The Daily Worker

Blackjacks and Hunger Rule Wichita Camp Hell

WICHITA, Kansas, June 17.—Details of fiendish tortures at the Wichita Prison Camp continue to seep through despite the denials by Bert C. Wells and Chief of Police O. W. Wilson, in charge of the farm. The Daily Worker of May 21 published the story on forced labor at this camp.

Failure to perform the forced labor either because of sickness, weakness or lack of good physical condition is punished by bread and water and a 50 per cent reduction in credit allowed for serving out fines paid, it is revealed.

A prisoner just released has described the brutal beating of another prisoner, Peter J. Gentile, as follows:

"'Curley,' as we called him, was on bread and water for 35 days when they took him out to work. He could not stand the potato hoeing. When he gave up and started for the shade, Moody, the guard, grabbed him as if to drag him back. There was a bit of a struggle and Moody knocked him down with a blackjack. It peeled a long piece, hair, hide and all, off Gentile's head.

Knocked Down and Beaten

"Then, when Gentile taunted Moody with using a blackjack on a weakened man, Moody handed the weapon to Superintendent Tom Cassner and lit into the prisoner, knocking him down and beating him. Cassner stood close to Gentile with the blackjack but the man was too weak to be dangerous.

"After it was all over, Cassner cursed Gentile and told him he would see to it that the prisoner served every day of the 114 it takes to serve out his fine on half pay, that he would stay on bread and water every day of it.

Hands Cracked and Scarred

"Another man, who worked in the kitchen 16 hours a day to get double time on his fine, said he was required to scrub three dish drying towels for three hours steady on a washboard and in lye water. He showed his cracked, scarred hands.

"'I couldn't have stood it another day,' he said, 'although I worked every day I was there.'

"Cassner gives you sugar sacks for dish cloths and makes you even wash out the printed name on them.

"I know of one boy whose fingers were cracked down to the bone back to the first joint. He couldn't work any more in the kitchen so he tackled the job of pulling the plow. His fingers would bleed from the strain of pulling with his hands behind his back and the blood would drip down.

Sour beans, another released prisoner reported, were served four days in a row to the workers on the farm. No drinking water to be had from 8 p. m. to 6 a. m., no reading matter, rotten, poisonous food—these are among the charges made by these workers sentenced to forced labor on the farm for the crime of being unemployed and homeless.