CONTINUING CRUELTIES IN THE CONVICT CHAIN GANGS AND CAMPS THE SOUTHERN UNITED STATES.

[ Issued by The Howard Association, London, 1901.]

Several years ago, the HOWARD ASSOCIATION, at the request of American correspondents, collected and widely diffused (on both sides of the Atlantic) information in reference to the shocking cruelties inflicted upon the convicts, both white and black, and especially upon women and children, in some of the chain-gangs and prison-camps of the Southern United States.

This action of the Association led to much discussion of the question in the American newspapers, and by persons of influence in the various States concerned.

The Howard Association has since been informed that some improvement has taken place in the treatment of these convicts, at any rate, of those who are now retained under the immediate control of the State authorities. Decided progress has been made, amongst this particular class, in Georgia and Louisiana. Thus, a Georgia correspondent writes that “The system has been radically changed, because all the juvenile convicts have been separated from adult hardened criminals, and the women have been collected in separate prisons. The long-term, able-bodied convicts are leased to well-known and reputable business firms. The prison management is placed under the control and constant supervision of three of Georgia's most reputable citizens, who are salaried to give constant attention to the welfare of these convicts.”

In Louisiana, the leasing-out system is reported to be abolished, and to be gradually disappearing in several other States. And in various parts of the South, good men and women are taking an increasing interest in this subject, and in the treatment and condition of the coloured race in general.

Philanthropic Efforts In The South. Such excellent persons as Mr. Michael Heymann, of New Orleans, Mr. G. S. Griffith and Rev. J.R. Slattery, of Baltimore, Colonel R. Bingham, of North Carolina, ex-Judge Albion W. Tourgee (now U.S. Consul at Bordeaux), Mr. John Mitchell, jun., of Virginia, Miss Tutwiler, of Alabama, Mrs. Clarissa O. Keeler, of Washington, D.C., Mrs. WM. H. Felton, of Georgia, and others like-minded, have laboured perseveringly, and not without material success, in this humane service. And their efforts have been ably seconded by some (but comparatively a few) coadjutors in the Northern States.

“Dark Places Of The Earth.” But America is a country whose freedom at times passes into mischievous licence, and enables the disreputable portion of the community, and 0002 2especially selfish exploiters of cheap labour, to set at defiance the regulations of established authorities. It is charged by a New York magistrate in 1901, that some of the police, even, in that city, are “organised black-mailers.” And if such corruption can take place in a large city, what atrocities may not occur in the convict-camps in lonely forests, and in prisons and labour-gangs in isolated places?

Dr. Conan Doyle has well remarked, in reference to English scenes of rural solitude and beauty, “The thought which occurs to me is a feeling of their isolation, and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there. In the town, there is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard's blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbours; and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that there is but a step between the crime and the dock. But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields; think of the deeds of hellish cruelty which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser.”

No system of inspection or regulation, can prevent “hellish cruelty” whilst such camps continue to exist as those of the South.

Even under the best British administrators, such as Peel, Derby, and Russell, it was found impossible to prevent the atrocities in similar convict gangs in isolated Norfolk Island, in Tasman's Peninsula, and in Macquarrie Harbour, with its fearful murders and cannibalisms. But at length the Colonists compelled Great Britain to abolish this system; and the better class of the population of the Southern United States may well follow her example.

The most abominably cruel sentences continue to be passed upon negroes, in the South, for petty offences, which in other countries would merely involve a reprimand, or a very brief detention. Thus, a negro was lately sent to the gangs for fifteen years, for stealing a box of soap! And black children get sentences of ten years for games “obstructing” the streets.

The American journals from time to time report lynchings, kidnappings, and other outrages, perpetrated chiefly upon the negroes, and occasionally on white persons also. But where one such crime becomes known to the public, there is reason to believe that a much larger number of such atrocities take place in secret. The Southern newspapers state that thirteen planters in South Carolina were recently fined (though in very small amounts) for enslaving and whipping negroes whom they had induced to sign “contract labour” papers.

DEBASING WHITE INFLUENCES.

As to the lynchings of negroes, by torture and burning alive, professing Christians in the South and West have emulated the horrible example of the Apaches, Comanches, and other Indian savages of a former generation. And these barbarities have found many apologists, on the ground that the negroes are licentious and dishonest—as, indeed, many of them are.

But who set them the example, and educated them in these vices? In too many cases the white population, and even their legal authorities. For the grossest licentiousness is practised and encouraged by the officers of some of the convict camps. One of these officials recently acknowledged that “the favourite male convicts are allowed to go in and out of the women's room in the stockade at all hours of the night. The guards do the same.” This charge is corroborated by similar accounts from other States.

Very cruel punishments are inflicted in some of the convict camps, such as scores of lashes on the bare back, for slight offences. Women also are brutally flogged.

