National Reports:
ROMER, GERALD WEALES, COURTNEY R. SHELDON, SAM
National Reports New York's Puerto Rican Dilemma By Gerald Weales THE SIMULTANEOUS arrival of ugly slum conditions and a large Puerto Rican population in Manhattan's West Side, which once...
...then the repair crews went in...
...Most of these people would consider themselves liberals, at least where racial, religious and national prejudices are concerned...
...On the scene, too, firemen discovered steel tools—wrenches, a scoop shovel, a chisel and a hoe...
...She was haled before a state commission, and, although she was vindicated in her humane program at Framingham, her effectiveness is still limited by laws adverse to progressive penology...
...whose slomping about and harsh threats of reprisals bad done no one any good were the first to cast a stone...
...to minimize the danger of explosion...
...State officials like Attor-ney General George F. Fingold...
...If this is the situation among the scattered intellectual population of the Upper West Side—often men and women who have come to New York to escape being molded by a particular society—how much stronger the reaction must be among the more solid neighborhood groups —for instance, the Irish and the Jews...
...Even if the hoped for assimilation takes place in fifty years, a psychological groundwork for prejudice will have been laid that will be difficult to destroy...
...The sociologists and historians, busy defining the origins of Negro prejudice in this country, hope to find solutions in the causes...
...This is not just a problem for intellectuals, whose guilty distress is most vocal, or for the Irish and Jews, who happen to represent the largest population groups, aside from the Puerto Ricans, in that part of Manhattan...
...Moreover, this situation promises to have a longer life and more unhappy consequences than the Puerto Rican difficulties caused by bad living conditions, poor schools and unscrupulous employers...
...It was later learned that the Minneapolis Fire Department, which regularly checked the plant while it was in operation, was not notified of the shut-down for repairs...
...Intensive competition for sensational headlines among Boston newspapers has not helped, either...
...Hexane gas, a high-explosive heavy vapor, is spread over the grain to squeeze out the oil...
...Impressed by some of the penal conditions described by the conviets, it also promised to use its influence to improve the lot of all prisoners...
...But from the blaring headlines and the news pictures of the dead and injured rose a question which often occurs to those who watch industrial progress: Does the capitalist really take all the risk...
...There are muttered slurs, like the word "spick," hissed out in anger and ignorance as "nigger" and "kike" so often were in earlier years...
...They began to talk of what they described as the "maudlin sentiment" displayed by those who suggested holding out "some hope' to the convicts...
...Few people know about the cases where reform and parole have worked, but everyone knows about the comparatively few cases where trust in prisoners has been misplaced...
...As he made the comment, he knew he was speaking the truth, yet he was probably haunted by the memory of past indignation at people who said, "Of course, some of my best friends are...
...After the blast, it was obvious that there had been none of the "adequate, continuous ventilation" which would seem a basic safety requirement for this kind of work...
...Finally, the four convicts, all lifers or serving the equivalent of life sentences, named a seven-man citizens' committee which they said they would deal with...
...And there are evidences of violence —like the teen-age Puerto Rican boy whom I saw doubled up in pain on the sidewalk before a Columbus Avenue bar, surrounded by a group who strangely could not tell the policeman what had happened...
...It was quickly apparent that the hexane was still around, and the men wore gas masks to keep from breathing the fumes...
...This kind of talk is one reason why it is difficult to achieve any progressive reform in Massachusetts...
...He cannot help asking why living six in a room precludes putting garbage in a trash can where the collectors can easily get it...
...But many of the more expensive apartment houses stand lonely in a row of brownstones, restricted havens whose well-kept interiors cannot mask the neighborhood decay...
...also, many have intimate knowledge of the effects of prejudice...
...But the $500,000, year-old plant had been built by Cargill, Inc...
...There is less emphasis here on severe and prolonged punishment, and more stress on fitting the indi-vidual to earn a lawful livelihood in the future...
...There are few in public office or public life who are willing to fight aggressively for prison reform...
...The sacrifice may not have been altogether futile, for the explosion dramatized for labor spokesmen in the Minnesota Legislature the inadequate benefits provided by the state workmen's-compensation law...
...Another group feels that prison discipline should achieve individual reformation by giving the prisoner some hope of re-entering society as a member in good standing...
...With the Jewish community, the problem is somewhat different...
...One view—apparently held by the majority of state officials—is that the overriding purpose of prisons is to make the inmate suffer to the point where he will be deterred from criminal activity in the future...
...A look at some of the streets on the Lower East Side, where the Puerto Rican population is small or non-existent, confirms the fact that carelessness is a product of too many people in too small a space and not of a particular national group...
...The nature of the dilemma has taken shape over many a cup of coffee and at many a talk party, where the concerns of literature, politics and gossip have given way to conversation about increasing slum conditions...
...They were there despite a notice posted on a bulletin board ordering that only tools made of bronze or brass (which do not produce sparks) be used—mute testimony to carelessness and lack of supervision...
...For years, the relative cheapness of apartments in the area from Columbus Circle to Columbia University has made that part of town the favorite residential section for Columbia students and faculty, and for those in the lower echelons of the publishing houses, periodical staffs and advertising agencies...
...often, in appearance has made easier the focusing of anger and disapproval...
...Will Massachusetts Learn from Prison Siege...
