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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
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