Such being the case, our steward figured that the convicts could be well enough supported by about 2500 calories apiece; and upon making a scientific estimate of the calories in our average bill-of-fare, he found that we were being overfed rather than the contrary. Meat, so many calories; soup, so many; sweet potatoes, so many; bread, so many; and so on. It was found possible, on this basis, to retrench here and there; the bills were reduced—it was hoped that we might ultimately beat even eight cents. The sole difficulty appeared to be that the men, the subjects of the experiment, began incomprehensibly and perhaps maliciously to starve.

I was fortunate enough to have access to a physician (a fellow prisoner), of forty years' eminence in his profession, who solved the enigma for me. The sum of his comment was this: "Put a Delmonico dinner in one bucket, and an equal bulk of swill or garbage in another; the number of calories may be the same in both. The steward, in his calculation, has forgotten to consider the condition in which the food is served—its eatableness, in short. If men could devour swill, it would be all right; but if they cannot, they will starve in spite of calories."

So the steward's calories became a byword and a mockery in the prison for many weeks afterward.

Similar conditions, perhaps due to the same cause, seem to have obtained at Sing Sing and elsewhere. It is not enough that prison food should be sufficient in amount; it must also be of a quality such that the men are able to get it down their throats. Nor are the doctor's salts a remedy; their violent and abnormal action finally paralyze the excretory and digestive powers of the organism, and the man dies from poisons generated by indigestible food in his own system. Even keeping him in the dark hole fails to recuperate him, though it has been constantly tried at Atlanta, and very likely in other reformatory institutions.

Plenty of vigorous and hearty outdoor exercise would help much; not the exercise of prison toil, which but deepens the darkness of the heart; but exercise for its own sake, for the cheer and excitement of it. Much has been said of the baseball at Atlanta Penitentiary; and doubtless it has been of benefit. But only a handful of the prisoners, and nine-tenths of them negroes, play the game; the others can only stand and look on. The games occur, weather permitting, once a week, on Saturdays. From Saturday at half past three until Monday morning at half past seven, the men are locked in their cells, absolutely inactive in body, and abandoned to such mental activities as, for the most part, breed no good either for themselves or others. The only outlet is the Sunday church service hour—a crowded session in a blank hall, with rifles ready to subdue any disorder. A very apostle might fail in his efforts under such circumstances; and very apostles are few.

A man who is sick and sad day after day and year after year, and conscious of his impotence to amend his state, is in no mood for moral reform. Much of the sickness might be averted if the medical treatment at the outset of disease were such as to encourage the patients to avail themselves of advice. But each man, as he comes up in the sick line every morning, is met with indifference or insults; he is presumed to be a malingerer unless he can prove himself genuine on the instant; the only other recourse is to become so sick as to be beyond help of medicine, and then, taken belated to the hospital, to die outright. The consequence is that the men will suffer silently in their cells rather than appeal to the doctor; and many diseases become ineradicable from this cause.

Even a convict, when he is miserable and weak from illness, shrinks from facing rough and unsympathetic handling and words in the doctor's room, with a good chance of being sent to the hole if he remonstrates. The doctor of a prison could be its good angel, if he would.



XIV

THE POLICY OF FALSEHOOD

The subterranean brotherhood waxes curiously indignant over being lied to by prison officials. For why should criminals, whose success in their trade must depend largely on lies either spoken or acted, be resentful when they are paid back in their own base coin? I am inclined to think that the anomaly may be due to some survival in prisoners of the old belief, that honor and fair play do, or should, exist in officers of justice; although their own experience should admonish them that officers of prisons, at least, cultivate the art and practise of fighting the devil with fire (as we say), and so far from ever thinking of keeping faith with a convict, study the art of deceiving and hoodwinking him, and appear to derive no small amusement from their results. Indeed, any tendency on the part of a guard or other official in a prison to deal honestly and above board with their charges would at once awaken suspicion of his loyalty to the "system," and his superiors would be apt to improve the first opportunity of getting rid of him.

The lies told to prisoners are sometimes told for art's sake merely—for the delight of the artist in his fabrication. There is fun in overcoming the suspicions and skepticism of some old timer, and beguiling him into the belief that for once, and at last, he really is getting trustworthy information—that he has finally succeeded in touching the elusive hem of the robe of Truth. But commonly the official liar has some practical object in view. This object is usually the tightening of the prison's grip upon the convict; not only to strengthen the bonds which confine his body, but to bring his spirit or soul under more complete subjection and to make him feel that so far from moral reform being the end sought in his incarceration, he will best consult his private interests by abandoning all thoughts of decency and honor, and acting, with the officials, against the welfare and hopes of his own fellows.

The consequence of the falsehood policy in prisons is, for one thing, that the men most worthless morally are uniformly those who get most favors. Men of unbroken spirit are handled in a hostile manner, and are subjected to a regimen calculated either to kill or cure their obstinacy and themselves. "You have no right to do this—there is no law for it!" the convict may protest. The reply is a sneer: "What are you going to do about it?" What do you think you would do in such circumstances?—write to the President, or to some Senator or Congressman? awaken the country to these iniquities? The warden and the clerk will smile over your letter, and drop it in the waste-basket, or will make it the basis of an adverse report against you to the Department,—insubordination, incorrigibility, insanity perhaps.

Or, if you reserve your protest till after you get out, and can then find any medium for ventilating it, the prison authorities will promptly and smilingly "welcome an investigation"; and the Department will eagerly send down some old friend and boon companion of the officials, to make a "strict investigation," "without fear or favor." Now, at last, the truth shall be known, let it hurt whom it may! So the severe and incorruptible inspector comes down; and after snubbing and insulting a few prisoners, and taking notes of the information of a few snitches, and dining and wining with the officials, and inspecting the country in the government automobile, he goes back to Washington with the reassuring news that the reports of abuses, where they were not absolute fabrications, were gross exaggerations.

