He assumed his present position in 1893 when he was appointed by the late Governor William E. Russell. Only one prisoner remains who has been an inmate continuously since General Bridges took control. The man is Jesse Pomeroy.
Convict Labor and Labor Unions—According to the Cedar Rapids (Ia.) Times, Union labor’s war to prohibit state authorities to allow honor prisoners at the penitentiary at Fort Madison to work for outsiders as painters, plumbers, etc., at Fort Madison, will now go into court, following the passage of an ordinance by the Fort Madison city council, which prohibits prisoners entering the city only on official business. Police will be ordered to arrest them and the ordinance provides for a fine of from $1 to $100 in violation of the ordinance. The war against the system has been going on for two years. The Governor and State labor commissioners have been appealed to but nothing was done. The State board of control allowed Warden Sanders to put honor prisoners outside in competition with union labor. Leaders of union labor took the matter to the city council, which resulted in the passage of the prohibitory measure and will now be tested out in court.
Says Georgia to Tennessee—The Atlanta Georgian has this to say in a recent issue:
“Since Governor Hooper of Tennessee and his party of prison investigators, who came to Atlanta last week to inspect convict conditions in Georgia, have returned home they have given interviews to Tennessee papers upholding the Tennessee system of convict control as superior to that of Georgia, particularly from health and humanitarian viewpoints.
“To one who has spent several years in each state and has had opportunity to observe the prison systems of the two states—not in a three-day cursory inspection, but at frequent intervals extending over these several years—the view’s of the Tennesseans seem open to question.
“In Georgia all the able-bodied men convicts are worked out of doors, under the direct supervision of state and county officials and inspectors, constructing public highways.
“In Tennessee about half of the able-bodied convicts are worked under ground in state-owned and operated mines, having exceedingly little opportunity to enjoy the fresh air and sunlight necessary to the physical well-being of a man. The other able-bodied half are worked in factories within the penitentiary walls at Nashville under the lease system that Georgia five years ago abolished as inhuman and unjust.
“A small per cent., too old or too infirm for mine or factory, are worked on a farm adjacent to the Tennessee penitentiary. Georgia has equally as good a farm at Milledgeville for its prisoners of the same class who are not fitted for work on the roads.