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world; but we must not. They are our own published records, made by ourselves for ourselves. The once proud State of Tennessee, chivalrous and public-spirited, stands to-day before the world a self-convicted murderer; and her victims are her own sons and daughters. Prison mortality should run from 8 to 25 per thousand per annum, whereas ours has reached the startling height of 147 per thousand per annum. If by a humane and well-regulated penal system prison mortality is reduced to an average of 15 per thousand per annum, then the system that shows a mortality of 147 per thousand is responsible for the murder of 132 per annum of every thousand in its charge.^[1]

I would ask the gentlemen who think that some American prisons are as bad as any that I have described, to compare the Coal Creek and Tracy City statistics with the records of Tiumén. Dr. Sims declares that "before a death-rate of 147 per thousand per annum humanity stands aghast." What, then, must be said of a death-rate that ranges from 230 per thousand to 440 per thousand? Between 1876 and 1887 there was not a single year in which the death-rate in the Tiumén forwarding prison was not more than double that in the Tennessee prisons, and in 1878 and 1879 it was more than three times the Tennessee rate. If, to adopt the metaphor of the Chattanooga surgeon, "Civilization hides her face in shame" at a death-rate of 147 per thousand, by what gesture or attitude shall she express her humiliation when shown in Russia a death-rate of 440 per thousand?

It may be said that the cases are not parallel, for the reason that the population of the Tiumén forwarding prison is composed largely of young children, who, by reason of their tender age, are more susceptible to disease and more likely to die than the mature convicts in Tennessee. This may be a good and sufficient explanation of a part of the difference between a death-rate of 147 and a death-rate of

1. Report of Dr. P. D. Sims, chairman of the prison committee of the Tennessee State Board of Health, dated Chattanooga, January 6, 1885. Nashville Weekly Banner, January 29, 1885.