Is this an imaginative sketch—or colored a little—or a good deal? How shall it be determined?—for I am only an ex-convict, and we all know what an ex-convict's word is worth. I can only suggest that, for your own individual satisfaction at any rate, you commit a bona fide crime and get sentenced to prison for it. If you survive, we can converse further on the subject. Or—to offer a bolder suggestion yet—perhaps the head of the Department himself might take a hand; perhaps he would oblige us by breaking a law. Let him be handcuffed and brought to Atlanta or elsewhere—we are not particular—and there be numbered and U.S.P.'d and set to work. After a ten years' experience, or, if his time be valuable, a year and a day might do, let him write his report, and I for one will abide by it.

The prison policy of falsehood may be illustrated by the uses to which the parole law is put. This unfortunate measure was no doubt conceived by its parents in love and charity, to supply prisoners with a stimulus to reform by rewarding them for it with early release from imprisonment. If a man's conduct while serving his sentence had been orderly and obedient to rules, he was to be freed after serving about one-third of his appointed time; but he was required, for a reasonable period thereafter, to make monthly reports to the prison, and to show that he was usefully employed and was not frequenting drinking saloons or otherwise going astray. A parole board was appointed to carry out the law and to look after the paroled prisoner, helping him if necessary to get employment. Meetings of the board were to be held at stated times, to pass upon applications for parole; it was to consist of the warden and the doctor of the prison, together with the president of the parole board, who officiated at all Federal prisons, and who would, naturally, be the superior official of the three. But two members of the board would form a quorum; and meetings of the board at times other than those regularly required could be held if thought desirable.

This looked humane and innocent, and raised great hopes in prisoners; and an improvement in their general demeanor was soon observable. Question soon arising as to whether life prisoners could be brought under the new law, it was decided that lifers who had served fifteen years were eligible, if of good record,—not an extravagant act of mercy,—and in obtaining this concession it was made known that the warden of Atlanta Penitentiary was instrumental. Of course the reputation of Atlanta as a model and humane prison was greatly enhanced thereby.

But the prisoners, and perhaps the framers of the law also, had overlooked one little word in the language of the law, which grew to have a large significance afterward. The language is, that if the prisoner's conduct has been correct, etc., he may be granted parole. If, for that harmless looking "may," had been substituted "shall," or "must," the secret annals of federal prisons since then would have been spared much rascality, corruption, cruelty, torture and death; and prisoners would not have hated and distrusted their keepers as they do now, and subordination on one side and humanity on the other would have received an impetus.

That "may" rendered it optional with the board to grant or to refuse parole in any given case; they might not only determine whether or not the conduct of the applicant had been, while serving his sentence, good enough to justify clemency; but also whether, even then, it were expedient to exercise it. No matter how unexceptionable the behavior of a prisoner were shown to be, it was open to the board to say to him, "We hold that your liberation would be inimical to the welfare of society, and we cannot therefore recommend it to the Department."

The prisoner, going before the board unsupported by the advice of counsel, had no further recourse; he must go back to his cell feeling that all his efforts to be obedient (persisted in through what discouragements only prisoners know) had been futile; that he was not a whit better off than was a man who had defied every regulation, and was worse off in so far as he had taken all his pains and indulged all his hopes for nothing. He must serve out his time; for if he renewed his application at the next meeting of the board, he was told that nothing could be done in his case except upon the presentation of "new evidence."

New evidence of what? The obstacle he had to meet was the arbitrary opinion, or fiat, of the board that it would not be a good thing to set him free; with what argument, except his good conduct, which had already proved unavailing, could he hope to reverse it? The decision left him helpless and hopeless, and with a sense of despotic injustice on the part of the authorities which was anything but conducive to good discipline in him or in his comrades who were conversant with his fate.

Obviously, however, there was a weak point in this kind of arbitrary rulings of the board; it was conceivable that some enterprising Attorney-General might want to know why the board had not held the good conduct specified in the law to be sufficient ground for freeing the man. To guard against this, the services of a subordinate called the parole officer were called in. This person's normal functions as indicated in the law were to help paroled men to procure employment, to aid them in general in their efforts toward a better life, and to stand by them as an authoritative and kindly friend. But he was now required to play a very different part.

As soon as a man applied for parole, the parole officer betook himself to the place where the applicant had formerly lived or been known, and there busied himself in unearthing whatever gossip and scandal of a hostile nature any enemy might be willing to supply. There was no time limit on these revelations, nor were any apparent precautions taken to determine whether the evil reports were founded in fact; the tale bearer was not compelled to testify under oath, and his story might refer to incidents which had happened years before, and which had nothing to do with the crime for which the prisoner was now undergoing sentence. With this budget of information the parole officer returned to his superiors, who were now prepared for any contingency.

When the prisoner comes up for examination, and has handed in his report of good conduct while incarcerated, the president of the board fixes a distrustful eye upon him, and says in effect, "Your behavior here seems to have been unobjectionable; but the board cannot take the responsibility of granting parole on that ground alone. It desires to be informed what you were doing in such and such a place, in such and such a year? Is it not true that you were arrested in this or that year for this or that offense? Has your career, in short, been absolutely blameless during the whole course of your life? Because, unless you can prove such to be the case, it will indicate a predisposition to law-breaking on your part which will render it imprudent for the board to recommend you for parole to the Department."

The president has a sheaf of papers in his hand, which he glances over significantly while the mind of the prisoner goes groping back over the past, asking himself what he has done amiss in forgotten years, and who can be his accusers. He has no counsel beside him to tell him that he is being tried before an unauthorized tribunal, on unsupported testimony, on charges irrelevant to that for which he is now undergoing punishment; or to remind him that the judge who passed sentence on him had specified that if his behavior were good while serving that sentence, he would be eligible for parole—that he had, perhaps, given him a longer sentence than he would otherwise have done, upon this very understanding; and that, consequently, the parole board was now arrogating the power to override the purpose of the federal court, and to inflict additional and unwarranted punishment upon him for something which he may or may not have done in the past, or for which, if he had done it and been convicted, he may already have served sentence. He has no one to argue thus for him; he feels that he is alone and among enemies; and he can make no effective defense. And the parole officer stands by with a sad countenance, as of one who had done the best he could for a protege, but was powerless to stem the tide of justice.