...With the Puerto Ricans, we are in on the birth of a prejudice, can see it forming day by day around us, know why it has come and that it is born of the usual mixture of half-truths and irrationality—but we seem helpless to do anything about it...
...However, the plant had been unsealed when it was shut down for repair...
...But emotionally it is easy just to blame the Puerto Ricans...
...Monday morning...
...The sanctuary of the Broadway restaurants, like Steinberg's or the Tip Toe Inn, which have hot been invaded by the Puerto Ricans as the Irish bars have, is only a temporary one...
...The transition in thinking is not as simple or quick as it may sound...
...Since most of its members are in a higher income group than the Irish, they can soften their distaste by keeping a greater distance...
...Many of them now stand empty, the fading names on the windows and the tattered awnings proclaiming that many of the Irish are moving out...
...The resulting explosion left the building a shell, shattering the corrugated sheet metal which formed the structure's siding...
...but in ten, twenty or thirty years, when the garbage has been safely hauled, the results will probably still plague New York...
...The gases were so heavy that, on Sunday night, two of the workers had to be led from the plant because they had inadvertently breathed the fumes...
...Rationally, one knows that these are the results of an inevitable what's-the-use feeling which follows overcrowding, coupled in this case with insufficient knowledge of sanitation...
...There was countrywide praise for the manner in which the committee handled the affair...
...Now these people are caught between the immediate evidence of their eyes, ears and noses, and an intellectual predilection against the kind of generalization that breeds prejudice...
...Far-reaching reforms will come in time, but it is unlikely that they will be achieved this time unless the public is thoroughly exposed to the values of modern penology...
...Suddenly, a spark ignited the gases...
...The majority live farther west, toward Riverside Drive, or else along Central Park West...
...The end of the incident was creditable, in view of earlier fears that the convicts might try to shoot their way out...
...Miriam Van Waters, Superintendent of the Framingham Reformatory for Women...
...But the work continued until 10 a.m...
...The bars that remain seem split between the old clientele and the new, one establishment filled with Puerto Ricans, the next with the Irish...
...Anyone not Puerto Rican is likely to feel the need to fix blame for the unpleasant conditions...
...There are two main schools of thought on how to handle prisoners in Massachusetts...
...The limited extent to which the latter viewpoint has penetrated the public consciousness is to be seen in the reaction to incidents surrounding the Charlestown affair...
...Minneapolis Men Pay for Industrial Carelessness By Sam Romer MINNEAPOLIS AN EMERGENCY repair crew was at work on a Monday morning in a linseed-oil extraction plant in Minneapolis...
...The process used in linseed-oil extraction is admittedly dangerous...
...National Reports New York's Puerto Rican Dilemma By Gerald Weales THE SIMULTANEOUS arrival of ugly slum conditions and a large Puerto Rican population in Manhattan's West Side, which once consisted of reasonably respectable lower-middle-class neighborhoods, has created a curious psychological situation...
...They then holed up in a solitary-confinement section, holding five guards as hostages...
...The prison commission appointed by Governor Herter, who has otherwise been silent on the issue, will not lack for ammunition to make the same points that previous commissions have made...
...The closed butcher shops and bake shops on Amsterdam and Columbus, the vacancy signs on some of the apartment houses, particularly the co-ops (witness the endless advertisements for Schwab House), indicate that the Jewish population, too, is heading for the Upper East Side or, more probably, the suburbs...
...the patrons have to go down the crowded streets to get back to their homes...
...Two others died...
...The faet that the slums came with the Puerto Ricans heightened, of course, by the difference in language and...
...safety devices were sealed in to absorb the gases while it was in operation...
...Because two men died and four others suffered horrible burns, an aroused city started talking about industrial safety...
...This committee eventually convinced the convicts of the fruitless-ness of their siege...
...The Irish bars that line Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues, once social centers for the men and some of the women in the Irish neighborhoods, offer their own testimony...
...Most of them are forced to preface every statement of distaste with a long apologia...
...If a man lives in the West Nineties, however, his attention is focused on his immediate surroundings...
...It was left idle for a day to let the gases evaporate...
...Resentment is always stirred by the garbage, broken furniture, tin cans, rags and paper that turn the streets into obstacle courses...
...Since the garbage appeared together with the Puerto Ricans, he fights a losing fight within his own mind and ends with the suspicion that Puerto Ricans just like living this way...
...The plant itself—an automatic unit used to drain the oil from crushed flaxseed—had been closed down since the previous Thursday...
...Threats and pleas by public officials were unavailing...
...Fire-prevention experts had no opportunity to insure proper precautions against an accident...
...In Massachusetts, the climate was different...
...By Courtney R. Sheldon BOSTON THOSE WHO EXPECT sweeping reforms in Massachusetts's penal system as a logical aftermath of the recent Charlestown prison siege are well advised either (1) to organize an intensive campaign to inform the public of progressive penology programs in other states, or (2) to resign themselves to the ultimate pigeonholing of the forthcoming report by Governor Christian Herter's special commission investigating Bay State prisons...
...No deals were made...
...Right now, perhaps, it is a matter of garbage...
...Three of the workmen miraculously escaped injury...
...One Columbia professor, explaining why he was moving out of the neighborhood, began, "Of course, I know the Puerto Ricans are terribly exploited, but...
...twelve others were burned, four of them critically...
...Four hardened criminals unsuccessfully sought to break out...
...One who has is Dr...
Vol. 38 • March 1955 • No. 10
