The Russian cannot do
more than beat, torture and kill his prisoners; but we do the same. It
is done at Blackwell's Island, at Sing Sing, at Auburn, at Jefferson
City, at Leavenworth (until the other day at least), in San Quentin, and
countless others, including my own Atlanta: only, there, the policy of
suppression of news and promulgation of falsehood is perhaps carried to
a more nearly perfect extreme than in most other prisons.
A few years ago, but under the present regimen at Atlanta, the workers in
the stone shed there were pursuing their occupation in the torrid heat
of a summer day, when one of them, a young man named Ed Richmond, asked
the guard on duty for leave to retire for a few moments. Such requests
must of course often be made. But Richmond was a man who had not been
lucky enough to win the favor of the higher officials in the prison, and
this was known to the guards, who felt that they might with impunity
treat him harshly. Richmond had been a good deal abused, and his mind
had become somewhat unbalanced; he would sometimes talk incoherently and
act oddly. It had been noticed that the stone shed guard "had it in for
Ed," as the prisoners say; but nothing very serious was looked for.
Be that as it may, something serious was about to occur. Five or six
years after this day, I was walking, under convoy of the Deputy Warden,
in the prison grounds that lie outside the walls, when we stumbled upon
the prison graveyard.
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