Chapter 16
Another day, following some months of constant deterioration in the food, and diminution in the quantity of it, a dinner of hash and bread was served, and both bread and hash were sour. The air of the room was full of the sour smell; the captain came down the aisle near mine, and a prisoner had the boldness to stop him and hold up his plate. "It's sour, Captain!" said he. The captain looked the man in the eye and replied sternly, "It is not sour!" "But, Captain--" "I say it is not sour!" the other repeated with a threatening look. It was either submit, or the hole; the man sat down.
But a few minutes later, some one hissed; before he could be identified, hisses came from every part of the room. It was a critical juncture. The captain ordered the band to play, and play it did at the top of its compass; but the hissing was audible and continued through the playing. Presently the men got up and began to march out; it was then that a group of guards from the smoking room below came running up the stairs armed with clubs and revolvers and tried to get through the barred door at the stair head, but were checked by the captain, who was a wise tactician. The men went to their cells, and there began to howl and screech like a crazy menagerie, and kept it up for hours. Twenty or thirty of the supposed ringleaders were sent to the dark holes; but the revolt was not checked until the warden personally promised reforms, and gave his word that no further punishments should be inflicted--fair promises, made to be broken.
The dining room windows were protected by wire netting; but there were many holes in it, as large as a man's head, through which the flies, in summer, entered in swarms; and there was no provision for keeping them out of the kitchen, which opened into the dining room. Complaints were constantly made, but the holes were never mended, and no means were taken to kill the flies. Food sometimes was placed on the tables hours before the men sat down to their meals, and the flies, not having the same delicacy of appetite as the men, feasted freely in the meanwhile. There was also frequent protest against the bits of loose enamel in the bowls; many of these were made direct to the doctor; but he did nothing. If a man whose digestion had given way called on him for help, a dose of salts was the only reply, and several deaths, while I was there, unquestionably had their beginning in this neglect. Upon the whole, contentment with starvation was the most prudent policy in Atlanta Penitentiary.
I am not a sybarite or an epicure. For fifteen years before I was sent to prison I lived on the hardest and most Spartan diet, eating as little food as possible and that of the simplest kind. Wheat, milk, a few green vegetables, and fruit made my menus. I was therefore better fortified against hardships than the majority of prisoners; I could hold out against starvation longer; but against the poison of rotten or bad food I had no protection.
The wardens and the chief clerks of prisons often wish, for motives of their own, to make an economical showing, and perhaps do not much care if it is made at the expense of the health or lives of prisoners. Some friends of mine in Atlanta prison and myself made an attempt to determine just what was paid out per man in the prison for subsistence; we quietly obtained statements from men in the kitchen and commissary departments, and made our calculations. After careful revision, the figures showed that we were being fed at the rate of from eight to eleven cents per head, a day.
About that time, a great scientific discovery was announced by the chief steward. Food, he had been informed, contained a certain amount of heat and power; and these heat units, called calories, could be estimated for any given article of diet. (As I write this, an editorial on the subject in a recent issue of a New York newspaper states the matter in terms which I am happy to reproduce.) "Physiologists have determined by repeated experiments that a definite quantity of certain foods furnishes a definite number of calories or heat units, which produce a certain quantity of energy in the animal or human body.... In twenty-four hours a normal man of about one hundred and thirty pounds at rest, needs 1680 calories or heat units, while a man doing severe physical labor would require sufficient food to produce 3000 calories.... Since the efficiency of labor depends upon the energy of the body and this energy or power is produced by the food, it is not difficult to calculate the actual outlay required for this purpose.... The household requirements of a family where two servants are kept would at this rate be from $1.00 to $1.40 a day, a sum sufficient to furnish all the energy for all purposes of normal maintenance."
Such being the case, our steward figured that the convicts could be well enough supported by about 2500 calories apiece; and upon making a scientific estimate of the calories in our average bill-of-fare, he found that we were being overfed rather than the contrary. Meat, so many calories; soup, so many; sweet potatoes, so many; bread, so many; and so on. It was found possible, on this basis, to retrench here and there; the bills were reduced--it was hoped that we might ultimately beat even eight cents. The sole difficulty appeared to be that the men, the subjects of the experiment, began incomprehensibly and perhaps maliciously to starve.
I was fortunate enough to have access to a physician (a fellow prisoner), of forty years' eminence in his profession, who solved the enigma for me. The sum of his comment was this: "Put a Delmonico dinner in one bucket, and an equal bulk of swill or garbage in another; the number of calories may be the same in both. The steward, in his calculation, has forgotten to consider the condition in which the food is served--its eatableness, in short. If men could devour swill, it would be all right; but if they cannot, they will starve in spite of calories."
