USA > Florida > Florida, 1513-1913, past and future; four hundred years of wars and peace and industrial development > Part 27
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WHAT THE STATE RECEIVES
Under the present contract with the state the company pays for the labor of each convict at the rate of $281.60 a year. The state reserves the right to withdraw all female and all invalid male pris- oners, "who from any cause may be deemed unable to perform rea- sonable manual labor," and from the date of such withdrawal, which was made when the contract became in force, the company agreed to pay for each prisoner remaining in its custody an additional fifteen per cent, a total of $323.84 a year.
For the female and invalid male prisoners thus withdrawn from the operation of the contract, the company pays nothing, and it main- tains them free of cost to the state at its farm of fourteen hundred acres near Ocala, or it cares for them in the Central Hospital which adjoins the farm. The labor of those who are physically able, is expended upon the farm and it is the only source of income for the self-support of these prisoners. Necessarily it is small when com- pared with the cost of maintenance.
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PUNISHMENT OF PRISONERS
In the punishment of refractory prisoners the state protects their interests to the farthest degree possible in the circumstances. It is obvious that some method of enforcing discipline is imperative, espe- cially among the ignorant and depraved classes from which the prison corps is recruited. The state holds out the reward of large reduction of the terms of sentence for good behavior. This ranges from one month and twenty-one days from a one-year sentence, to two years, ten months and eight days from a twenty-year sentence. Any neces- sity for discipline may lessen the allowance of "good time" which the convict may earn and the incentive is toward proper and orderly conduct.
Severe and excessive punishment is an economic waste, for it tends to incapacitate the prisoner for the performance of his work, besides arousing an ugly spirit which may lead to more serious trou- bles. As noted already, no guard is allowed under any conditions to strike a prisoner. The sole method of discipline is the lash. Only one person, usually the captain of the guard, is permitted to use the lash and he is required over his own signature to report once each month to the Commissioner of Agriculture, the name or names of the prisoners whipped by him, the nature of the offence and the number of blows inflicted. Any appearance of excessive punishment is investi- gated immediately by the commissioner. No convict refusing to work on account of alleged illness or physical injury, may be punished until he has been examined by the physician in charge, who determines the reasonableness of the excuse.
THE USE OF BLOODHOUNDS
Bloodhounds are used for tracking escaped prisoners. For those who are acquainted with the nature of the animal employed for this purpose, the idea loses much of its repugnance. It is not ferocious by nature. Its keen sense of smell alone makes it useful. It tracks the prisoner for hours, even for days, and when it locates him it sounds the alarm, guiding the human followers to the quarry.
Commissioner B. E. McLin, under whom the convict system in Florida was cleansed of its worst abuses, said of the bloodhound : "Many, very many prisoners, working in the open as they do, have attempted to escape, but with the aid of the bloodhound have been soon tracked and recaptured. But in no instance have I ever heard
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of such a thing as one being hurt by a bloodhound. The hounds only serve to inform the pursuers of the route the fugitive has taken and when he changes his course. The negro's fear of the bloodhound trailing keeps many in camp that otherwise would hie themselves off to freedom."
INSPECTION BY STATE AUTHORITY
The system of inspection of the prison camps and stockades is car- ried out by the prison physician, whose duties take him to every camp in the state; and a supervisor for each of the four districts into which the state is divided for this purpose. The Physician to State Con- victs, as his title runs, is employed in addition to the surgeon at the Central Hospital. This officer has a general oversight of all condi- tions that affect the prisoners from the sanitary and health viewpoints.
His report for the year 1910 called attention to the isolation of advanced tubercular patients in the Central Hospital and the handling of milder cases in the woods, giving as his opinion that the disease is decreasing among Florida convicts. He made, however, a most startling declaration regarding certain other health conditions. "I find," he said, " that the great majority of colored prisoners sentenced now are physical wrecks, and the prevailing cause so far as my investi- gations have gone, is syphilitic affections. I find at least seventy-five percent of the colored prisoners with syphilis in some of its stages."
