The doors were opened, and they stood on the threshold.
"Right face!" All wheeled to the right.
"March!" was the next order.
At that word they marched down the stairs, in the order that they came
out of their cells, deposited the ration pan and quart, in which they
had carried their supper to their rooms the night before, on the ration
table, to be taken into the kitchen and washed, ready to receive their
breakfast, which was passed out in them when they came in from work at
seven.
The other divisions were called out in the same way, and followed in
their order.
Unrefreshed, sleepy, and without energy, they moved along to their two
hours of labor before breakfast. And such a breakfast to look forward to
when it came. Rye coffee and mush, varied with brown bread once a week,
and this purposely stinted to the least possible amount which one could
subsist on and work.
I noticed that most of them took only their coffee, and worked upon that
when it was brown bread morning till the noon meal came.
Many a one looked into her quart, as she passed me, and sighed out, "God
help us!"
"May He help you! He only can--I cannot," was my response; but not
always made audibly.
He only knew how I longed to do so. I often said to myself, as the days
passed on, I would not starve a dumb dog as those poor human things are
starved. I would not work a dumb animal as those poor human things are
worked! Nor would the Master feed his horse as they were fed; nor would
he stall him as those prisoners were lodged.
I did what I could for them. I asked the Deputy if he could not
substitute flour bread for the brown which they refused. He answered,--
"No! They will come to it. The Master will not change the order."
They did not come to it. And day after day, as I saw them go
breakfastless to their work, I wished,--was it wrong? perhaps so,--that
the avenger might be on the track of that unfeeling Master, and that the
day might come when he might be obliged to breakfast upon a quart of rye
coffee and a slice of brown bread, instead of the steaks, and eggs, and
toasts, and other delicacies that I saw carried to his room from the
kitchen, as I passed through it to the officers' dining-room.
If it aroused such indignation to witness such cruelty, what must it do
in the hearts of those who suffer from it! Does such correction of
convicts tend to arouse better purposes in their hearts than those which
brought them into prison? Such treatment aroused in them anger and
revenge. When they dared, and in every way which they could invent
without laying themselves liable to punishment, they gave expression to
their feelings.
When they were dismissed from the prison, the officer usually remarked,
"We shall have that boarder back again."
The answer that I should have made, had I spoken my thoughts, would have
been--The whole tendency of their discipline here is to produce that
end.
The first thing that I did, after breakfast was over, was to take the
names of my six kitchen women, and learn, as nearly as I could, just
what work belonged to each one of them.
There were two sink women, McMullins and Magill. Their work was to wash
the dishes, keep the sink clean, and scrub about one quarter of the
floor. The slide woman scrubbed the ration table, a certain portion of
the floor, washed the quarts and piled them up, scrubbed the table in
the centre of the room, took care of the flour bread when it came in,
and the pieces that were left. At meal time she passed out the coffee,
and put the potatoes in the ration pans.
The cook made the mush, which was boiled twice a day, the soup, and
hash, and stewed the peas. She had a certain portion of the floor to
scrub, and the room to keep tidy, as well as her boilers to wash.
The steam woman took care of the steam boiler, made the coffee, helped
the cook slice the meat, and kept her portion of the floor clean. It was
a part of her work to pile the ration pans in rows of pyramids on the
centre table.
The one who tended the women's slide had one half of the floor to scrub,
and the Master's furnace, which stood in the centre of the kitchen, to
tend.
There were many things to be done in common, where all helped; like the
carrying out of the swill, which was emptied into tubs when the ration
pans came in to be washed. That was carried a long way down the yard,
poured into barrels, and left for the yard man to take to the piggery.
They all helped to bring up the potatoes, four barrels at a time, wash
them in the sink with a large bat-stick, and then put them in the boiler
to be cooked by steam.
To make the confusion more confounded, the work was changed round, and
new hands put to it, the day I went there. The bringing up of the coal,
for the steam boiler, which had heretofore devolved upon the steam
woman, was now required of all the rest, to be divided among them,
because the steam woman had had a broken wrist, and it was not quite
strong again. That gave dissatisfaction, and created grumbling, and the
constant contention of shifting the labor from one to the other. The
rest were constantly fretting Allen, the steam woman, because she asked
it of them.
To settle the difficulty I asked the Deputy, when he came round,--"who
should bring up the coal for Allen?"
"Any of them that you see fit to order."
That was an excellent hint to me. Allen had been in the habit of giving
her own orders, which made it necessary for me to interfere continually
so as to get them executed, and also to keep peace. They invariably
answered her back with refusal when she asked for coal, and made
altercation over every bucket that was needed.
All orders, like information, were given promiscuously. I at once gave
direction that all orders were to be given through me.
"Allen, when you wish for coal, come to me for it!"
Orders had no authority when given by one to another; and by watching I
discovered that Allen was disposed to retaliate the little peckings she
received, by making the one that aggravated her most bring up the most
coal.
It was more than one day's work to bring them to this arrangement. So I
made it another rule that when they differed they were never to answer
back; but come to me to settle the trouble. That was rather more
difficult to establish than the first, they were so hot-headed, and
anxious to defend themselves.
O'Sullivan, one of the slide women, undertook to try my authority on the
first order which I gave for coal. She sat idly upon her table, and I
asked her to bring it up.