It can't be done, legally or justly; but it is done; that is the gist of the matter. There is no one to know the wrong and to insist upon the right; and the wrong is perpetrated. Unnumbered victims of it, in every federal prison of the country, substantiate this fact. The parole board—which means, in practise, its president—exercises more power than the federal court, and there is no appeal from his decision. At his will, a man may be tried twice for the same offense, behind closed doors, without aid of counsel. He may be condemned, though the offense was never committed except in the imagination of an enemy. We tell our convicts that they have no civic rights; but it is not generally understood, I think, that the Spanish Inquisition of the Middle Ages can properly be reproduced in Twentieth Century America even with men behind the bars.

But let that pass. Things are done under the parole law worse than this. If it were used merely as a means to induce unruly men to be docile, no one could complain; if men thus induced should after all be deprived of the reward they had earned, we might condone it. But what if we find the parole board turned into an accessory of the secret service or spy system, and learn that an applicant for parole, whether or not he have maintained good conduct during his term, may yet hope for a favorable report on his case if he will consent to betray some man on whom the police have not yet been able to lay their hand?

Here comes a postoffice thief, for example. He was known to have had confederates, but they escaped. He is up for parole, with only an indifferent prison record to plead for him. "We do not find your case meritorious," says the president to him (in substance), "but there were two or three others concerned in your crime. If you are able to furnish their names to the board, with such other information as may lead to their arrest and conviction, we might see our way to recommend leniency in your matter." I will not guarantee that the president expresses himself in terms quite so explicit, but he makes himself perfectly understood, and the prisoner perfectly understands that his liberty is purchasable at the price of treachery.

I don't know what percentage of the miserable creatures accept the ignoble offer; but I know personally of many who refused it. And I do not need to ask what are the prospects of an honest and worthy career for those who chose to be traitors. If they go to ruin, is not the parole board responsible? On the other hand, who shall blame the convict if he accedes to the bargain? The alternative presented to him is one which might cause even virtue to waver, and convicts are not supposed to be virtuous, especially when such an example as this action of the board is set them. The alternative is liberty, or continued incarceration with the strong probability of increased severity of treatment, and always the off chance of death.

Meanwhile, is there not something humiliating in the reflection that a tribunal authorized and appointed by the Government of the United States should descend to such practises? Or are we content to accept the spy system in toto, cost what it may? Perhaps, however, the president of the parole board is prepared to deny that he ever entered into any such compact with a prisoner; and perhaps the Department of Justice will be astonished to hear that he ever did. Is the thing true, or not true? I think men exist who have excellent reasons to believe, and who may be willing to testify, that it is.

But take the case of a prisoner who had no confederates—how does the board deal with him? According to my information, which includes my personal experience, question is put to the applicant whether or not he admits himself guilty of the crime for which he is undergoing sentence? My own reply was, "Not guilty"; and though the president was very courteous to me, and gave me every assurance that I might expect favorable action on my application, as a matter of fact and of record the recommendation made to the Attorney-General was that my application be denied, and denied it accordingly was. But in other cases nearly contemporary with mine, which came to my knowledge, the reply of "not guilty" called forth the rejoinder that in that case the matter was not one for the board to pass on, but should be referred to executive action—that is, that the President of the United States should be petitioned for a pardon. Some men are so persistent or so infatuated as to take the suggestion seriously; but their petition does not bear fruit; probably its path to the President is by way of the Department of Justice, where it is either pigeonholed, or reaches him with an endorsement to the effect that it is not a case for clemency. But in such cases as came to my knowledge, the President never saw the petition at all.

And what happens if our man pleads guilty? Why, in that event he is told that such a person as he should not have made application for parole—that he has not been sufficiently punished—that the best he should hope for is to serve out his sentence, less the regular allowance for good time. It is a case, in short, of heads the board wins, tails the convict loses; and he withdraws, wondering, perhaps, what the board is for. But let him beware of becoming restive under his disappointment, or he may forfeit his good time too.

That the parole law is interpreted, under all conditions, as being a favor or privilege and not a right earned by good conduct, is perhaps no more than one might expect; but no prisoner who lacks powerful friends, or whose parole does not in some way inure to the advantage of the prison quite as much as to his own, can make his application with assured hope of success. Upon the whole, prisoners feel that parole will not be granted if any means can be found or devised to prevent it; the good report of an entire county where a man formerly lived will not prevail against the adverse report of some inspector—one enemy of a prisoner outweighs, in the board's estimation, the favorable words of many friends.

Moreover, men released on parole live in constant dread of the secret service, for they know that unjust and trivial pretexts are often made the occasion of their re-arrest; and a paroled man re-arrested must serve out his whole time without rebate, and not including the period during which he was at liberty. Some supervision by the Government is of course proper; but the men feel it to be hostile, not friendly or helpful; that any error they fall into or mishap they meet with will be construed against them, not in their favor. In short, under the outward forms of liberty, they are still in prison, and are often discouraged from doing their best by this sleepless fear of the prowling spy.

Atlanta prison records show that out of one thousand prisoners who applied for parole up to June 30th, 1913, two hundred and seventy were successful. These applicants were serving terms of from one year and a day to twenty-one years. The two hundred and seventy who were paroled had served an aggregate of eighty-three years beyond the period when they were eligible for parole (that is, after one-third of their original sentence), or an average of about 112 days each, and with an average of from twenty-five to forty per cent, of the time contemplated for them to reestablish and rehabilitate themselves.

The one-year-one-day men lost about thirty-three per cent. of their time during which they might have labored to reform themselves; and there were about one hundred of the two hundred and seventy whose sentences ran for a year and a day. Some sixty-five of the two hundred and seventy had sentences of more than a year and a day and less than two years; about thirty-five had over two years and under three years; from which it would appear that short term men, convicted of minor offenses, were given preference for parole over long term men. Yet it would seem to the ordinary intelligence that it should be the long term men who most needed parole and, if their conduct had been good, best deserved it. It often happened that men would be paroled when they had but a few weeks or even days yet to serve of their full sentence. In such cases, the prison got whatever credit may belong to granting parole, but the men got rather less than nothing, for they stood the risk of re-arrest and further confinement.