He noted a strong tendency toward improvement of these condi- tions with proper medical treatment, good sanitary surroundings, open air, regular work and habits. His statements afforded a remark- able confirmation of physical conditions known from other sources to be common among the lower strata of the negro race throughout the south.
Dr. S. H. Blitch, surgeon at the Central Hospital, in his report of the same year, spoke of this infection in the following words: "Syphilis, the scourge and awful encmy of the negro race, is making rapid increase, the greater part of the subjects detained in hospital being syphilitics, and aside from tuberculosis, almost every death in hospital is due to the remote effects of syphilis."
The reports of these physicians, both of them trained and quali- fied by long experience to speak with authority, suggest at least some of the difficulties encountered in properly caring for the degenerate human beings who make up the larger part of Florida's convict colo- nies. These conditions do not exist outside the southern states and
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they are but little appreciated by those who do not know them from personal observation.
DISTRICT SUPERVISION
The duties of the four supervisors, each in his own district, are to inspect the camps under their jurisdiction. Their investigations cover every matter of camp life and labor, the kind and quality of food from the warehouse to the table and the midday lunch pails of the convicts, the clothing worn by the prisoners, the accommodations for sleeping, including the buildings, beds and clothing, the sanitary arrangements and the physical condition and the treatment of the prisoners them- selves. These supervisors are required to file a report of every camp with the Commissioner of Agriculture and to keep in daily touch and communication with his office.
The reports of these officers in the past have indicated uniformly the tendency and wish on the part of the lessee and the sub-lessees to fulfil every requirement of contract agreement with the state, and voluntarily to go further in reasonable efforts to improve the con- dition of the prisoners under their care.
The original contract with the Florida Pine Company provides that it shall not be transferred by the company, nor shall the prisoners be sublet to any one person, firm or corporation. It is allowed, how- ever, to sublet the convicts to such "persons, firms or corporations" (note the plurals) as may be approved by the Commissioner of Agri- culture and the Board of Commissioners of State Institutions.
RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES
Commissioner McLin, already quoted, provided for the spiritual welfare of his charges. Religious services are held at least as fre- quently as once a month at every prison camp in the state, conducted by a clergyman who preaches to the citizens in the section where the camp may be located. These services are held oftener where it is pos- sible to arrange for them. The commissioner also had placed a small library in each camp for the use of the convicts, the books and period- icals being adapted, so far as possible, to the needs and mental capaci- ties of the prisoners.
It is only proper in this place to note the splendid work that is being done by Commissioner McLin's successor, the present commis- sioner, W. A. McRae. Appointed to fill a vacancy in the office caused by the death of his predecessor in 1912, Mr. McRae was elected by
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popular vote to fill the position for the regular term thereafter. He has proved himself to be in fullest sympathy with the policies estab- lished by Commissioner McLin. A man of thought and action he is progressive and in close touch with the best and most advanced ideas, and his administration of this most complicated office in the State Government has showed his splendid ability.
Although not specifically included in the original contract, the state insists that all prisoners convicted of misdemeanors shall be worked and kept separate from those charged with the more serious crimes classed as felonies. In this respect the penal system of Florida has been placed on a par with that of any other state and in advance of that maintained by most of them.
LEASING OF COUNTY PRISONERS
By an arrangement similar to that between the state and itself, the Florida Pine Company leases from a number of the counties of the state the prisoners sentenced from the county courts. Their terms of imprisonment vary from thirty days to four months. These pris- oners are placed in the camps of the sub-lessees and are given the same protection and treatment and are subject to the same conditions and discipline that attend the state's prisoners.
The most humiliating conditions of prison life in Florida are found, not in the camps of the state convicts, but in the county jails. These institutions are under the general supervision of the commis- sioners of each county, usually business men who have been success- ful in the management of their private affairs. Naturally few of them are versed in the principles of modern penology and their adminis- tration too often is marked mainly by ideas of economy. Too fre- quently they are ignorant of actual conditions in the jails under their care, which they know of through infrequent inspections and by the reports of incompetent and sometimes selfish officials in charge of these institutions and their inmates.
