The penitentiary for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, at
Philadelphia, in 1907, was the only prison in America conducted on
what is known as the "silent system."
In this grim edifice a man sentenced to twenty years imprisonment
might pass all of that time buried from sight in his cell, seeing only
his keeper, the chaplain, the doctor and the schoolmaster, and for
twenty minutes in every six weeks he would be allowed to talk with a
near relative.
This man loses his identity the moment he enters the prison gates. A
black cap is drawn over his head and he is led to a cell in one of the
many corridors that radiate from the central tower like spokes from
the hub of a wheel. He is known thereafter by a number.
The cell in which he eats and sleeps and works is a little larger than
the average prison cell, and more completely furnished--as it must
hold his bed, his lavatory, his dishes and a place for eating, his
work, his every possession, and such books as he may secure from the
prison library.
His front door opens on a corridor and is kept ajar on a heavy chain
so the prison guards may watch him.
His back door opens on a plot of ground about 8×10 feet. It is
surrounded and cut off from all communication from every living human
being by a brick wall. Only the watchman in the central tower and the
birds that wing their way over the prison can see him in his little
yard. Robinson Crusoe on his deserted island could not be more utterly
lonely.
In this tiny yard is a circular path worn smooth and pressed deep into
the soil by the feet of despairing men--his predecessors.
The prisoner is forbidden even the negative pleasure of going out into
this God-forsaken walled plot of bare ground except for one hour a day.
In his gloomy cell the prisoner drags out the "task" given him to
escape insanity. He fears to be idle without the sound of a human
voice in his ear or the sight of a human face to relieve his awful
loneliness.
To lengthen these "tasks" the State of Pennsylvania has provided
primitive hand-looms, some 100 years old, and other discarded
makeshifts of man's industrial infancy.
Not for him has the world progressed beyond the caveman's day.
Perhaps he is a skilled mechanic, a man accustomed to the swift
play of machinery, the grip of tool on material. He is condemned to
manufacture by primitive methods the clothes he wears to keep him from
quite going mad.