When an applicant goes before the board for examination, he is sometimes turned down summarily; but more often he goes out ignorant whether or not he will succeed, and, as I have already shown, he is not seldom kept in this torturing uncertainty until the day when he is either turned loose or told that he has been rejected. This seems unnecessary, and often appears to be due to sheer carelessness; the papers are not promptly submitted to the Attorney-General, or they are pigeonholed and forgotten. It may be true that the law does not categorically demand that a prisoner shall be released immediately upon a favorable report; but there is no obvious reason why he should not be, and it is cruel to keep him in suspense.

There was a young fellow while I was there, a well educated and agreeable man, whose conduct had always been unexceptionable; he applied when eligible for parole, and was informed that he would be released. Every morning thereafter for three weeks he arose with the hope that the release would come that day; every night he went to bed with a heart heavy with disappointment. He could not eat or sleep, he could not talk connectedly, he trembled and turned pale, and was on the way to becoming a nervous wreck; but no explanation was vouchsafed him. At last he was suddenly told that he might go. The sole reason that I ever heard for the delay was that the papers had been overlooked. There are a great many government employees at Washington; it might be worth while to appoint one more, charged with the duty of seeing that the overlooking of parole papers be henceforth avoided. This was a very mild instance; I have related how poor Dennis lingered for six months and finally died from the same inattention or indifference.

There was a friend of mine, M., a highly intelligent, good natured fellow, active and efficient in his prison duties, always courteous and obliging; he was serving a sentence of five years, I think, for some theft or confidence game. He had "done time" some six or seven years previously, but during the interval had lived straight. At the time of his last arrest he had been kept in the local jail, somewhere in New England, after conviction, for four months before being transferred to Atlanta. Time spent in a local jail before conviction is not counted in the prisoner's favor; for example, I was arrested several months before my conviction, and the trial itself lasted four months, and after the trial I spent ten days in the Tombs.

With the exception of the last ten days, however, I was lucky enough to be out on bail; but none of this time was applied to the lessening of my sojourn in Atlanta, although the judge specified in his sentence that my imprisonment there was to count from the time when the trial began; an injunction which, had it been observed, would have caused my release on parole a few days after my arrival at the penitentiary. But it appears that such rulings by a trial judge have no weight with the Department of Justice; and I am willing to admit that the judge's ruling in my case seemed rather like whipping the devil round the stump—an evasion of the manifest intent of the law, which, if I were guilty, I had no right to expect. At all events, the Attorney-General made a decision, based upon my case, that hereafter no such evasions were to be allowed; and I presume his authority must be superior to that of any federal judge.

But my friend's case did not come under this category. His four months in jail came after, not before, his conviction; and yet, when he arrived at Atlanta, he was told that this four months would not be deducted from his penitentiary time. Turn this which way you will, you cannot escape the conclusion that this man is getting four months more than the sentence of the judge required. Well, M. applied for parole on the plea of perfect conduct during his imprisonment; no denial of that was offered; but he was informed that his conviction seven years before, for which he had been duly punished at that time, prevented the board from giving favorable attention to his application.

This looks to me like trying a man twice for the same offense, and twice condemning him; and I can find nothing to warrant it in the wording of the parole law. If every actual or alleged mis-step of a man's whole life can be quoted against him as ground for refusing parole, it would seem tantamount to stultifying the law for parole.

This is not done in every case; but the point is that it may be done in any case, and thus the fate of the applicant is at the arbitrary and absolute disposal of the board, whether or not he have complied with the stated provisions of the law.

The president of the parole board, in my time, was a Mr. Robert LaDow. A former deputy warden of the Leavenworth Penitentiary, one W.H. Mackay, wrote a letter to the Attorney-General on the 6th of November, 1913, parts of which were published in newspapers about that time. In this letter he said that Mr. LaDow was egotistical, arrogant, negligent, extravagant, visionary and impractical, showed favoritism to prisoners, and was totally unfit for the position he held. He goes on as follows:

"Personally, he knows nothing of Leavenworth Federal Prison; he is too cowardly to go among the prisoners in the yards to make a personal investigation of conditions; he has dealt unfairly and hastily with so many at the parole meetings that he is afraid to meet prisoners face to face.... Prisoners will stand punishment without a murmur if there is a just reason for it, and they will permit you to be the judge; but when men under the law are entitled to parole, and the flimsy excuse to hold them in confinement is made that they will be a menace to society, they cannot see it in that way. The parole board at this time is arrogantly dominated by LaDow; it is practically a one-man board....

"When the board meets here, the men do not know sometimes for weeks and months afterwards what their fate is.... Instances occur here where the board acts unanimously upon a parole. Mr. LaDow takes these cases to Washington and holds them thirty, sixty, and even ninety days on some flimsy pretext or other. He often claims press of business, until finally some senator or congressman or influential politician calls on him, and then he gets busy very suddenly....

"When he comes to a parole meeting he begins work generally with a rush and a flurry.... Usually has about 180 cases; he rushes them at the rate of 60 to 80 a day, without getting at the merits or giving them serious deliberation. He brings a stenographer, his private secretary, from Washington at a heavy expense.... Then, when they return to Washington, the stenographer writes up the result of the meeting, while LaDow will take a junketing trip at Government expense ... as a sort of recreation from his arduous duties."

I had not been long in Atlanta before a guard informed me that LaDow was the best hated man in the prison, by officials and convicts alike. Nor did I find any prisoner there, afterward, who did not speak to the same tune. If he be really an efficient and trustworthy official, this is singular and unfortunate. Mr. Mackay's charges against him at Leavenworth are almost identically the same as what may be heard against him any day in Atlanta. If there be any basis for them, perhaps it would be expedient for the Government to supersede him. The parole law, at its best, seems to be rather a weak-kneed and perverse institution, and it would be a pity to deprive it of what value it may have by committing its dispensation to the hands of a man not peculiarly fitted by nature and temperament to carry out its provisions. It was Napoleon's opinion that a blunder is worse than a crime.



XV

THE FRUIT OF PRISONS

After weathering Cape Parole, I laid my course for the Port of Good Time. Men whose prison records are clear are liberated after serving two-thirds of their original sentences. This new posture of my mind invited a review of the experience through which I had been passing, and of the conditions with which I had become conversant, and their significance in connection with the policy of penal imprisonment in general. I will introduce some of these reflections in this place.