Many unfortunate conditions are eliminated in those counties where the prisoners under sentence are leased to the contractors for the state's convicts. The legislative act of 1909, which placed the county jail systems under the supervision of the Commissioner of Agriculture, authorizing regular inspection by state officials and the promulgation of a set of rules for bettering these conditions, has had marked beneficial results.
In some counties, fortunately becoming fewer each year, are
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confined indiscriminately with other prisoners those who are await- ing the slow action of state and United States courts. They are not under conviction and under the presumption of law they are not guilty of the crimes charged, not yet having reached the trials of their respective cases. The Federal Government under contract with the counties, must of necessity patronize these county jails for prisoners awaiting trial and for all sentences under one year.
BENEFITS OF CAMP DISCIPLINE
Reverting to the state prison system, it is possible to judge from even surface conditions, as well as from other indications, a few of the results of humane treatment and of reformatory influences upon the convicts.
The number of convicts including those received, discharged and remaining in custody during 1910, was 1,781. Those in custody January 1, 1911, were 1,326. The number received in 1910 was 442, divided by race and sex as follows: One white woman, 78 white men; 19 negro women and 344 negro men. All but 19 were given sen- tences of one year or more, and 44, or ten percent, came for the rest of their natural lives. At the beginning of the year 1911, 123 pris- oners were held at the Central Hospital or on the prison farm, not subject to the convict lease system. This number represented the female and invalid male prisoners. Eleven hundred and sixty-eight were worked in thirty-one turpentine and lumber camps throughout the state. Of these, approximately eighty percent were negro men, three-quarters of them between the ages of sixteen and thirty-two years. The population of these camps recruited from the lowest, most ignorant and morally depraved classes in the state. They were in the prime of their physical strength and the unrestrained development of their lowest passions. The testimony of competent physicians shows that three-quarters of them were tainted with a loathsome disease, all the way from incipiency by contagion or inher- itance, to its incurable stages. It would be difficult to find anywhere a set of men seemingly less likely to be controlled by appeals to their reason or to their moral natures.
HEALTH CONDITIONS IMPROVED
But in spite of these unfavorable conditions the influence of camp life and hospital treatment show surprising results in the death rate
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among Florida convicts. This rate among the 1,705 prisoners con- fined during the year 1909, was 8.2 per thousand. For 1910 it was 11.2. Compared with similar facts in other southern states where the convict lease system is in force, the differences are decidedly to the credit of Florida. Louisiana's convict death rate in 1908 was 24.5 and in 1909, it was 22.4 per thousand. Alabama for the four years ending with 1910, had an annual average death rate among her state prisoners of 38.6 for every thousand; and Mississippi, 16 for every thousand in 1909.
The State of Florida in its agreement with the lessees, recog- nizes their right to the labor of the convict. It recognizes their right to enforce obedience and to secure that labor by adequate punish- ment, but it limits this punishment to the use of the lash, forbidding the shackling of prisoners under any circumstances, excepting by express permission of the Commissioner of Agriculture in each par- ticular case.
Yet statistics show that most of the attempts at escape are made by prisoners soon after their arrival in camp, usually within ten days and before they have become accustomed to new conditions. Such attempts are not frequent among old-timers nor after the convict has passed several months in these surroundings. It is an estab- lished fact that in a large majority of cases the convicts receive better food and more of it, they sleep in more comfortable beds, wear better clothing and, owing to the enforced regularity of their habits, enjoy better health than they have ever known or will know outside the prison confines. They are relieved of all anxiety about the affairs and responsibilities of life, a matter of no little moment to the southern negro.
FASCINATIONS OF PRISON LIFE
That they not infrequently prefer the conditions of prison life is shown by their return to them after the expiration of a term of imprisonment. To many there is small disgrace connected with im- prisonment. It is the confession sometimes made to prison officials by a convict returning to serve his second or third, or even his fourth or fifth or sixth term, that he has committed crime in order to be brought back to conditions that prevail in the turpentine camps of Florida. Many of these prisoners have never known anything so nearly approaching their ideas of home comforts as they have found in these prisons.
