Capitol of Georgia, by a sub-lessee during a controversy arising from
the leasing of some convicts; whereupon Governor Atkinson declared
that, under heaven and by God's help, he meant to lift up the
administration of the laws of the State to that high plane that will
put an end to these things.

Mr. Byrd of Rome, Ga., by authority of Governor Atkinson, inspected
the misdemeanor camps in 1897, and reported that private chain-gangs
were being operated against law, and in spite of the decisions of the
Supreme Court of Georgia, and that the average penal camp of the State
penitentiary is a heaven, compared to the agony and torture endured by
the misdemeanor convicts in many of these joints. He said that Mr.
Wright did valiant service for humanity by showing that a bondage
worse than slavery was being inflicted upon the convicts, who were
confined in these "hells upon earth."

In one camp, he said, an ante-bellum residence had been converted
into a prison by removing every window, and closing up every aperture,
leaving not even an auger hole for light or air. In the center of a
room only 18 feet by 20, was an open can, the reeking cesspool of this
dungeon in which sat a sick Negro convict confined in this dark
sweat-box, perishing.

In another camp, after the visit of Mr. Wright, the guards took turns
at beating a convict to death and buried him in his shackles. A
respectable citizen asserted that they caught the convict by the
shackles and ran through the woods dragging him feet foremost, and
that when these facts were sworn to before the Grand Jury of Pulaski
County, it was thought best to hush them up and keep the matter out of
the newspapers, and out of court, as the superintendent of the prison
camp had friends on the jury.

Another case sworn to before the coroner's jury was that of a guard
who had whipped nearly all the life out of an old Negro, who said:
"Boss, is ye gwine to kill me?" The guard replied with an oath in the
affirmative, whereupon the convict begged to be shot and thus freed
from his sufferings. He was chained up to a tree where he died in
thirty minutes.

In another camp a white convict was being boarded at a hotel ten miles
away, and doing a prosperous business at painting, while another white
convict who had been made night guard and given a gun and the keys to
the camp, had it so free and easy that he threw up his job and
decamped.

Mr. Boies of Pennsylvania, in his instructive work, disc