As I have just said, men whose prison records are clear are liberated after serving two-thirds of their original sentences. But part or all of this abridgment may be lost by imperfect conduct. One man, at least, within my knowledge, was punished by the dark hole several months before the expiration of his original sentence, and was kept there until that sentence had expired. Then, out of that filthy dungeon he was thrust abruptly forth into broad daylight and the crowded world. It was a miracle if he survived. What have most convicts to live for? Perhaps those who have most to live for are unlikeliest to survive—their anxiety is greater.

On the other hand, severity itself may stimulate a convict. His human mind cannot comprehend despair. Instinct forces him to hope. So weeks, months, years go by, and hope seems to him more instead of less justifiable, till at last, perhaps, he dies with the illusion still strong in him. Real despair is un-human and possibly rare. Otherwise prison mutinies and killings would be more frequent. The argument of despair is, "Since I must die here anyway, I'll take two or three of those devils with me!" But few men believe they will die in jail, therefore the guard or other official escapes.

Not ten percent of men in jail would regard such a killing as unjustifiable. We were taught in school that resistance to tyrants is obedience to God, and many who had disobeyed God in other ways would gladly obey Him in this. I speak not merely of "ignorant and brutal" convicts, but of educated and intelligent men like you and me. Even a sensitive conscience may condone the killing of a tyrant who is slowly and surely destroying you, body and soul, under sanction of law. But we punish convicts who fight for revenge or liberty, and protect the officials who taunt and torture them into doing it.

What a hideous and almost unbelievable situation! Historians wonder that the Aztecs of Cortez' time, with their comparatively high civilization, tolerated human sacrifices. But their human sacrifices were merciful compared with ours. What is cutting out a man's heart on an altar to propitiate a god, to hounding him to death through miserable years in a prison to placate the spite of an accuser, the justice of a court, or the grudge of a warden or guard?

And what is the fruit of it? For pure, carefree, smiling, remorseless wickedness nothing in human annals surpasses the young criminals—black- mailers, bomb-throwers, gunmen—now infesting our cities. "I think no more of killing a houseful of human beings, men, women and children," one of them was quoted as saying the other day, "than of crushing so many beetles." How came such a monster to exist? Why, we bred him, supplied him with the poisonous conditions that generate such beings and can generate nothing else. He had intelligence enough to understand that the established order made earning an honest living hard work; saw thousands living well without labor apparently, other thousands robbing under cover of legal technicalities; a legal profession living by devising statutes to punish crimes and prosecuting the criminals thus manufactured; often living better yet by teaching criminals to escape the penalties which their law imposed. He saw reform schools which instructed such children as he had been to become such men as he was; prisons and penitentiaries which graduated such as he in the latest devices of crime—and he made up his mind that goodness was at bottom humbug, that only a fool would be honest or merciful when money could be got by theft and murder.

We breed poisonous snakes and scorpions, give them no chance to be anything but that, and then wonder they are not doves and butterflies. Things like this gangster are infernal spirits, irreclaimable; but we gain nothing by extirpating the individuals; the black stream which carries them must be dammed at its source. Of the conditions which generate them, a part is the prisons and their keepers. But we are not yet at the root of the matter—the keepers are not primarily to blame. It is the principle which prisons illustrate which attracts and molds keepers till they become often as bad as the men they have charge of, and often much worse.

Prisons mean social selfishness, the disowning of our own flesh and blood. They segregate visible consequences of social disease; but the disease is invisibly present in all parts of the body corporate, and can no more be healed by cutting off the visible part than we can heal small pox by cutting out the pustules. Prisons are not the right remedy; they inflame and disseminate the poison we would be rid of and prevent any chance of cure. The soul of all crime is self-seeking in place of neighborly good will; we send men to prison to get them out of our way, and that is criminal self seeking and ill will to the neighbor—delegating to hirelings our own proper business.

In attempting thus selfishly to extirpate crime, we commit the crime least of all forgivable—the denial of human brotherhood and responsibility. For that crime, no law sends us to prison; yet it is no sentimental notion, but the truth, that it is a crime worse than those for which we imprison men. Prisons are brimful of men less guilty before God than is the society that condemned them. You and I are not excused because we are not society—we are society. Society is not numbers but an idea—a mutual relation; we cannot shift our blame to people in the next street. "Am I my brother's keeper?" was an argument used long ago, and its reception was not encouraging.

Thoughts like these pass through a convict's mind when he discovers that he is on the last leg of his disastrous voyage. He then begins to see the whole matter in its general relations; what use was served? who is the better for it? "Prisons make a good man bad and a bad man worse," is the way I often heard the men at Atlanta put it. The situation, entire and in detail, is preposterous and futile. Grown men, from all ranks of life, or all degrees of intelligence and education, are herded promiscuously, and treated now like wild beasts, now like children. Discipline, in any condition of life, is a good thing, and no people need discipline more than we do; but in prison, discipline means punishment, and there is no discipline in the right sense of the word. A man is "disciplined" when he is starved, or clubbed, or put in the hole, or deprived of his good time.

Military discipline might be beneficial; it implies respect for rightful authority, and orderly conduct of one's own life. Officials in a penitentiary wear uniforms; prisoners wear prison clothes; but, in warm weather, officials go about, indoors and out, in their shirts and with the bearing of loafers; they have no official salutes, and the men are not allowed to salute them—to do so would expose them to "discipline." There is no drill in the prison, no soldierly bearing, no physical control of movement. The men are "lined up" to go to work, but it is a line of slouchers and derelicts; no spirit in it, no respect for themselves or one another, no decent example set by the guards. And yet armies in all ages and in all parts of the world have proved the value of discipline—its necessity, indeed—in all proper and intelligent handling and control of bodies of men; and it is as important for convicts as for soldiers. It would promote cheerfulness, smartness, efficiency; half an hour's lively drill of all the men in prison every morning and evening would do them good, improve relations between guards and prisoners, and lessen the danger of revolts. Why refuse it then? Is it because it would imply something human still lingering in convicts? or because it is feared that convicts taught to act in unison by military drill would combine more readily for mutiny? But order does not naturally lead to disorder but away from it, and mutinies are mostly impromptu affairs, contemplating revenge rather than escape. As for the other argument, a lie is not a sound basis to build on, and it is a lie that convicts are not human. To admit this would facilitate their management.