At the U.S. “National Conference of Charities and Corrections” held 0003 3at Washington, in 1901, a well-known Southern lady who has long laboured on behalf of suffering humanity, Miss Julia S. Tutwiler, Principal of a Normal College, said that negro children are still sent to prison with adult criminals, and that they leave it “half devil and half beast.” In one jail fifty children were incarcerated, whose only offence was “stealing a ride on a train.” She asked: “How can we hope that brutal assaults will cease while we are making brutes of human beings?” Another Southern authority remarks that a similar description applies to the prisoners in nearly every Southern State, and adds: “It has recently been proved that men, women and children are held in a worse bondage than before Emancipation.”

A Committee of Investigation in South Caroline lately found a number of innocent persons in convict stockades. They were being chained, flogged and cruelly overworked. Occasionally even white persons are kidnapped and obliged to work in remote camps, or mines, in the South. But it is a frequent practice to inveigle, or force, negroes into them.

SUCCESSFUL EVASION OF THE LAW.

In some of the Southern States the chief authorities have made exemplary attempts to detect and bring to justice the offending parties; but the latter are very cunning and can easily manage to baffle such endeavours to check their malpractices. Prisoners, or even free citizens, giving information against these oppressors, do so at the risk of their lives.

Even State Legislatures may be successfully foiled, or defied. The Florida Legislature has appointed a Committee to visit the convict camps in in that State. They reported of one of them (in Citrus County): “Your Committee found a deplorable condition of affairs in this camp, and cannot present in language the true situation. We found a system of cruelty and inhumanity that would be hard to realise, unless it could be seen and heard.” It is very significant that the same Committee afterwards ascertained that prisoners had been punished for replying to their inquiries.

If such obstacles attend official commissions, private investigators or informants must experience the utmost difficulty and personal risks.

Imprisonments of negro offenders in the South are often arbitrarily prolonged, in the interest of contractors. An able paper in the BOSTON “ARENA” (March, 1901), states that in Louisiana “one out of every four and a-half white prisoners receives a pardon, while only one out of every forty-nine negroes obtains such clemency.” A similar injustice rules in other States also. The “Arena” adds: “There are but three reformatory prisons in the eight extreme Southern States, and no State reformatories. Measures for reform in the penal institutions are not one-half as great as in the North. The penalties are extreme. Life sentences are frequently given for burglary. The whites cause crime among the negroes by attentions to negro women. The attitude of the white women in the South is conducive to negro immorality; for they are generally indifferent to the relations of their husbands and brothers with negresses.”

WHAT CAN BE DONE? U.S. NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND INTEREST.

What can be done to diminish these evils? It is by the respectable class of American Journals and by The Religious Portion Of The Community that the most likely influences for good can be put forth. Colonel Bingham, of Carolina, writing in Harper's Magazine, appeals to the whole nation, North as well as South, to give more earnest practical attention to this question, precisely because it is a truly national matter. For negro crime and immorality seriously affect the white population of the whole Union.

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Lynchings and other cruelties cannot reform the coloured people. On the contrary, they cause hatred and revenge. On such terrible occasions as the inundation of GALVESTON and the bursting of the POCAHONTAS reservoir, the negroes of those localities refused to render aid to the drowning and the dying, and betook themselves to plunder and outrage. Elsewhere in the South, they have refused to check conflagrations, and have combined to quit, in numbers, certain localities, as in Carolina and Texas, where they have been specially terrorized, thus occasioning great loss and inconvenience to the local employers of labour.

So that even on the ground of self-interest, it is of importance that the white community should seek to raise the moral condition of the black race, and to discontinue the debasing influences of chain-gangs, convict camps and lynchings. The active efforts, in this direction, of the EXECUTIVE AUTHORITIES of all the Southern States, should be urged by the PRESS and by patriotic and humane persons.

As to the action of the STATE GOVERNMENTS, a valuable practical suggestion is made by Mr. TIMOTHY NICHOLSON, of Indiana, the President, for 1891-92, of the U.S. “National Association of Charities and Corrections.” Writing to the Howard Association, he says: “Prison reform even in our Northern States, made very slow progress until 'sTATE BOARDS OF CHARITIES AND CORRECTIONS' were created by law. And very few of the Southern States have such Boards. It seems to me that the best way to secure improvement in this matter, will be to advocate the creation, by legislation, of such non-partisan Boards, with authority to thoroughly inspect everything pertaining to prison management, and to make reports thereon, in detail, to the Governors, with such recommendations as may seem to be called for. I hope the Howard Association will persevere in its laudable efforts to stir us up.”

Great benefit has resulted in the Northern States from the creation of such Boards, and it is to be hoped that the people and Governments of the South will not much longer delay to follow the example of their Northern brethren in this matter.

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING and ELEMENTARY EDUCATION are making progress amongst the coloured population of the South. But, at the same time, drunkenness and immorality are stated to have much increased amongst them of late years, thus evincing the necessity for more direct religious influences being brought to hear upon them. For with negroes, as well as whites, no means of social elevation can be put in comparison with the GOSPEL and with the practical effects of BIBLICAL TRAINING. And the prayerful invocation of DIVINE HELP, in this direction, is also essentially needful.