But they do not believe that the government has condemned them
to starvation, or to poisoning (and the condition in which food often
comes to the convicts' table is practically poisonous). They know that
no such punishment is included in the statutes; and they can only
conclude, therefore, that it is an arbitrary and illegal piece of
cruelty or neglect on the part of the warden or commissary officer. They
are prone to think that these persons profit financially by cutting down
their supplies; and that they are careful to conceal the fact in their
reports to the Department, or to disguise it as a meritorious economy.
At the same time, they are conscious that there is no regular channel
through which they can make their injury known to the authorities, and
that nothing is more readily denied, or more easily concealed from
inspectors, than is this very abuse.
But the suffering which it occasions is constant and cumulative. They
are still required to perform their labor, as if in full physical vigor.
They are punished if physical weakness causes them to fall short in
their tasks. They feel their vitality ebbing, they find themselves ever
less able to resist the inroads of disease, their appeals to the doctors
are often met with sneers and even animosity; and what marvel is it that
stoicism and patience at last give way, and they break out in some wild
and savage excess which justifies the resort by their masters to the
dungeon and the bullet? But death may well seem to the rebels preferable
to the lingering pains of the alternative fate.
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