Keg Sitter Out

At San Quentin Prison, perched on the rocky tip of Sibkon Point in San Francisco Bay, the sound of gunfire is almost as common as the cawing of the seagulls. From their watchtowers the guards methodically riddle each bit of flotsam as it floats beneath the walls, lest it hide an escaping convict. Inside the walls are many flowers and a collection of yellow and grey buildings housing 5,000 convicts, world's largest prison population. The prisoners look reasonably contented. Their reading privileges are almost unlimited. The prison band plays twice a day, at meals. Provided they roll their own, convicts can smoke cigarets anywhere except in the huge prison jute mill. San Quentin is not only the world's most populous prison, but also one of the world's most overcrowded, hence highly dangerous to manage.

Last year a gang of San Quentin prisoners boldly assaulted Warden James B. Holohan and kidnapped three members of the Parole Board in an unsuccessful attempt to win their freedom (TIME, Jan. 28, 1935).

Last fortnight U. S. Secret Service operatives, seeking the source of counterfeit $10 bills circulating along the West Coast, backtracked on a trail which led through San Quentin's gates and into San Quentin's printing plant. Walls of this room were decorated with photographs of cinema stars which, when removed, loosed a shower of bogus bills. The counterfeit dies were found concealed in the ceiling. Four prisoners confessed to manufacturing the fake money, shipping it to four accomplices outside.

Last week another irregularity came to the attention of the State Prison Board. Warden Holohan had been summoned to the telephone to find himself talking to the London News Chronicle. The News Chronicle wanted to speak with Prisoner Alexander Mackay, a Briton condemned to death for his part in last year's unsuccessful break. Still weak from the fractured skull he got in that melee, and instinctively willing to do anything he could for a death-house inmate, Warden Holohan had the bad judgment to let Mackay go to the transatlantic telephone, profess his innocence, describe a letter he had written to Edward VIII asking for international intercession.

Since there is a rigid rule against permitting the local press to interview San Quentin's condemned men, California newspapers proceeded to give Warden Holohan's administration a terrific drubbing. In the same breath they condemned the cruelty of San Quentin's solitary confinement dungeons and the leniency of the parole system. At first Warden Holohan, 64, denied that he would resign under fire and go back to the Santa Cruz County farm where he was born. Late last week he suddenly changed his mind, turned in his resignation, announced: "I have been sitting on a powder keg for eight and one-half years."

Probable selection for his place was Warden Court Smith of Folsom Prison.

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