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2£hte prison ||timrr. Edited and Published by the Inmates. Entered at the Post Office at Stillwater Minn as Second Class Mail Matter. Subscription Kates. THE PRISON MIRROR is issued every Thurs day morning at the following rates. One Year Si* Months • Three Montns 25 Single Copies • Subscriptions must be paid nvariably in ad vance. Advertising rates given upon application. Address. EDITOR PRISON MIRROR, Stillwater, Minn. THE PRISON MIRROR is a weekly paper pub lished in the Minnesota state prison. All matter published In its oolumns is contributed by the inmates, except that properly credited. Its sup port must come from the outside as every inmate is given a paper without cost. It is published in the interest of the prison library and after paying for the printing outfit, contributed $l5O to the library fund the first year. Its objects are to en courage individual intellectual effort, provide a healthy journal for the inmates of this and other prisons, and, above all, to acquaint the outside world with the needs of the prison by reflecting its inner life and thus aid the cause of moral ad vancement and prison reform. St. Paul now realizes how bad it made Minneapolis feel to be accused of padding. There are over two hundred vacant cells over here many of which have never been occupied. We continue to gather them in—Minne sota newspapers. The latest acquisition to our exchange list is The Graphic Sentinel, of Labe City, a paper that shows energy and ability on every page. We have no more disagreeable duty to perform than that of refusing a request to “Ex.”, yet we are compelled to do it three or four times a week. Our exchange list has grown to such proportions that it threat ens to swamp us. So if requests for ex changes meet with no response you will know the cause. Pfl Sheriff Chas. P. Holcombe, one of The Mirror’s best friends, has received the Re publican nomination for the office of clerk of the state supreme court. If Charlie should get left at the polls, which we do not say is even probable, it will not be be cause he failed to get the solid vote of Washington county. It is gratifying to know that crime is act ually on the decrease in this state, and it is to be hoped that those whose duty it is, and that means all men, will bend every energy to keep crime on the descending scale. For every man or boy saved from crime a good citizen is gained, the state is saved a heavy expense, and incalculable sor row and wretchedness is prevented. How is this for the utterance of a Texas journalist, statesman and philosopher: “Per petual banishment and a cat-o’-nine tails for the lower grade of offenses would depopu late the penitentiaries.” Evidently some scoundrel has visited the editor’s chicken coop. If he would be so harsh with the lower class of offenders what would his wisdom suggest as befitting punishment for the higher grade of crimes? The Prison Mirror is the grateful re cipient of a beautiful little volume, in scribed, “A story: ‘Damon and Pythias.’ A Souvenir to the Knights of Pythias of the World.” The noble story as told by A. Cressy Morrison is made doubly attractive by the elegant dress it has been given by the printer and binder. The little souvenir reminds us of nothing so much as a spotless lily fresh from the bosom of the pond. The Pabst Brewing Company, Milwaukee, have our sincere thanks. How many men live with no conception of life’s real meaning and whose ideal is merely to exist? The manly man is he who is governed by some high aim, and lives to an end, for it is only when he has a fixed purpose that his eyes are open to the great possibilities of this world, only when he begins to live for something and that something is high and noble, that he begins to see with the eves of one from whom the scales have fallen. In proportion to his conceptions and ideas is measured the power which he acquires in the world. TO THE PUBLIC. Great teachers are not the most learned ones, but they are those to whom some idea has become incarnate quality. The lives of great men are expressive of their ideas, for they have taken into their souls the great truths, which have become their ruling thoughts.—Rev. Smith Baker, in Minneapo lis Evening Journal. There is many a man in prison to-day who is no more responsible for his being there, than George Gould is for being heir to millions, or the Prince of Wales is for being heir to the throne of Great Britain. The man in prison is just as much a creat ure of circumstances as are George Gould and the Prince of Wales. The time is com ing when the world will be so enlightened that all men will see as do now the greatest thinkers of the day, that the criminal is more to be pitied than blamed —we do not mean that kind of pity* called “maudlin sympathy”—but that pity which true men and women feel for the victims of adver sity, and that leads them to apply such practical remedies as circumstances seem to demand. When that day comes there will be no longer seen within the prison walls —a spectacle so common at this day—men of low origin and intellect serving ten year sentences for lighter offenses than those for which their fellow-prisoners of higher social status and brighter intellects are serving one or two years. AN ECHO FROM CHAUTAUQUA. The Chautauqua Assembly Herald, a daily paper published at Chautauqua, N. Y., during the Summer Assembly of the C. L. S. C., has the following to say of Bishop Vincent’s visit to this state and this prison. But before coming to the “following” we would respectfully advise the editor of the Herald to take a course in a C. L. S. C. geography class. He had the Minnesota state prison and the Waseca Assembly grounds located in Michigan. However, he cannot be expected to spend much time searching through geographies when there is so much C. L. S. C. fun inviting him out side the editorial room: Bishop Vincent has visited