So the steward's calories became a byword and a mockery in the prison for many weeks afterward.
Similar conditions, perhaps due to the same cause, seem to have obtained at Sing Sing and elsewhere. It is not enough that prison food should be sufficient in amount; it must also be of a quality such that the men are able to get it down their throats. Nor are the doctor's salts a remedy; their violent and abnormal action finally paralyze the excretory and digestive powers of the organism, and the man dies from poisons generated by indigestible food in his own system. Even keeping him in the dark hole fails to recuperate him, though it has been constantly tried at Atlanta, and very likely in other reformatory institutions.
Plenty of vigorous and hearty outdoor exercise would help much; not the exercise of prison toil, which but deepens the darkness of the heart; but exercise for its own sake, for the cheer and excitement of it. Much has been said of the baseball at Atlanta Penitentiary; and doubtless it has been of benefit. But only a handful of the prisoners, and nine-tenths of them negroes, play the game; the others can only stand and look on. The games occur, weather permitting, once a week, on Saturdays. From Saturday at half past three until Monday morning at half past seven, the men are locked in their cells, absolutely inactive in body, and abandoned to such mental activities as, for the most part, breed no good either for themselves or others. The only outlet is the Sunday church service hour--a crowded session in a blank hall, with rifles ready to subdue any disorder. A very apostle might fail in his efforts under such circumstances; and very apostles are few.
A man who is sick and sad day after day and year after year, and conscious of his impotence to amend his state, is in no mood for moral reform. Much of the sickness might be averted if the medical treatment at the outset of disease were such as to encourage the patients to avail themselves of advice. But each man, as he comes up in the sick line every morning, is met with indifference or insults; he is presumed to be a malingerer unless he can prove himself genuine on the instant; the only other recourse is to become so sick as to be beyond help of medicine, and then, taken belated to the hospital, to die outright. The consequence is that the men will suffer silently in their cells rather than appeal to the doctor; and many diseases become ineradicable from this cause.
Even a convict, when he is miserable and weak from illness, shrinks from facing rough and unsympathetic handling and words in the doctor's room, with a good chance of being sent to the hole if he remonstrates. The doctor of a prison could be its good angel, if he would.
XIV
THE POLICY OF FALSEHOOD
The subterranean brotherhood waxes curiously indignant over being lied to by prison officials. For why should criminals, whose success in their trade must depend largely on lies either spoken or acted, be resentful when they are paid back in their own base coin? I am inclined to think that the anomaly may be due to some survival in prisoners of the old belief, that honor and fair play do, or should, exist in officers of justice; although their own experience should admonish them that officers of prisons, at least, cultivate the art and practise of fighting the devil with fire (as we say), and so far from ever thinking of keeping faith with a convict, study the art of deceiving and hoodwinking him, and appear to derive no small amusement from their results. Indeed, any tendency on the part of a guard or other official in a prison to deal honestly and above board with their charges would at once awaken suspicion of his loyalty to the "system," and his superiors would be apt to improve the first opportunity of getting rid of him.
The lies told to prisoners are sometimes told for art's sake merely--for the delight of the artist in his fabrication. There is fun in overcoming the suspicions and skepticism of some old timer, and beguiling him into the belief that for once, and at last, he really is getting trustworthy information--that he has finally succeeded in touching the elusive hem of the robe of Truth. But commonly the official liar has some practical object in view. This object is usually the tightening of the prison's grip upon the convict; not only to strengthen the bonds which confine his body, but to bring his spirit or soul under more complete subjection and to make him feel that so far from moral reform being the end sought in his incarceration, he will best consult his private interests by abandoning all thoughts of decency and honor, and acting, with the officials, against the welfare and hopes of his own fellows.
The consequence of the falsehood policy in prisons is, for one thing, that the men most worthless morally are uniformly those who get most favors. Men of unbroken spirit are handled in a hostile manner, and are subjected to a régimen calculated either to kill or cure their obstinacy and themselves. "You have no right to do this--there is no law for it!" the convict may protest. The reply is a sneer: "What are you going to do about it?" What do you think you would do in such circumstances?--write to the President, or to some Senator or Congressman? awaken the country to these iniquities? The warden and the clerk will smile over your letter, and drop it in the waste-basket, or will make it the basis of an adverse report against you to the Department,--insubordination, incorrigibility, insanity perhaps.