Physical exercise twice a day in the open air would diminish the sick line, produce better work, and help to put a soul in any prison. Desultory exercise—say two or three hours of baseball on Saturdays—does not meet the need—it emphasizes it rather. But at present the well-nigh universal aim seems to be to render the gray monotony of prison slavery as monotonous and as gray as possible. Any relief from it is opposed or made difficult. It is true that at Atlanta and elsewhere we have music (that is what it is called, and I have no wish to criticize the hardworking and zealous young fellows who produce it in and out of season; and some of the men may like it for aught I know); and that a vaudeville company performs for us occasionally. But I must look these gift horses in the mouth, and say that often we have them less for our own advantage than as an advertisement to the public of the liberality of prison authorities. And there to be sure at my prison, is Uncle Billy, who makes fiddles out of shingles, with nails, and plays on them, all with one hand. But he is—I hope I may now say, he was; for he was to have been paroled the other day; he was a lifer, and a picturesque and wholly innocuous figure—he was, then, permitted to pursue this industry, and visitors used to come and watch him do it; but he, too, was most useful to the prison press agent, and owed the indulgence to that functionary. On the other hand, there is a convict, also a lifer, who cultivated a most remarkable skill in inlaid woodwork, producing really beautiful and artistic boxes and other articles, and found some consolation for his awful fate in making them. But one day while I was there his cell was entered by the guard, his boxes and plant taken away and broken, and he was forbidden to do that work any more. Visitors did not know about him.

This was malicious. But some of the things done by prison authorities are apparently due to sheer stupidity and ignorance. For example, there were some cows belonging to Atlanta prison, and some of them calved. So there were half a dozen calves more or less, with prospects of more to come. The authorities decided that the expense of rearing these innocents was not justifiable; there was nothing in the rule book about it; besides, the jail was not designed to harbor innocent creatures. The minutes of the conference were not given out, and we can judge of what passed only by the results. The order went forth that the calves be killed; and the killing was actually perpetrated, and the bodies were buried somewhere in the prison grounds. The story seems incredible, but it was corroborated by several men cognizant of the facts. Why not, at least, have turned them into veal?

I was speaking just now of the promiscuous herding together of prisoners in prisons generally. No effort is made to separate the old from the young, the educated from the ignorant; the hardened sinners from the impressionable youths or newcomers; or (at Atlanta, except in the cells), the negroes from the whites. Association of negroes with whites, on a footing of enforced outward equality, is bad for both; not because a bad white man is worse than a bad negro, but because the physical, mental and moral qualities of either react unfavorably upon the other. The negro, being the more ignorant as a rule, falls more readily into degraded vices; the white man, being as a rule the dominant element in the situation, masters the will of the negro, but cannot or at least does not erect barriers against the latter's subtle corruption.

We must always bear in mind the abnormal conditions in a prison—the misery of it, the dearth of variety and relaxation, the terrible yearning for some form, any form, of distraction and amusement. The male is parted from the female, and from the resource of children; his nerves are on edge, his natural propensities starved, his thoughts wandering and embittered; he finds no good anywhere, nor any hope of it. He will seize upon any means of abating or dulling his cravings. The negro is pliant, unmoral, free from the restraints of white civilization. In the South especially, his subordination to the white is almost a second nature; but he involuntarily avenges himself (as all lower races do upon the stronger) by that readiness to comply which flatters the sense of power and superiority in the other, and leads to evil.

I wish to say, in passing, that my allusion to negroes in this connection is by no means to be taken as reflecting upon them all; some of the men in Atlanta for whom I had the highest respect were negroes; and I am inclined to think that the negro in his right place and function is a desirable element in civilization, and, if we would treat him aright, would do us as much good as we can do him. But the negro in jail is at his worst, just as white men are, and he is made worse by white companionship. There are more than two hundred of them in Atlanta jail, and some of them are the worst of their kind.

What is true of the association of negroes with whites is not less true of the association of what are called professional criminals with the young and unhardened. Various prison authorities claim that they have made some effort to prevent this contamination; but the only sign of it that I could ever discover at Atlanta was that the old and the young are not commonly assigned to the same cells. Obviously, however, a man young in years may be old in crime; there can be no security in the age test taken by itself; and no pretense of adopting any other test in a jail is made.

A young fellow, without inherited or acquired criminal tendencies, is sent to jail for some inadvertent and insignificant infraction of law. He had always meant to live straight; he had no enmity against society; he had always thought of himself as well intentioned and law abiding. But here he is; and he is shocked, shamed and appalled at the sudden grip and horror of the jail. Upon a mind thus astounded and distraught the professional criminal seizes and works.

The man of the world—of the criminal world—befriends him, chats with him, heartens him, and soon begins to fascinate him with ideas which had never till now occurred to him. He preaches the injustice and hostility of all mankind, and the hopelessness of the convict once in jail ever again reestablishing himself in the world. He tells his pupil that he is damned forever by his fellow men outside, and that unless he be prepared to lie down and starve, he must fight for life in the only way open to him—the way of crime. Then he proceeds to show him, progressively, the profits and advantages of criminal practises. It is only too easy for the trained crook to overcome the resistance of the unhardened youth; his arguments seem unanswerable; and the wholly justifiable feeling that prison is wrong and an outrage aids the corruptor at every turn. A few months is often enough to turn an innocent boy into a malefactor; a year or more of such instruction leaves him no chance of escape; and many an innocent boy finds himself in a cell for what seems to him a lifetime.

Last July, a justice of a State Supreme Court sentenced Thomas Baker, little more than a child, to fifteen years in jail for—what? If your mother was blind and helpless, and your stepfather came in and abused her and beat her, in your presence,—a big brute with whom you could not hope to contend physically,—what would be your feelings, and what would you be prompted to do? Thomas Baker, trembling and sobbing with rage and anguish, ran out of the house to a neighbor's, borrowed a shotgun, and ran back and emptied it into the brute's body, killing him on the spot. Fifteen years in prison for that! Shall we rejoice and say that justice, at last, is satisfied?—But that is a digression.

