Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 July 1881 — Inventive Genius West and East. [ARTICLE]

Inventive Genius West and East.

We have always maintained the superiority of the West over the East in most of the essentials ; but there is one branch of progress wherein the East still takes tlxe lead. In certain lines of invention the people of Massachusetts far outstrip the people of Michigan. Up to a very recent date it has been a sad drawback to the comfort of prison officials in punishing convicts that the latter could not be kept for any length of time on tiptoe. No matter how high their hands -were fastened, the ungrateful wretches would manage somehow, by stretching their arms or some other portions of their anatomy, to get their heels on the ground, and thereby defraud their torturers of lawful enjoyment and the pleasant emotions excited by the observance of human misery. But the inventive genius of the Yankee has come to the rescue of the abused prison official. Some sharp-witted fellow in the Refoxin School at Westboro, Massachusetts, hit not long since upon the simple device of placing sharppointed tacks under the heels of convicts* when suspended by the wrists. They are quite willing now to stand on tiptoe instead of meanly settling back upon their heels ; aud the keepers are correspondingly happy. A Michigan man would never have thought of this. The recent investigation at lonia showed that the authorities there were mere slavish imitators of the authorities in Eastern prisons. They had the strap and the “paddle,” and they fed their convicts upon rotton meat, j ust as the Eastern torturers of convicts have done for years. But they hadn’t a spark of originality.— Detroit Free Press.