Or, if you reserve your protest till after you get out, and can then find any medium for ventilating it, the prison authorities will promptly and smilingly "welcome an investigation"; and the Department will eagerly send down some old friend and boon companion of the officials, to make a "strict investigation," "without fear or favor." Now, at last, the truth shall be known, let it hurt whom it may! So the severe and incorruptible inspector comes down; and after snubbing and insulting a few prisoners, and taking notes of the information of a few snitches, and dining and wining with the officials, and inspecting the country in the government automobile, he goes back to Washington with the reassuring news that the reports of abuses, where they were not absolute fabrications, were gross exaggerations.
Is this an imaginative sketch--or colored a little--or a good deal? How shall it be determined?--for I am only an ex-convict, and we all know what an ex-convict's word is worth. I can only suggest that, for your own individual satisfaction at any rate, you commit a bona fide crime and get sentenced to prison for it. If you survive, we can converse further on the subject. Or--to offer a bolder suggestion yet--perhaps the head of the Department himself might take a hand; perhaps he would oblige us by breaking a law. Let him be handcuffed and brought to Atlanta or elsewhere--we are not particular--and there be numbered and U.S.P.'d and set to work. After a ten years' experience, or, if his time be valuable, a year and a day might do, let him write his report, and I for one will abide by it.
The prison policy of falsehood may be illustrated by the uses to which the parole law is put. This unfortunate measure was no doubt conceived by its parents in love and charity, to supply prisoners with a stimulus to reform by rewarding them for it with early release from imprisonment. If a man's conduct while serving his sentence had been orderly and obedient to rules, he was to be freed after serving about one-third of his appointed time; but he was required, for a reasonable period thereafter, to make monthly reports to the prison, and to show that he was usefully employed and was not frequenting drinking saloons or otherwise going astray. A parole board was appointed to carry out the law and to look after the paroled prisoner, helping him if necessary to get employment. Meetings of the board were to be held at stated times, to pass upon applications for parole; it was to consist of the warden and the doctor of the prison, together with the president of the parole board, who officiated at all Federal prisons, and who would, naturally, be the superior official of the three. But two members of the board would form a quorum; and meetings of the board at times other than those regularly required could be held if thought desirable.
This looked humane and innocent, and raised great hopes in prisoners; and an improvement in their general demeanor was soon observable. Question soon arising as to whether life prisoners could be brought under the new law, it was decided that lifers who had served fifteen years were eligible, if of good record,--not an extravagant act of mercy,--and in obtaining this concession it was made known that the warden of Atlanta Penitentiary was instrumental. Of course the reputation of Atlanta as a model and humane prison was greatly enhanced thereby.
But the prisoners, and perhaps the framers of the law also, had overlooked one little word in the language of the law, which grew to have a large significance afterward. The language is, that if the prisoner's conduct has been correct, etc., he may be granted parole. If, for that harmless looking "may," had been substituted "shall," or "must," the secret annals of federal prisons since then would have been spared much rascality, corruption, cruelty, torture and death; and prisoners would not have hated and distrusted their keepers as they do now, and subordination on one side and humanity on the other would have received an impetus.
That "may" rendered it optional with the board to grant or to refuse parole in any given case; they might not only determine whether or not the conduct of the applicant had been, while serving his sentence, good enough to justify clemency; but also whether, even then, it were expedient to exercise it. No matter how unexceptionable the behavior of a prisoner were shown to be, it was open to the board to say to him, "We hold that your liberation would be inimical to the welfare of society, and we cannot therefore recommend it to the Department."
The prisoner, going before the board unsupported by the advice of counsel, had no further recourse; he must go back to his cell feeling that all his efforts to be obedient (persisted in through what discouragements only prisoners know) had been futile; that he was not a whit better off than was a man who had defied every regulation, and was worse off in so far as he had taken all his pains and indulged all his hopes for nothing. He must serve out his time; for if he renewed his application at the next meeting of the board, he was told that nothing could be done in his case except upon the presentation of "new evidence."
New evidence of what? The obstacle he had to meet was the arbitrary opinion, or fiat, of the board that it would not be a good thing to set him free; with what argument, except his good conduct, which had already proved unavailing, could he hope to reverse it? The decision left him helpless and hopeless, and with a sense of despotic injustice on the part of the authorities which was anything but conducive to good discipline in him or in his comrades who were conversant with his fate.
