You need to know that you are fit for something better than slavery and cannon fodder. -Eugene Victor Debs ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hellraisers Journal, Sunday July 14, 1918
From Atlanta Penitentiary: Comrade A. L. Hitchcock Sends Greetings
From The Ohio Socialist of July 9, 1918:
A Letter from Comrade A. L. Hitchcock
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June 16, 1918
Comrades:
From the Cincinnati Enquirer of June 11, 1918
I arrived here yesterday (Saturday) at 2:30. Had a very interesting trip down from Toledo. Was quite surprised to learn that I was going so soon. I suppose you will be anxious to know of how I am and what conditions are here. So I will say, for the present I am in a large ward with about 60 others. We are in quarantine, to wait until all danger of bringing any disease in here is passed. Everything is scrupulously clean. We are fitted out with clean and disinfected clothes from top to toe. Have shower bath twice a week. The food is good and there is enough of it, so there is no kick from the care I am receiving. There are men here of all descriptions and professions, for all the different kinds of wrongdoing imaginable. However, I must not discuss those who are here, but it is all very interesting to me. This paper is not adequate to hold all I should like to write, but as you are mostly interested in my welfare I will reassure you that there is absolutely nothing to worry about.
My time will peter out in a little over six years, so I am told, so that don’t amount to much. So long as I am good I can write once per week, but can receive all the mail that comes. All mail is read both ways, in and out, so you will not write anything so intimate that it could not be read by the officials here. The officers, or those I have come in contact with, seem like very decent fellows. You will have to pass this letter along and send it to Cleveland, too, so the friends there will know that all is well.
Atlanta is quite a large city, near 200,000, also it is the home of the state office of the Socialist Party, I believe.
