on two small slices of bread twice a day. Men are clubbed frequently, on the least provocation, and recently a young colored boy, “Kid” Smith, was shot dead for not walking fast enough while being taken to “the hole.”
The average type of guard in the Federal Prison is far below that of the average prisoner, both mentally and morally. Excepting a few decent officers, of a humane spirit, the majority of the guards are vulgar, brutal and dissipated men. Some are degenerates of the worst type. At their head is Deputy Warden Girardeau, formerly in charge of a chain gang. He is a man of very low mentality who believes in the old-time methods of brutality and suppression. His tactics look towards the breaking of the prisoner’s spirit and to the degradation of the inmates. A prison is the last place in the world, even at its best, to improve a man. But the Atlanta Prison tends chiefly to dehumanize the prisoners and to crush the last vestige of their manhood and self-respect. It is the Deputy Warden who is mainly responsible for the inhumanities and outrages practiced in the Federal Prison. He encourages the most brutal tendencies of the guards, and even frequently protests and nullifies the Warden’s more humane attitude. The Deputy Warden is the most hated man in the prison. The inmates regard him as a religious hypocrite, insincere and mean-spirited. It is his custom, after reading Sunday service, to go down to the dungeon and chain men up to the doors. He tantalizes the hungry victims in “the hole” with the recital of the fine breakfast he had enjoyed that morning, and in various ways seeks to provoke them into some unguarded remark in order to increase their punishment. In protest against the murderous clubbing and shooting of defenseless prisoners, I circulated a petition in the tailor shop (where I was employed at the time), to call the attention of the Warden to the terrible situation. The Deputy, hearing about it, sent for me and asked me what my purpose was. I explained to him the general indignation regarding the abuse of the prisoners, whereupon he asked me my opinion of his methods. I told him frankly that his actions did not square with his religious professions. I said that he was cruel to the men, that he lacked all sense of justice and fair play, and that I thought—as well as the majority of the prisoners—that he was a hypocrite. For this I was put on bread and water in “the hole,” a dark and filthy cell hardly big enough to stretch out in. After my time in “the hole” had expired, I was sentenced to solitary confinement for the rest of my time. I spent the last seven and a half months there.
The Federal Prison at Atlanta would profit a great deal both in discipline and morale by the immediate discharge of Deputy Warden Girardeau. Warden Fred G. Zerbst is a man far above the Deputy in every sense. He is a man of modern ideas and of much experience in handling prison inmates. He believes in the more humane methods of prison management as against the Deputy’s system of brutal repression. Unfortunately, the Warden is almost entirely occupied with the outside affairs of the prison, so that the inside management is practically all in the hands of the Deputy. There is considerable friction between the two, with deplorable results to the prisoners. Very frequently the best intentions of the Warden are nullified by the manner of their application at the hands of the Deputy.
It is high time that the public get a look into the inside workings of our penal institutions. The amount of brutality practiced in them as a matter of daily routine is almost unbelievable. When will people realize that the criminal is a man more sinned against than sinning, a victim of our unjust social and economic arrangements? But after all, prisons and their methods are a reflex of the conditions in the world outside. With so much injustice, strife and brutality in the world at large, it is no wonder that prison life mirrors the same spirit. When we become civilized enough to abolish human slaughter in the larger prison called society, when we reorganize life on the basis of human brotherhood and co-operation, we will have no use for prisons.