“Tennessee convicts in the mines and in the factories come in direct competition with organized free labor. Georgia’s road building convicts are worked for and not in competition with other classes of labor.
“It is true that the temporary road building camps, which of necessity must be moved from place to place as construction progresses, do not possess the permanent sanitary improvements that Tennessee has installed inside the walls and at the mines—a condition to which the Tennessee party calls attention—yet this is more than offset by the health-giving open-air life led by the Georgia prisoners.
“It is a matter of record that both Governor Hooper and his predecessor, Governor Patterson, pardoned hundreds of Tennessee convicts because they were victims of tuberculosis, produced by the close confinement in the mines and factories. Without comparative statistics on which to base the assertion, the writer is confident that in the last five years there have been at least fifty per cent. more cases of tuberculosis among Tennessee than Georgia convicts, despite the fact that Georgia with its larger area and population, has about fifty per cent. more convicts than Tennessee, of whom eighty per cent. are negroes against Tennessee’s sixty per cent. of negro prisoners.
“Governor Hooper says Georgia is making fine roads. There may not be as many prayer meetings in the Georgia road camps as in the Tennessee mines, but Georgia is not blindly killing off the bodies with tuberculosis while trying to save its convicts’ souls. Georgia believes in saving both, but says to save the body first and have a better chance at saving the soul.”
A New Warden at Sing Sing.—Warden Clancy, who made a creditable record at Sing Sing, has resigned, and Superintendent of Prisons Riley has appointed Thomas T. McCormick of Yonkers as warden. Which leads the New York Evening Post to say:
“Sing Sing Prison has long been a disgrace to the State, but this fact was never so familiar to the people as it has been during the past few months. The Superintendent of Prisons appears, however, to think the present an auspicious moment for placing in charge of the prison a man whose only recommendation for the post, so far as known to the public, is that he has been successful in the plumbing business, and that he is one of the mainstays of the Westchester County Democratic machine. In the face of things like this, the men and women who are laboring to get our penal institutions properly conducted have need of all the faith and resolution they can command to keep on in their endeavor. But they will keep on, and the time will come when the idea of appointing the warden of a great prison for any other reason than his special fitness to conduct it wisely and well will seem too monstrous for belief. We must not forget the encouragement there is in the fact that, bad as these things are now, we have got beyond the utter shamelessness which was so often shown in former times.”
The New York Commission on Prison Reform—The New York State Commission on Prison Reform which was appointed by Sulzer a year ago has just filed the preliminary report of its findings. The commission of which Thomas Mott Osborne is chairman was authorized to examine and investigate the management and affairs of the several State prisons and reformatories, the prison industries, employment of convict labor and all subjects relating to the proper maintenance and control of the State prisons of the State. The Commission has made careful study of these several matters and the report which has been released contains many interesting and valuable suggestions.
The abolition of the ill-famed Sing Sing prison is recommended and the erection on its site of a receiving station for the observance and study of all persons sentenced to imprisonment in a State prison for medical examination and treatment of those afflicted with diseases and for weeding out those found to be mentally defective—the latter to be sent to separate institutions devoted solely to the care of the mentally defective.