Waseca As sembly since he left Chautauqua, and thence he went to Stillwater, Minn., where he was met at the depot by the warden of the state prison, who escorted him into the chapel of the institution, where three hundred pris oners were assembled. A choir stationed on the platform conducted the singing. The paper we have seen reports many vis itors present, and a Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle of thirty prisoners on the front seats. The Bishop could not get away from the C. L. S. C. even in the prison. To this congregation he spoke of the Chautauqua readings, and of the people in prison and out of prison who are reading this course of study. The prisoners laughed, cried and applauded, his speech. At the close, the chaplain read a complimentary address to the Bishop and then a prisoner presented him with a copy of the address engrossed and framed, together with a large velvet sofa pillow', with a beautifully em broidered name, a gift from the C. L. S. C. The speaker said: You will notice that the word members has its letters in stripes. The Bishop’s reply was appreciative. He thanked the men, and said, “I will send the pillow and address directly to Chautau qua.” They took his address and sent the articles by. express. They were received here last evening and should be placed in the C. L. S. C. rooms as tokens of the esteem in which our brothers in prison hold the Chancellor of Chautauqua. How suggest ive this incident will be to people in this grove, and to Chautauquans everywhere, of the fact that the Chautauqua idea has pen etrated human minds in every condition of life, and that our Chancellor is at Chau tauqua. Though not at this gathering by the lake, he is with some other divis ion of the Chautauqua host, on land that stretches toward the Pacific sea. The Chancellor, if he would visit Chautauqua to day, must go into every state and territory in the Union and visit many lands beyond the seas. A Reasonable Conclusion. “Yep,” said the open-faced old Kansan, wishing to impress his Eastern host; “some mighty queer things happen out thar whar I live. Got up, one mornin’, an’ found the blamedest goin’-on ever you seed. It was rainin’ blood an’ flesh an’ dust an’ stones an’ ashes, an’ hailin’ an’ thunderin’ an’ lightenin’ all at once. Felt cold an’ hot, both at the same time. The frogs was jest more ’n hollerin’, an’ the punkins ’peared to be sweatin’ blue sweat. Wife, she was flustered. But. I told her to jest rest easy, as I reckoned by the signs, that Senator Ingalls must ’a’ got home in the night, an’ learned the opinion the Farmers’ Alliances had about him.”—Puck. Republican. Governor —Win. R. Merriam of Ramsey county. Lieutenant Governor—Gideon S. Ives of Nicollet county. State Treasurer —Joseph Bobleter of Brown county. Secretary of State—Fred P. Brown of Faribault county. Auditor of State —Peter J. McGuire of Polk county. Attorney General—Moses E. Clapp of Otter Tail county. Clerk of the Supreme Court—Charles P. Holcombe of Washington county. Alliance. Governor—Sidney M. Owen of Hennepin county. Lieutenant Governor —J. O. Barrett of Big Stone county. State Treasurer —Eric Mathison of Lac qui-parle county. Secretary of State —M. Weisenberg of St. Louis county. Auditor of State —Patrick H. Rahilly of Wabasha county. Attorney General—James M. Burlingame of Steele county. Clerk of the Supreme Court—Frank W. Kohler of Le Sueur county. Tlie Whipping Post In the Missouri Penitentiary. The use of the lash in the prison is com mon—too common to be of any possible benefit in keeping order. A man goes to the whipping post, not with the feeling that he is being punished for some infraction of the rules, but to gratify the 111-feeling of some guard whose enmity he has incurred. Deputy Warden Bradbury is the one whose duty it is to wield the rawhide. In the middle of the room stands the whipping post and stocks. The men stand facing the instrument of torture, and the guards report the conduct of their men to the Warden. One complains that one of his men neg lected his work, or was talking to a fellow prisoner; perhaps a prisoner was caught carrying bread to his cell from the kitchen. Deputy Warden Bradbury steps up to the whipping post, pulls off his coat, rolls up his sleeves, and in a caressing way picks up a rawhide, which he intently examines to see if it is all right. The culprit is brought up to the post. His hands are tied to the post near the ground, leaving him in a stooping position. His neck is placed under the stocks, which are then fastened so that he cannot jerk his head away. The Deputy Warden steps up, and seizing the man’s shirt, pulls it up around his neck, leaving the bare back ex posed. The prisoner receives from one to twenty-five lashes, according to the offense and the number of times he has been at the post. The Warden tucks his shirt sleeves carefully above his elbow, takes the rawhide in his hand, plants his foot firmly, and with a full swing of his powerful arm, down comes the whip with a swish and a crack upon the bare back of the prisoner. Swish comes the whip again, and the prisoner bites his lip to keep from crying out with the pain, as such a thing only increases the punishment. Crack, the -whip again and again strikes the quivering flesh, leaving a thick welt along the skin, and as the force of the blows increases as the Deputy Warden warms up to his work, the welts assumes first a red, then a blue hue, and finally the blood trickles down over his back in little streams. Again and again the lash, soft and pliable with the warm blood, curls around the naked form of the crouching and shrinking prisoner until either the allotted punishment has been inflicted or else the prisoner faints from the pain and torture. He is then given over to the care of the doctors. From long practice the whipping master can make the whipping more severe in a given number of strokes on the person of one prisoner than another. In case he wishes to make the pain more intense, after one half the strokes have been given he goes to the other side of the prisoner and makes a series of cross-cuts, making a num ber ot bloody X’s on the back. 1 have seen a prisoner faint from the severity of the punishment and from loss of blood. After the whipping is over the prisoner is cared for, the blood on the rawhide is carefully wiped off, and it is ready for the next culprit. When the whipping was done by an official who was intoxicated or under the influence of liquor, the punishment was always more severe. I have seen one of the officials stagger as he walked up to the whipping post, and 1 know he was greatly under the influence of liquor.