That is fine; but the concluding words mean more than they say. How is the public to know? If you had a mother or a sister or daughter in that jail, would you feel entirely reassured by the declamations in the legislature of these kindly gentlemen? Would it not occur to you that, when this little flurry had blown over, the warden and his guards might possibly, and as quietly as might be, revert to what they held to be the only effective means of keeping order? It is easy, in a prison, to gag a woman so that she cannot scream, and to take her down to a secluded place, and there to lay on the leather heartily, with or without first removing the inner garment. Who is to know, or to tell? We are not Russians, to boast of these things openly. At the turpentine camp at Atmore, Alabama, thirty-five convicts whose contract had been annulled by Governor O'Neal, were brought to Mobile October 10th, 1913, and placed in the county jail. All but fourteen had been whipped with heavy straps loaded with lead, and affidavits were offered showing that two of them had been whipped to death. But Superintendent of Prisons Riley of New York, in a letter to Warden Rattigan of Auburn prison, writes: "I do not believe that any one was ever reformed by physical torture." This was not the view taken, apparently, in Jefferson City (Mo.) prison, for there, a few weeks ago, a negro was given a very hard task each day (says the _Post-Dispatch_ of St. Louis), more than he could perform. At evening he would be taken out, strapped to a post and beaten with a heavy strap. There were cuts and sores all over his body. Favored prisoners were allowed to break rules, while others were severely punished for the same thing. The penitentiary there is described as a "small hell entirely surrounded by masonry and incompetent officials." Dozens of men were brutally whipped for minor offenses. We have all heard about Blackwell's Island, New York City, where "beatings by officials, and much worse, resulted in the death of a man." Trustee Hurd found two men in dark cells, one stupefied, the other hysterical and sobbing. They had been punished for whispering. The dark cells had been ordered discontinued some weeks before. Warden Hayes, on being asked by the official why he had permitted them to be used, replied, "Well, the fact is, I've been so busy I haven't had time to get round to it!" What is his business? In Atlanta we do not use the leather; we find the club handier, and some guards are skilful in so applying it to the bodies of their patients that, while the external evidences are negligible, it occasions internal troubles which can be ascribed to "natural" causes. And there are indications that we do use the dark cell, described by Dr. MacDonald, above, as more inhumane than the lash. If this expert be correct, he gives us a standard whereby to measure how inhumane they must be.