The female prisoners are employed in mending and making apparel for the men, and in domestic labors in the family apartment. The feeble men are employed in light work about the hall, such as dusting, carrying water to the cells, whitewashing, sweeping, &c., or in repairing clothes. Two able-bodied men are required in the cook room, another in the wash-room and to do chores, and part of the time still another. The remaining men are let to a contractor, who pays a stipulated price per day for each when he works.
The needed officers to the institution are the warden, deputy, physician, chaplain, hospital steward, four overseers, four guards, and two night watchmen, fifteen at least. All of these must be paid from the prison earnings. When to this is added the cost for supporting the prisoners, the ordinary repairs, printing the Report and annual apprisal, we have the net prison gain. But the outsets, with the strictest economy, must always of necessity be large, showing that crime is an important drawback to industry and thrift.
When I commenced my labors at the institution, it was about emerging from an experience which had brought no little opposition to the warden from some in the city, especially in the line of his reform moves.
He took the prison in '65, the inmates, numbering seventy, being let on a contract of forty cents per day; the bedding extremely limited; the cells swarming with those pestiferous attendants on sleeping hours, every crevice between the stones and bricks affording a safe resort; the food for the inmates insufficient for prison demands.
He at once commenced a war of extermination in the cells. Having secured a change of bedding, and taking a division at a time, he would remove all the articles for washing and boiling, and inject burning fluid into the cracks and crevices, setting fire to it, and thus literally burning out each apartment. He found it essential to renew this attack, however, as months rolled round.
Finding, from the best authority at hand on prison fare, that it is not safe to run the supply to a man lower than twenty cents per day in cost for the raw material as the market usually is, and that flour bread is an economical food for prisoners, as well as being humane, he resolved to adopt this with a diet commensurate with nature's real demands, built a baker's oven, and hired a baker for instructing certain selected inmates in the art of baking, and established the daily supply seen in the Bill of Fare at the end of this article. Under the head of "vegetables" are embraced all the articles commonly used as such on our tables,—onions, beets, carrots, parsnips, turnips and cabbage. Not, however, using all at any one meal.
In the chapel service the warden gave the prisoners liberty to look upon the speaker,—a great relief from the former downcast method,—and the chaplain introduced the responsive manner of reading, denounced by some as a most dangerous innovation. The Sabbath school was held the year round, instead of simply during the session of the legislature, and a few months beside.
But it required close calculation and strict economy with the warden to meet the current expenses with the wages of forty cents per day to a man, though he did that and gained a little.
The war ending, the tide began to set towards the institution, increasing the number in '66 to 111, '67 to 118, and '68 to 135, the highest number ever reached by the institution. The current then turned, the prisoners numbering in '69, 129, and in '70, 118.
In '67 the authorities relet the prisoners at ninety cents per day instead of forty, a great advance, brightening the financial prosperity of the institution. But in doing this they had to make a great outlay in enlarging the shop, obtaining a new engine, boilers, &c. There were, also, important repairs, with improvements in the drainage and ventilation, made.