“Col. Miller, chief quartermaster, reports need of underwear of all sorts, as well as bedding and blankets. Some Ohio towns are just being heard from. At least thirty cities and towns are inundated in Ohio, twenty in Indiana and many in Illinois, Kentucky and West Virginia. Boundary line surrounding flooded territory more than two thousand miles long. Situation very serious in a number of Indiana cities. I am going to Indianapolis tomorrow at urgent request of Governor Ralston.
“Following report from Adjutant General F. S. Dickson of Illinois indicates gravity of situation in that state: ‘We have a flooded territory on the eastern side of the state along the Wabash River and its tributaries, and another through the heart of the middle western part of the state along the Illinois River and its tributaries, but the most serious situation confronting us is along the Ohio and Mississippi, particularly the Ohio. The entire territory from above Mount Carmel on the Wabash down past Cairo is either submerged or in grave danger of being submerged. Shawneetown has been abandoned and is now under water to the extent of approximately twenty-five or thirty feet.
“‘On duty there are two companies of national guard and a division of naval militia. People driven from their homes numbering approximately eight hundred to one thousand are in the hills back of the city and are appealing for shelter and food. Mounds City is making a desperate fight and there are four companies of national guard working on the levees. The saving of the people is in doubt because there is no high ground in their rear to which it is possible for them to go, they are entirely shut off in the rear by from fifteen to twenty-five feet of water. Cairo is practically an island and the water from the Ohio has driven people along the territory I have indicated, away from their homes and back into the hills to distances of ten to fifteen miles. This distance is entirely covered by water. The state is furnishing all the tentage at its command and food supplies to every possible point within our power. From the reliable reports from my officers who have personally visited these places, I would say that in the present flooded area in southern Illinois there are from eighteen to twenty thousand people homeless and in dire need of food.’”
SMASHING THE LEASE SYSTEM IN ARKANSAS
When Governor Donaghey of Arkansas just before Christmas turned loose 360 convicts as one step in his effort to break up the system of hiring out prisoners to private contractors, nearly every editor in the country found space for the story. But when, last month, T. J. Robinson, the new governor, signed a bill which finally abolished the lease system and established in its place a state farm where prisoners are henceforth to be worked, the news was not so picturesque and only a few papers outside of the state of Arkansas thought it important enough to even publish the fact.
The new law brings to an end one of the most spectacular campaigns ever waged against the lease system.[[1]] “The penitentiary was not designed for a revengeful hell,” ex-Governor Donaghey said the day he pardoned 360 of the state’s convicts. This extreme measure was taken as the last means, before his retirement, of rousing the people of Arkansas to immediate action. By hiring out to contractors persons whom it is the state’s duty to protect and reform, declared the former executive, the state was in a way giving its sanction to cruelty and exploitation.
[1]. See The Survey for Dec. 28, 1912, page 383; also Jan. 4, 1913, page 410.
The new law replaces the former Board of Penitentiary Commissioners, which consisted of a number of state officials who had heavy duties in other directions, with a new Board of Penitentiary and Reform School Commissioners. This board has only three members and the law stipulates that two of these shall be experienced farmers. They are to give their entire time to their new duties.
The law declares that this commission “shall not hire out or lease or permit any person to hire out or lease any of the convicts of this state to any person or persons whomsoever.” Instead, it shall “use and work” all convicts on a state farm, which it is authorized to purchase. A farm of 8,000 acres is now being used for the purpose, and it is said that all of the prison population can be profitably employed there the year round.
Several reasons led to the selection of farm work for prisoners. One was that there is less competition with free labor in farm work than in other lines of production. Another was that it gives the men a great deal of healthful outdoor exercise. A third was that it will enable many of the men after release to take up work from which there is less chance that their prison records will exclude them than would be the case in many of the trades ordinarily followed in prison factories.