The wardens and the chief clerks of prisons often wish, for motives of their own, to make an economical showing, and perhaps do not much care if it is made at the expense of the health or lives of prisoners. Some friends of mine in Atlanta prison and myself made an attempt to determine just what was paid out per man in the prison for subsistence; we quietly obtained statements from men in the kitchen and commissary departments, and made our calculations. After careful revision, the figures showed that we were being fed at the rate of from eight to eleven cents per head, a day. About that time, a great scientific discovery was announced by the chief steward. Food, he had been informed, contained a certain amount of heat and power; and these heat units, called calories, could be estimated for any given article of diet. (As I write this, an editorial on the subject in a recent issue of a New York newspaper states the matter in terms which I am happy to reproduce.) "Physiologists have determined by repeated experiments that a definite quantity of certain foods furnishes a definite number of calories or heat units, which produce a certain quantity of energy in the animal or human body.... In twenty-four hours a normal man of about one hundred and thirty pounds at rest, needs 1680 calories or heat units, while a man doing severe physical labor would require sufficient food to produce 3000 calories.... Since the efficiency of labor depends upon the energy of the body and this energy or power is produced by the food, it is not difficult to calculate the actual outlay required for this purpose.... The household requirements of a family where two servants are kept would at this rate be from $1.00 to $1.40 a day, a sum sufficient to furnish all the energy for all purposes of normal maintenance." Such being the case, our steward figured that the convicts could be well enough supported by about 2500 calories apiece; and upon making a scientific estimate of the calories in our average bill-of-fare, he found that we were being overfed rather than the contrary. Meat, so many calories; soup, so many; sweet potatoes, so many; bread, so many; and so on. It was found possible, on this basis, to retrench here and there; the bills were reduced--it was hoped that we might ultimately beat even eight cents. The sole difficulty appeared to be that the men, the subjects of the experiment, began incomprehensibly and perhaps maliciously to starve.