No doubt, meanwhile, Thomas Baker's one consolation in life is the reflection that he did succeed in killing his stepfather; and he will be very ready to give ear to an older and more experienced man who tells him that the only difference between good and bad in the world is that those are called good who have power over those who are called bad; and that the only way for him to get even for his wrongs is to become a crook—and not be a fool!

The wardens and guards do not prevent these companionships; whether or not they try to prevent them cannot be affirmed; but to my mind it is plain that they could not prevent it, try as they might. It is an evil inherent in prisons and ineradicable. As long as we have prisons, we shall see judges like Thomas Baker's sending boys to jail for such "crimes" as his, there to stay for fifteen years, more or less, and there to be changed from innocence into diabolism. But Thomas was not innocent, you say, but guilty. What is guilt? I find him innocent of the guilt of standing inactive by and seeing that cruel fist strike his blind mother's beloved face.

Anything unnatural seems unreal. I remarked some time ago that when I was sitting in the court room being tried on charges sworn to by certain postoffice officials, the dull and sordid scenes would sometimes vanish before me, and I would say to myself, "It is an illusion—what is really taking place is very different from this appearance."

This thought often recurred while I was in prison.

At meal times, the men would file in and take their places at the tables; anon, the meal over, they would rise and file out—men whom I knew, creatures like myself, slaves of an arbitrary power acting in accordance with principles long since known to be false and mischievous. And I would see men whom I knew, men like myself, jeered, insulted, clubbed, dragged to the hole. I would see the dead bodies of men whom I knew, men like myself, rattled out of the gate to the dumping ground and dropped there and forgotten—men with wives and children still living or dead in poverty and shame, their pleas unheard and their wrongs unrighted. I would contemplate the long rows of steel cells, cages for me and men like myself, locking us in for months and years and lifetimes, for an example to others and for the protection of society against our menace. I would glance, as I passed, at the aimless toilers in the workshops, standing or squatting in the foul atmosphere under the eye and rifle of the guard.

I would consider that this dismal and inhuman pageant was going on age after age as a cure for crime—while crime, all the while, was increasing by percentages so astounding that we seek through immigration statistics and records of increase of population to account for it—and in vain. And I would tell myself, once more, that the thing must be an illusion; it was inconceivable that an intelligent nation should tolerate it.

If you found that you were taking bichlorid of mercury by mistake for a sleeping draught, would you go on taking it? or would you clamor for an antidote, waylay doctors for help, and disturb the discreet serenity of hospitals for succor? But the nation, made up of such as you, continues its prison nostrum, which slays a million for bichlorid of mercury's one.

A tragic farce—that is what prisons are. Enclosures of stone and steel are built, and a handful of armed men are given absolute control over several hundred beings like themselves. We, as a community, have erected a system of laws which places us, as a community, in the attitude of penalizing practises which we, as individuals, do not severely condemn. Our morality, as publicly professed, is in advance of our morals as privately exercised. When our neighbor steals or murders, we give him the jail or the chair; but when you and I are charged with such deeds and see the prison or the chair in our near foreground, we discover ourselves to be less convinced than we had imagined of the rectitude of our penal system. Of course, then, the faster we make laws to punish crime, and the more we punish criminals, the more criminals are there to punish. Our hypocrisy gradually is revenged upon us, one after another; one by one we fall into the pit so virtuously digged for others.

And criminal law, meanwhile, becomes constantly more searching and severe in its provisions, seeking to prevent crime by the singular device of employing the best methods for multiplying it. The victims of its activities are miserable enough in jail, and languish and die there, and, if they were not very wicked before, are furnished with every facility to become so; but they have not the consolation of feeling that their being thus immolated on the altar of an outraged but non-existent morality is doing them or anybody else any good. A prominent business man was put in a cell yesterday; a political boss arrives to-day; a college graduate, a judge, and a religious fanatic are expected next week. But business, politics, the Four Hundred, the Law and religion are no better than they were before.

The procession becomes ever more crowded; when is it to stop? Shall we build more prisons, enact more laws? A leading counsel said the other day, "Commercial crime is an effect and not a cause. The existing system is responsible. We should prevent conditions that lead to crime and resort to criminal courts as little as possible." And an ex-Attorney-General observed, about the same time, "I sometimes think that if we could repeal all the laws on our statute books and then write two laws—'Fear God' and 'Love your neighbor'—we would get along better"—but he added, "If we could get the people to live up to them!" Yes, that is a prudent stipulation; and it applies just as well to the myriad "laws on our statute books" as to these two.

I call prisons a tragic farce, and am sensible of an unreality in them; but they are fortunately unreal only in the sense that they stand for nothing rational or in line with the proper and natural processes of human life. They are false, and the mind spontaneously reacts against falsity and denies it. But here are half a million (or some say, a million) men every year who suffer actual and real misery from this falsity, and many of whom die of it; that is the tragedy of the farce. And the fact that this falsity, prison, exists among us and has legal standing and warrant, tends to demoralize every one connected with it, and, more or less, the entire community. If its misery and evil were confined within the circuit of its walls we might endure it; but it spreads outward like a pestilence. It creates little jails in our minds and hearts, though we never beheld the substantial walls nor heard the steel gates clang together. We become jailers to one another, and to ourselves.

There was a woman, the wife of a jailer, with a son four years old. At first, her husband had lived in a house outside the jail, but latterly he had been obliged to dwell within the jail walls.

His wife had seen and known too much of jails to be happy in such a residence. She thought of her son, growing up inside prison walls, and seeing the squalor and daily misery of convicts, and witnessing the cruelties of the guards—mere matters of routine, but horrible nevertheless. Her husband had come up from the ranks in prison life, and was an efficient officer. He had no thought of ever changing his occupation.

One day he left the jail on business, and did not return till one o'clock the next morning. Two keepers who had been left in charge heard four sounds like pistol shots about ten o'clock that night, but supposed them to be torpedoes exploding on the railroad that passed the rear of the jail. There was an interval of an hour or so, and then came two more shots. This time they made a search of the jail, but it did not occur to them to examine the quarters of the warden, where his wife and his little son were.

