The Subterranean Brotherhood

by Julian Hawthorne

THE BANQUETS OF THE DAMNED

The walls of jails are good non-conductors of what goes on behind them, and this applies to other prisons as well as to that at Atlanta. Yet once in a while a groan or protest, or a partial account of some outbreak, finds its way through; and in many cases the gist of the story is to the effect that the food is bad or scanty. Other things the men behind the bars suffer stoically, or not so stoically; but lack of food arouses them to despair and frenzy. We have lately heard reports from Sing Sing illustrative of this condition there; and many another jail could echo the complaints of the unfortunates in that gloomy hell-chamber.

Convicts know that they are to be punished, that the government has sentenced them, that it is the law; and though they may find cause to disagree with the decree that consigns them to hopeless and useless servitude, they accept it as at least legal and incident to the game as played. But they do not believe that the government has condemned them to starvation, or to poisoning (and the condition in which food often comes to the convicts' table is practically poisonous). They know that no such punishment is included in the statutes; and they can only conclude, therefore, that it is an arbitrary and illegal piece of cruelty or neglect on the part of the warden or commissary officer. They are prone to think that these persons profit financially by cutting down their supplies; and that they are careful to conceal the fact in their reports to the Department, or to disguise it as a meritorious economy. At the same time, they are conscious that there is no regular channel through which they can make their injury known to the authorities, and that nothing is more readily denied, or more easily concealed from inspectors, than is this very abuse.

But the suffering which it occasions is constant and cumulative. They are still required to perform their labor, as if in full physical vigor. They are punished if physical weakness causes them to fall short in their tasks. They feel their vitality ebbing, they find themselves ever less able to resist the inroads of disease, their appeals to the doctors are often met with sneers and even animosity; and what marvel is it that stoicism and patience at last give way, and they break out in some wild and savage excess which justifies the resort by their masters to the dungeon and the bullet? But death may well seem to the rebels preferable to the lingering pains of the alternative fate.

The under nourishment and malnourishment of convicts is, in fact, one of the worst crimes of the many which their despots perpetrate upon them. From any point of view, it is barbarous and wicked—the crime of a Weyler upon the defenseless Cuban revolutionists, which, as much as the destruction of the Maine, impelled this country to declare war. Yet, knowing as we do that it is perpetrated upon the human beings in our prisons, we sit supine and acquiescent, and thereby make the crime our own.

Have you not imagination enough to put yourself for a moment in the predicament of the prisoner? There you sit in the narrow gloom of your cell, or you toil in the stifling confinement of your work room, and such is not only your state to-day, but for years to come it will be unchanged. You are isolated from sight of and association with every man and woman in the world who cares for you or thinks kindly of you; silence and rigid obedience are imposed upon you; you meet no looks that are not harsh, and hear no words but sharp commands or angry menaces. Your very toil is idle and unpaid, and its diligent performance brings you no credit or hope, except treacherous promises of a good constantly delayed. And then picture yourself when, after wearisome hours, the whistle blows that means intermission of labor and the renewal of strength by food. Yet that summons, instead of cheering you, does but make the burden of your misery heavier.

Sullenly and heavily, in the endless line, you tramp into the huge, comfortless hall, with its hideous tables and benches, and as you pass up the aisles you glance abhorrently at the dirty scraps and masses of provender dumped carelessly out of noisome buckets by the filthy hands of the servers upon plates still rough and foul with the hardened grease of foregoing meals. You are faint for lack of nourishment, yet the sight of what is provided, and the unclean smell of it, nauseate instead of inviting you. Eat you must, if you would live and have strength to work, yet if you eat you invite sickness and suffering, and if you could eat all, and assimilate it, you would still leave the table but half fed.

Every tyro in physiology knows the effect upon the general organism of dejection and resentment at meals. Prisoners more than men in any other condition need abundance to eat and good cheer while eating; but the food they get, and the circumstances in which they get it, causes them to degenerate physically, and the body affects the mind. Physical disease breeds the disease of evil thoughts and impulses. Criminals might be generated by prison food alone, without taking account of their previous records and future prospects.

We of Atlanta penitentiary used to hear occasionally of the bills-of-fare of our repasts in the prison that were daily forwarded to Washington, by way of reassuring the Department of Justice, and whom else it might concern, as to the substance and excellence of our nourishment. These alimentary documents might be compared with like lists at Delmonico's and the Waldorf, and the names of the viands would be found to be identical. The inference, to the legal mind, not to speak of the penological one, was plain: the convicts at the penitentiary fared as sumptuously as do the banqueters of the Four Hundred—at no cost, moreover, to themselves, not even waiters' tips.

For here were rich soups and gravies, substantial roast beef, succulent steaks and chops, the renowned baked beans of legend, comforting hashes, pies and puddings, fresh vegetables, including the famous sweet potato of the South in its pride; and long draughts of milk from the tranquil cows of the pasture, together with tea and coffee from the Orient, sugar, mustard, salt and pepper and vinegar, enough to beguile the most squeamish appetite, and, to top off with, fruits in their season, led by the incomparable Georgia watermelon. I may have inadvertently omitted some items from this toothsome list, but it is enough as it stands to make an epicure's mouth water. And if any skeptic were still unconvinced, a photographer would be admitted with his undeniable camera at certain seasons—Christmas and Fourth of July, for example—who would place a picture of the revelry and the revelers on the everlasting records, with garlands and festive decorations, and actual dishes of some sort on the groaning boards, and serried rows of plump felons ready to fall to.