NOTES ON PENITENTIARIES. 
187 
with the aid of machinery, in some instances on a very large scale; the whole being 
enclosed in high outer walls, vigilantly guarded by armed sentries. The convicts wear a pe¬ 
culiar striped prison uniform, of coarse woollen fabric, manufactured within the prisons. 
Their movements to and fro at the regular hours in the daily routine of the life of the pri¬ 
sons, are all made in single file, with the lock-step, and with the heads turned all in one 
direction, facing the constant eye of the keeper of each respective division, for the prevention 
of intercommunication. At Sing-Sing they eat their meals singly in their cells ; at Auburn, 
in large eating halls, at tables at which they are seated back to back, and fronting only their 
keepers. The food is plentiful and healthy, though coarse. A scrupulous cleanliness reigns 
through every nook and corner of the establishments. The health of the prisoners is good ; 
the average of deaths being about two per cent per annum. Each prison is provided with 
a chaplain, whose whole time is devoted to his interesting though arduous pastoral charge, 
and under whose direction they receive instruction on the Sabbath in Sunday schools. The 
cells have always been supplied with bibles; since the accession of the present executive of 
the state, and by his direction, other books have been added, suitably selected for instruction 
and moral improvement. For many years the establishments have not only defrayed the cost 
of their own maintenance, but have continued to earn annually a large excess to the benefit 
of the general revenues of the state. The mode employed of using the labor of the con¬ 
victs is to let it out at certain rates per diem, for fixed periods, to contractors in the different 
branches of industry pursued. 
The proper limits of the present occasion forbid the expansion of this brief account with 
any further details of the operation of the system, whose gradual growth has been thus 
related. As has been already remarked, the conflict of opinion between the supporters of 
the Auburn system, of social labor in silence by day, with solitary confinement by night, and 
the Pennsylvania system, of uninterrupted solitary confinement with labor, has been carried 
on with no small degree of both earnestness and ability. The advocacy of the Auburn sys¬ 
tem has been chiefly sustained by the Boston Prison Discipline Society, the annual reports of 
which have continued, from the institution of that society in 1825, to hold it up to the admi¬ 
ration and imitation of the world, in terms of unqualified eulogium. The prisons have been 
visited by many thousands of strangers, from foreign countries as well as from the other 
states of this Union, attracted by the celebrity which they have acquired; and even those 
whose preference has inclined in favor of the theory of the Pennsylvania system, have not 
failed to accord a high degree of praise to the many admirable features characterizing ours, 
as well as to the excellent management with which they have been practically administered. 
The following States have since erected penitentiaries for the most part in imitation of the 
model thus afforded : Maine, New-Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Mary¬ 
land, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois and Ohio; together with the two provinces of 
Upper and Lower Canada ; not to speak of numerous city prisons and county jails. 
We are far from desirous of pronouncing even an opinion in relation to this controversy. 
There are undoubtedly some features in the Auburn system which its best friends would 
