"I suppose it could be done in twenty-four hours," I admitted.
"Yes, and there are six men down there, and they have thirty times twenty-four hours. They are in a cellar underground, with the air that hasn't been changed in years, and the heat-pipes making it worse. Their health can't stand it—you know that—but there they've got to stay every day from eight till half after four, pottering round with their types and proofs and stuff, and trying to drag it along till time's up—what's the good of it to anybody? It's the same everywhere; look at the tailorshop! Those fellows sit and fool around there, with the guard slinging language at 'em every few minutes, and taking an hour to sew a hem six inches long; and all the time here's you and me wearing clothes that were new maybe five or six years ago, as you may see by the numbers that have been stamped on your back and then blotted out, and were worn, since then, by some poor devil with tuberculous trouble or worse; but they'll be worn out for fair before we get any others. Why, look at your pants! They're split all down the leg, and there's your knee sticking out of the hole! The prison authorities call that economy, may be; what do you call it?"
I said that I was not competing for the glass of fashion just then. Ned offered to sew up the rent for me, but I said that the safety-pin now on duty would suffice. He still had some of his theme left in him, and he went on:
"Look at that power house, that's kept going night and day, the year round, with coal at government expense, running all sorts of machinery, and what do they get out of it? I was in the carpenter's shop the other day, and there was all kinds of machines going, lathes, and I don't know what; you'd think by the noise of them they was building the Ark at least. But I nosied round, and couldn't find anybody that seemed to be working much. At last I came to one of the big steam lathes, and there was a man that looked to be busy about something, so I went up to watch him. Well, what do you think he was doing? He was making one of these here little sticks that a fellow cleans his nails with! The power house was burning tons of coal, and everything humming, and that was what came out of it all. A nail stick! What do you think of that?"
No doubt there was rhetorical exaggeration about this; but Ned's arraignment was on the whole not devoid of justification. There are abundant means in the prison for carrying on useful and energetic work, but they are not properly employed. Neither the convicts nor the community benefits by it.
Not that it is wholly without benefit to anybody, either. Good clothes are made in the tailor shop, but they are not worn by convicts. At least one excellent dwelling house has been made by prisoners, but it is occupied by a high prison official. Unexceptionable meals are cooked in the convict kitchen, but convicts do not eat them. There is an admirable and productive kitchen garden attached to the prison, but its contents never appear on convict tables. There is a fine lawn, diversified with brilliant flower-beds, in front of the main prison building, and it is greatly admired by visitors and passers-by; but the convict sees it twice only during his term—once when he is brought into the prison, and again when he is led out. On neither occasion is he, perhaps, in the best mood to profit by it. Perhaps the prison officials do profit by it; but if so, the results are not seen in their intercourse with the prisoners. There is nothing flower-like in that.
Idleness is an evil thing; purposeless work is idleness in another and worse form. Aimlessness, as my friend Ned said, is a miserable state for a man; it tortures him in prison, and the habit of it, acquired in prison, cripples and degrades him after he gets out. Contract labor is a crime which is getting recognized as such; it disgraces the nation or the state which tolerates it, and the shame of it, if not its immorality, may lead to its general suppression. Unpaid convict labor for the state, as on roads and so forth, is better than private contract labor, but is also a disgrace to the employer—a contemptible saving of pennies at the cost of human souls. Honest work is a manly thing, and those who do it should be treated like men, and as laborers worthy of their hire. Because we have rendered them helpless to demand their rights is no excuse for denying them. It is cheap, but shameful, and can only teach them that the community can be as dishonest as the veriest thief of them all.
But a system of work of which that at Atlanta is a type (and, alas! the type is far too numerous) is anomalous and abominable; it is aimless, and abhorrent to man, God and devil alike. It is difficult to absolve such a prison from the charge of being run at the expense of prisoners, for the benefit of its officials, since they alone appear to prosper by it.