It is also proved by numerous instances in which the prisoner,
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discharged at the expiration of his term, has asked the lessee for employment as a free man at the same work he has been performing as a convict. In freedom he receives the wages that have been paid the state for his labor; he is relieved of the oversight of the ever present guard and from the discipline of the stockade. He earns less wages than he might command elsewhere for the same work, but his labor as a free man is no less arduous and his hours are quite as long as when he worked under the eye of the guard. He discards the stripes and he works apart from his former companions, but he has the same fare and he is better housed than he could provide for himself.
ECONOMIC CONDITIONS
Convict labor is not economical labor. Officials of the company contracting with the state for it have admitted the fact and would prefer to employ free labor if it could be obtained and used efficiently. The Florida of today is in the peculiar position of being burdened with a system for whose creation the present generation is not re- sponsible, but which it must administer until it can incorporate into this administration the recognized principles of modern penology.
It would be idle to claim that no abuses can or do creep in to mar this system of convict labor and state supervision. It is, how- ever, a modest claim for Florida's convict labor system that it im- proves the physical condition of those who come under it; it provides for them better living surroundings than attend the larger portion of them as free men; it throws about them higher moral influences, poor as they may be in the stockade, than debase them at large in the community, and it reduces to the lowest possible minimum the moral degradation which is inseparable from prison life.
But it is a system that the sovereign people of Florida will put away in the near future, when they take upon themselves the responsi- bility of caring for their criminal classes more in accord with the principles of a higher Christianity, instead of profiting by the sins of those to whom sin is as the breath of life.
CHAPTER XXIX
A LAND OF ENCHANTMENT
F ROM the years when Florida was a land of mysteries, made more mysterious by ignorance, it has had a fas- cination for the traveler. It might be said with a shadow of fact, that until long after the middle of the nineteenth century, the great Peninsular State and its conditions of climate, its soil and fauna were understood by the world hardly better than the regions of Darkest Africa which had been described by Livingstone and Baker and Stan- ley. Florida was pictured in the popular mind, as a land of swamps and malaria, with delightful winter temperatures, but with a summer climate that was probably deadly to the unaccustomed northerner; a land that was infested by alligators and mosquitoes, and ravaged by Indian outbreaks. The traveler who had visited Florida was regarded almost as an adventurer, and his tales of adventures and wild expe- riences, however exaggerated, were given undue credence.
In later years, the mild winters were recommended as a tonic for weakened lungs and tubercular patients, and Florida, the part of it that had been opened to the tourists, became a sanatarium for the whole country. Some of these health-seeking travelers were benefited, and regained their normal health-some had come too late. Some dis- covered that the Florida summer was altogether delightful, with its cooling breezes from ocean and gulf, and they remained to make their homes here.
Gradually, the influx of travelers and tourists grew to larger pro- portions. Hundreds of them built in various parts of this state their winter homes, where in an atmosphere of orange blossoms and under the moss-draped oaks and palms and magnolias, they dreamed away three or four months of winter and hastened back to their northern homes at the first suggestion of summer temperatures in Florida, while yet those northern homes were covered with snow!
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RAILROADS AS DEVELOPERS
To meet the necessities of winter tourists, great hotels were erected in a few Florida cities. Jacksonville, with its famous old St. James and Windsor hotels, became the Mecca; and those who ventured a trip up the St. Johns and along the Ocklawaha, found themselves amply repaid. The more adventurous who traversed the length of the Indian river, from Titusville to Jupiter and then to Lake Worth, found scenes of rare beauty, whose description dispelled some of the misconceptions that had shrouded these places.
It was in reality the extension of the railroads to the previously inaccessible points that opened Florida to the tourist. The develop- ment of the east coast by the enterprise of Henry M. Flagler, and the erection of a magnificent chain of hotels as his line of rails ex- tended towards St. Augustine, Ormond, Palm Beach and Miami, was the earliest attempt to meet the demands of tourist travel on a large scale. The progress of the Flagler system was marked by the open- ing of these hotels at various points, and those farthest south received each season the largest percentage.