—St. Louis Republic. A Chicago man who had been appointed receiver went to a lawyer and asked: “Out of $20,000 passing through his hands how much ought a receiver to profit?” “Well, about $19,000,” was the reply. “Only $19,000!” he exclaimed. “Who is to get the other thousand, I’d like to know?”—Texas Siftings. STATE TICKETS. “Uet tlie Best Man Win.’* In Chicago. MISDIRECTED POWER. Were half the power that filla the world with ter ror. Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts, (liven to redeem the human mind from error, There were no need of arsenals nor forts. —Selected. Prison versus Free Labor. To the Editor of The Mirror: In your is sue of thel7th inst. you state that in the event of the state putting down a twine plant in this institution, that such a course would raise a howl of indignation from outside manufacturers of this article. And now, in the name of common sense and justice, I ask why such a proceeding should not produce a protest in the free la bor circles? Should the state authorities carry out their idea they will l suppose as per usual run the concern for a short time on their own responsibility and then as is usually the case eventually hand it over to other parties. Why any certain company should lease a lot of men for a mere nominal sum and then place the result of labor of said men on the open market, 1 for one am quite at a loss to understand. There are various ways the state can utilize convict labor otherwise than leasing it out to a company. For instance, boots, shoes, etc., for state pur poses could just as well be made in here as on the outside. Some persons may claim that this pro ceeding would also come into competition with free labor —to this 1 would simply reply that the government has a perfect right to manufacture goods for its own use. Others may again say that by the con tract system the convict has a chance of learning a trade—to such I would say that such chgnces are slim in the extreme. Take the machine shop of the Minn. Thresher Co. for an example. Here a man is set to work on a lathe and in making a few articles he may become as proficient as any trained mechanic, but at the expiration of his sen tence he is very little better off than when he commenced —he can make the few things appertaining to the thresher trade and this is all; and even should he be successful in getting work in a machine shop on the out side, he can no more hope to hold his job than he can aspire to turn the course of the Mississippi, and as 1 have clerked in one of the largest repair shops in the north-west 1 must be allowed to know something of this matter. The statement I make may not be cheerful, but it is in all respects true. You Americans pride yourselves—with much justice—in leading the van of civiliza tion, and yet you have in vogue a system which is not tolerated in any other civilized country in the world. Not even under the despotic sway of the Czar of Russia is such a system permitted, and without being sar castic, why it should be allowed to prevail in the Land of the Free passes my limited and perhaps somewhat obtuse comprehen sion. But as the world grows older people are becoming more charitable, more en lightened and less narrow minded, and a convict is not looked upon in the same light to-day as he was fifty years ago. It is my firm opinion that in a few short years con tract labor will all be done away with and looked back upon as a relic of semi-civiliza tion; I base my ideas on this subject from Charles Dickens’ “American Notes.” If you will compare the prisons of that date with those of the present time you will see the enormous improvements that have been made, and I trust the good work will still continue. Now, Sir, it may be out of place to make any remarks on the twine factory in this paper, but I will simply say that I do not an enterprise will ever prove a success in this institution on the following grounds. The climate of Minnesota is so totally different to that of Ireland or the South of England, that Ido not think the flax can be grown to a profitable advantage, and even should this difficulty be overcome —all that the outside manufacturers have to do is to form a trust, undersell and swamp the state, and this they assuredly will do even if for a time they are compelled to sell at a loss. I am personally well acquainted with the owners of three twine and rope factories in Great Britain. The largest of these em ploys between three and four thousand and the smallest about seven hundred bands. How the state intends to run with some seventy-five or one hundred men is some thing I do not pretend to be competent to explain. And now, Mr. Editor, in making the foregoing remarks I wish it to be un derstood that I do so entirely without prej udice. To me personally it does not make the slightest difference as to whether the state put in its factory or not; but once on the outside I will shout and howl with the loudest against Contract Labor. Never Satisfied. Beggar: Please, sir, give me a few pen nies. My wife is dead. Mr. Henpeck: Man alive! What more do you want?—Texas Siftings. Energy may bring success; but there’s nothing like success to bring one energy.— Puck. Under Two Flags.