Society
no longer willingly tortures its failures. It controls,
punishes, but does not hate them. There are no beatings, no
tortures, no close-cropped heads, even, for the convict may grow
his hair as he chooses.
Every man who knows no trade is taught one. There is a feeling
of moral responsibility to the criminal, and a desire at least to
make him NO WORSE.
The prisoners are divided into two classes: those whose faces
and skulls tell of evil birth and predestined failure, and those
who are simply like others--average men, victims of chance, of
temptation, of ability ill-balanced, of ignorance, of drink, or
even of accident.
In one great room the convicts are weaving--working at hand
looms. The work is desperately hard. Both hands and both feet
are going constantly. Human power is used, that the greatest
amount of labor and least competition with the outside working
world may be simultaneously achieved.
At one loom sits a poor creature, a dismal human failure. His
forehead is half an inch high and a bony ridge-telling of
unfortunate prenatal influence--runs high along the top of his
head. His small eyes are close together. His exaggerated
chin protrudes; only a cunning look directed now and then toward
the watchful warden tells that any thinking goes on in that
miserable being.
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