Obviously, however, there was a weak point in this kind of arbitrary rulings of the board; it was conceivable that some enterprising Attorney-General might want to know why the board had not held the good conduct specified in the law to be sufficient ground for freeing the man. To guard against this, the services of a subordinate called the parole officer were called in. This person's normal functions as indicated in the law were to help paroled men to procure employment, to aid them in general in their efforts toward a better life, and to stand by them as an authoritative and kindly friend. But he was now required to play a very different part.
As soon as a man applied for parole, the parole officer betook himself to the place where the applicant had formerly lived or been known, and there busied himself in unearthing whatever gossip and scandal of a hostile nature any enemy might be willing to supply. There was no time limit on these revelations, nor were any apparent precautions taken to determine whether the evil reports were founded in fact; the tale bearer was not compelled to testify under oath, and his story might refer to incidents which had happened years before, and which had nothing to do with the crime for which the prisoner was now undergoing sentence. With this budget of information the parole officer returned to his superiors, who were now prepared for any contingency.
When the prisoner comes up for examination, and has handed in his report of good conduct while incarcerated, the president of the board fixes a distrustful eye upon him, and says in effect, "Your behavior here seems to have been unobjectionable; but the board cannot take the responsibility of granting parole on that ground alone. It desires to be informed what you were doing in such and such a place, in such and such a year? Is it not true that you were arrested in this or that year for this or that offense? Has your career, in short, been absolutely blameless during the whole course of your life? Because, unless you can prove such to be the case, it will indicate a predisposition to law-breaking on your part which will render it imprudent for the board to recommend you for parole to the Department."
The president has a sheaf of papers in his hand, which he glances over significantly while the mind of the prisoner goes groping back over the past, asking himself what he has done amiss in forgotten years, and who can be his accusers. He has no counsel beside him to tell him that he is being tried before an unauthorized tribunal, on unsupported testimony, on charges irrelevant to that for which he is now undergoing punishment; or to remind him that the judge who passed sentence on him had specified that if his behavior were good while serving that sentence, he would be eligible for parole--that he had, perhaps, given him a longer sentence than he would otherwise have done, upon this very understanding; and that, consequently, the parole board was now arrogating the power to override the purpose of the federal court, and to inflict additional and unwarranted punishment upon him for something which he may or may not have done in the past, or for which, if he had done it and been convicted, he may already have served sentence. He has no one to argue thus for him; he feels that he is alone and among enemies; and he can make no effective defense. And the parole officer stands by with a sad countenance, as of one who had done the best he could for a protégé, but was powerless to stem the tide of justice.
It can't be done, legally or justly; but it is done; that is the gist of the matter. There is no one to know the wrong and to insist upon the right; and the wrong is perpetrated. Unnumbered victims of it, in every federal prison of the country, substantiate this fact. The parole board--which means, in practise, its president--exercises more power than the federal court, and there is no appeal from his decision. At his will, a man may be tried twice for the same offense, behind closed doors, without aid of counsel. He may be condemned, though the offense was never committed except in the imagination of an enemy. We tell our convicts that they have no civic rights; but it is not generally understood, I think, that the Spanish Inquisition of the Middle Ages can properly be reproduced in Twentieth Century America even with men behind the bars.
But let that pass. Things are done under the parole law worse than this. If it were used merely as a means to induce unruly men to be docile, no one could complain; if men thus induced should after all be deprived of the reward they had earned, we might condone it. But what if we find the parole board turned into an accessory of the secret service or spy system, and learn that an applicant for parole, whether or not he have maintained good conduct during his term, may yet hope for a favorable report on his case if he will consent to betray some man on whom the police have not yet been able to lay their hand?
Here comes a postoffice thief, for example. He was known to have had confederates, but they escaped. He is up for parole, with only an indifferent prison record to plead for him. "We do not find your case meritorious," says the president to him (in substance), "but there were two or three others concerned in your crime. If you are able to furnish their names to the board, with such other information as may lead to their arrest and conviction, we might see our way to recommend leniency in your matter." I will not guarantee that the president expresses himself in terms quite so explicit, but he makes himself perfectly understood, and the prisoner perfectly understands that his liberty is purchasable at the price of treachery.
I don't know what percentage of the miserable creatures accept the ignoble offer; but I know personally of many who refused it. And I do not need to ask what are the prospects of an honest and worthy career for those who chose to be traitors. If they go to ruin, is not the parole board responsible? On the other hand, who shall blame the convict if he accedes to the bargain? The alternative presented to him is one which might cause even virtue to waver, and convicts are not supposed to be virtuous, especially when such an example as this action of the board is set them. The alternative is liberty, or continued incarceration with the strong probability of increased severity of treatment, and always the off chance of death.