EAST COAST HOTELS
This system of hotels includes:
The Ponce de Leon at St. Augustine, which was begun in 1885 and opened in December, 1888.
The Alcazar, also at St. Augustine, completed and opened in 1889.
The Ormond, at Ormond Beach, which was acquired from its orig- inal ownership and opened as The Flagler Hotel in 1890.
The Royal Poinciana, at Palm Beach, was completed and opened early in 1894.
The Breakers, also at Palm Beach, was opened in December, 1895.
The Royal Palm, at Miami, was opened in December, 1897.
The Victoria, at Nassau, was acquired, reconstructed and opened in 1898.
The Colonial, also at Nassau, was opened the year following, in 1899.
The Continental at Atlantic Beach, near Jacksonville, was com- pleted and opened in June, 1901. This hotel has recently been sold to other owners and is now opened the year around, under the name of The Atlantic Beach Hotel.
These hotels have a combined capacity of 4,500 rooms. The Royal
TAMPA BAY HOTEL ON HILLSBOROUGH RIVER
GROUNDS OF T. A. EDISON'S WINTER HOME
A WINTER HOME NEAR TALLAHASSEE
A WINTER HOME ON THE ST. JOHNS RIVER
Vol. 1-37
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Poinciana at Palm Beach is said to be the largest hotel in the world. It faces west on beautiful Lake Worth. Directly east of it, three- eighths of a mile away, stands The Breakers, overlooking the ocean beach, with the deep blue outlines of the Gulf Stream clearly dis- tinguishable a mile or more off-shore when wind and light conditions are favorable. These two hotels from January to April of each year, may be considered almost the social center of the United States, for here are usually gathered for a brief season social leaders from New York and other important centers of wealth in the United States.
WEST COAST TOURIST RESORTS
The development of the west coast of Florida as a fashionable tourist resort was centered at Tampa, where Henry B. Plant erected the splendid Tampa Bay Hotel on the borders of the picturesque Hillsborough river. He surrounded it with a magnificent collection of Florida trees and foliage, and he incorporated into the hotel itself every luxury and convenience that a refined taste could suggest or that money could procure. It was adorned with works of art and decorations that made it a delight. The property is now owned by the City of Tampa. The hotel is one of the popular resorts of tourists, and the grounds, as beautiful as ever, are used as the city park.
FLORIDA'S WINTER ATTRACTIONS
But the delights of the winter climate have long since ceased to be the only attractions that Florida offers to travelers and tourists. Although the great hotel centers already described have each season their full quota of guests, and there are hundreds of less expensive and less known resorts in Florida that are full from December to May- these tourists are but a fraction of the hundreds of thousands who come to this state every year to remain for a week to six months. Wherever the railroads penetrate, and in the lonely spots reached only by other conveyances-everywhere the tourist is found. Thousands have built winter homes, ranging from the humble bungalow to the mansion of elegance, set in the forests or in gardens of tropical growth. These are occupied for many wecks of the year, to be closed during the months of summer. Other hundreds own orange groves or pine- apple plantations, and spend the harvest season in marketing the annual crops.
Florida is no more a winter resort than a winter play-ground.
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Some of the finest golf courses in the United States have been laid out in connection with Florida resort hotels. The annual tourna- ments on the east coast bring experts from all over the United States and Europe into competition for valuable trophies and important championships.
FISHING AND BOATING
To the fishermen everywhere Florida waters are known for the widest varieties of sport and the gamest fish. During the spring months they flock to the passes and inlets along the lower west coast and from Tampa Bay to Charlotte Harbor around to Biscayne Bay for tarpon fishing. Along the Indian river and in Lake Worth and as far north as the St. Johns river and Nassau sound on the east coast, and from Pensacola to Key West, they troll or whip the waters for a greater variety of food and game fish than is to be found elsewhere in the United States.
Deer, bear, quail and wild turkeys are plentiful in various locali- ties, and although Florida has, and enforces, a rigorous set of game laws, ample opportunity is allowed the hunter under such restrictions as every genuine sportsman approves, to hunt in proper season.
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