"You will find things in confusion. The Matron who went away yesterday
was inefficient."
"Perhaps so," I replied; "but the confusion appears to me to date
farther back than the last Matron. It arises from the want of a head
officer to regulate affairs."
"I have double the trouble on this side, with four Matrons and a hundred
women, than with three hundred men and more than a dozen officers on the
other."
"You would insinuate that women are more difficult to get on with than
men. I make a very different solution of the difficulty in this
particular case. You are on the ground all of the time; explain his duty
to every officer, and see that he does it. That makes the officer's work
distinct before him. It is done under your eye, which makes it promptly
and well done. If that were the case on this side, we might be as
orderly, and have as little trouble in performing our part, as you on
yours. The cook tells me that certain work belongs to the slide woman;
the slide woman says it belongs to the sink women; the sink women shift
it on the steam woman, and so I am kept on the chase, from one to
another, for some one to do a piece of labor. I do not know who ought to
do it, and they know it. If they do not intend to confuse me, they
intend to clear themselves of all the work they can."
"Use your own judgment, and call on whom you please. They are all
obliged to obey any order that you give."
"If I call upon one to do the work that has formerly been done by
another, I stir up ill feelings among the prisoners towards each other,
and contention, and they think me hard and unjust. It makes me trouble.
They obey my order reluctantly, and say, 'That isn't my work.'"
"If they quarrel, they know the punishment. If they refuse to obey your
orders, report them to me, and I will put them where they will be glad
to obey." He nodded towards the prison door.
I knew he must refer to some kind of punishment. I did not know what;
but frightful visions of the cruelties of which I had read rose in my
imagination, and I said no more.
I vowed to myself that I would never get them punished by refusing to
obey my unjust exactions if I could help it.
My thoughts did not stop with my words. I reasoned with myself. If my
ignorance, or bad management, cause me to be unjust towards those women,
and if I, by my injustice, arouse their bad temper so as to cause them
to be punished, who will be most in fault? I decided that I should be.
The question suggested itself to me--If you get them punished unjustly
who will avenge them? The All-seeing-Eye will notice, and avenge it. I
will be careful.
I resolved to feel my way along softly and carefully. There was no
relief for my dilemma, except in my own ingenuity to find out the ways
of the place, and the proper management to apply to it.