A U.S. prison is an epitome of capitalist brutality and makes a lie of every ‘civilized’ pretense of this society. In the second desperate rising in six months, prisoners at New York’s Auburn Prison seize guns and the warden. Eight inmates and the warden would die.

‘Prisoners in Auburn Revolt; Seize Warden’ from The Daily Worker. Vol. 6 No. 239. December 12, 1929.

Fight Vile Conditions–Second Uprising in Year–Troops Called In–Series of Revolts Show Growing Protest

BULLETIN. Eleven prisoners and one guard had been killed, last minute reports from Auburn declared, and 20 barricaded men were still holding out against thousands of troopers, guards and police. Gas attacks and machine-gun fire raked the embattled prisoners who were fighting against the miserable conditions and tortures meted out to them since the July revolt. Warden Jennings, who agreed to free the prisoners, was saved by state troopers.

AUBURN, N.Y. Dec. 11. Fighting against the vilest, foulest jail conditions in the state, 1,700 imprisoned men in Auburn prison, for the second time this year, revolted and captured Warden Edgar Jennings and eight guards.

Having armed themselves, the embittered men who have suffered the rottenest conditions imaginable, as well as undergoing the severest tortures for their last revolt in July, made a prisoner of the warden and the chief guards and demanded their freedom. Troops were immediately rushed to the prison, and latest reports are that the revolt has been quelled by the murder of the leaders of the uprising.

In the last revolt against the awful conditions, two prisoners were killed, several were severely wounded and six escaped.

When captured by the embattled men, Jennings fearing the wrath of the men he caused to be tortured, pleaded with the troops and guards on the outside to let the prisoners go free.

Dr. Raymond F. C. Kieb, commissioner of correction promised an investigation on conditions after the July revolt, but the outcome was the worsening of the vile conditions and overcrowding which directly led to the present militant resistance of the prisoners.

This is one of a long series of prison revolts all over the country. Thousands of workers are being railroaded to jail on indeterminate sentences and under the vicious Baumes and similar laws in all parts of the country.

The prisons are overcrowded, and grafting politicians in control goad the men in jail. Auburn prison is the oldest penitentiary in the state. Even the reactionary National Society for Penal Information described it as “a damp and unhealthy place.” It is built to house 1,200 prisoners in tiny cells, and contains more than 1,700 at the present time.

The growing rebelliousness of the prisoners in the American jails is symptomatic of the growing resistance of the working class to the increased exploitation and the worsening of conditions.

Unrest is seething throughout all the penitentiaries in the United States. While a great number of the prisoners are slum proletariat, an ever larger number of workers are being thrown into jail because of employment, increased speed-up which throws the worker broken in health and body penniless on the streets at an early age.

The capitalists courts have evolved vicious laws with ever-increasing sentences. Conditions in the jails are rotten. Overcrowding has reached the limit. The prisoners, rather than live under these conditions, have put up a series of brilliant battles against overwhelming odds, declaring that they would rather die in their attempt for freedom than continue to live under the domination of the grafting politicians and hopelessly long prison sentences for mild crimes.

‘Prison Revolt is Crushed’ from the Daily Worker. December 13, 1929.

But Prisoners’ Fight Against Repressive Laws Grows

AUBURN, N.Y. Dec. 12. Thousands of state troopers and armed guards crushed the valiant revolt of 1,700 goaded prisoners who were fighting against miserable conditions and refined torture. Eight were killed and one flunkey guard lost his life.

The outbreak was the second in six months in Auburn. It again showed that the spirit of resistance of the prisoners against the inhuman laws of the capitalist class, which are mainly directed against the working-class victims, cannot be squelched by even the most severe tortures, whose only rival is the inquisition of Torquemada.

That the outbreaks in various prisons in the United States, ox which the Auburn revolt was the fifth in one year, are due to the growing repressive laws of the capitalist class, is admitted by even reactionary upholders of the present system.

Dr. Hastings H. Hart, head of the Russell Saga Foundation, declared apropos the Auburn riot:

“Another inducing cause has been the fact that hope for the prisoner has been very largely shut off. He is no longer able to earn one-third of his time off for good behavior. Then, too, the Parole Board is not so much inclined today to release prisoners on parole as they used to be.”

Vile conditions in the 100 year old Auburn den, and rotten food, were also admitted to be a contributing cause by William Lewis Butcher, member of the New York State Crime Commission, which is responsible for the perpetuation of the indeterminate sentence and Baumes Laws. Butcher said:

“I have only the same reaction to this that I had when it happened last Summer; that is, that society has got to provide proper sanitation, proper conditions and proper food.”

The revolt in American penitentiaries is not restricted to Auburn. It is an outgrowth of the general crowding of the jails with brokendown workers, unemployed; and other victims of capitalist exploitation and oppression.

On July 22, 1,300 prisoners in Clinton Prison at Dannemora, known as the “Siberia” of New York penal institutions, revolted and were crushed. An outbreak occurred at the Federal Penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kan., on August 1. Another revolt broke out in the Colorado State Prison at Canon City Col. This uprising of the maddened prisoners broke all records in the spirit and daring of the revolted against the torture of grafting politicians and vicious capitalist laws.

With the growing repressive laws, the prison outbreaks will become more frequent and severe. Not only are the capitalists filling the prisons with wrecks of their speed-up factory system, but more efforts are being made daily to throw revolutionary fighters into the dungeons of the master class.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

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