When the husband and father reached home, he went to his rooms; and there he learned the extent of the misery and loathing which his profession and his dwelling had created in the heart of the woman who had loved him. She lay dead, with a bullet hole in her temple. The little boy was also dead, shot through the heart by his mother's hand. On the floor was the pistol, and four empty shells were scattered about. Those first bullets she must have aimed at her son, but the horror of the situation had shaken her hand, and she had missed him. Then had come that interval, which the two keepers had noticed. What had been in her mind and heart during those endless, brief minutes—her terrors, her memories, her desperate resolve, now failing, now again renewed? If you who read this are a mother, you may perhaps imagine the unspeakable drama of that hour. At last, murder and suicide were better than the jail, and she fired twice again, and this time did not miss.

"Insane" was the verdict. But it is perhaps reasonable to ascribe the insanity to the conditions which found their black fruition in the woman's act, rather than to the despairing creature herself. She had all that most women would ask for happiness—a good husband, a darling little son, an assured support. But there was ever before her eyes the ghastly, inhuman spectacle and burden of the jail; she knew it through and through, and she could endure it no longer. She pictured her innocent boy growing up and following his father's trade. The idea tortured her beyond the limits of her strength, and she accepted the only alternative—death. She was not a prisoner—she was only a looker on; but that is what prison did for her. And our press, echoing our own will, and our courts, voicing our own laws, keeps on shouting, "Put the crooks in stripes; show them no mercy!"

Shall we not pause a moment over the bodies of this mother and her son, over this frenzied murder and suicide? They constitute an arraignment of the prison principle not to be lightly passed over, or commented on with rasping irony by witty editorial writers. That tragedy means something. We cannot lease the community's real estate to hell, for building hell houses and carrying on hell business, supported by our taxes and advocated by our courts and praised (or "reformed") by our penologists—we cannot do that without meeting the consequences. We see how the consequences affected Mrs. Schleth in the Queens County, New York, jail, last summer. It will affect other persons in other ways. But it will affect us all before we are done with it. Hell on earth is a tenant which no community can suffer with impunity.

If prisons are a good thing, it is full time they made good. If they are a bad thing, it is full time they were abolished. The middle courses now being tried in some places cannot succeed; no compromise with hell ever succeeds, however kindly intentioned. But the devil rejoices in them, recognizing his subtlest work done to his hand.

What shall happen if prisons are done away with? That question will doubtless puzzle us for a long time to come. I have no infallible remedy; but I shall touch upon the subject in my next and last chapter.



XVI

IF NOT PRISONS—WHAT?

What would you advise to check law breaking? A good practical answer to that question would save civilized humanity a great many millions of dollars every year.

The old answer was "jail" for minor cases and death for the others. There was much to be urged in favor of the latter. Dead men not only tell no tales, but they commit no crimes. Kill all criminals and crime would cease. The device has been tried—it was tried in England for a while—but the result was disappointing. It threatened to decimate the population; and in spite of logic, it failed to discourage law breakers. Criminals seemed to get used to being hanged, and drawn and quartered—they no longer minded it. There is a psychological reason for that, no doubt; though it is not so sure that psychology as understood and practised to-day can find out what it is.

Moreover, the spy system, which always accompanies and thrives upon severe legislation, became so productive of informations that it was soon clear that the end would be the indictment not so much of a tenth part of the population as of all but a tenth—or even more. So a compromise was made; only murderers should be killed. That did not lessen the number of murders, and seems rather to have increased them; for the impulse to murder is commonly a very strong impulse, producing a brain condition in which consequences are not weighed. Also, when the community takes life for life, it appears to weaken the general respect for life, and men can be hired to do a killing job for small sums. Sentimental persons, too, insist on making heroes of convicted murderers, which in a degree, perhaps, counteracts the depressing conditions surrounding them. So we made another compromise.

This is not on the statute books, but it operates actively, nevertheless. It is the development of the appeal industry among lawyers for the defense.

"I will teach you to respect human life," says the judge, "by depriving you of your own."

"Don't worry, my boy," says the culprit's counsel, patting him on the back; "you'll die sometime, I suppose; but nothing is more certain than that it won't be on the day set for your execution by his honor. And I'll risk my reputation on your death being no less in the ordinary course of nature than his honor's, and very likely—for he looks like a diabetes patient—not so soon."

These anticipations often prove well grounded.

No one in the court room, therefore, is often more cheerful and confident than is the prisoner doomed to the noose or the chair. Besides, if all else fails, he may petition for pardon or for life imprisonment.

In short, the death penalty stays on the statute books, but the community does not want it, though it has not the courage to demand its abolition outright. It forfeits its self-respect, and the murderer draws the inference that it is safer to murder than to steal. A thoroughbred man does not compromise; he does one thing or he does the other, retains his self-respect, and commands that of his fellows, whether or not he be "successful." This nation is not thoroughbred as regards its laws, and is neither self-respecting nor respected.

However, there is agitation for the abolition of the death penalty; and possibly the futility and absurdity of such a punishment may finally strike the persons whom we have picked out as the wisest and ablest among us, and have put in our legislatures to tell us what to do and not to do. Absurd though legal killings may be, they are not so absurd as the persuasion that death is the worst thing that can happen to a man. It involves little or no suffering, and is over in a moment. Imprisonment involves much suffering, and lasts long, not to speak of the disgrace of it, to those who can feel disgrace. The serious feature about killing is, that it is final for this state of being, and when we do it we do we know not what. But that is for the community to consider, not the victim.

We cannot know what death means, but we can and do know what imprisonment means, and so far as our mortal senses can tell us, it is worse than death. But while we may abolish the death penalty easily, the suggestion to abolish imprisonment staggers us like an earthquake. Every moral instinct in our little souls leaps up and shrieks in protest; and if that be not enough, we fall back with full conviction upon the consideration of security of property. It is impossible to consider a measure which would leave crimes against property unpunished. And what other punishment for them than imprisonment is there or can there be?

Argument upon this matter evidently bids fair to drag in pretty nearly everything else—sociology, political economy, religion, politics, law, medicine, psychology,—the whole conduct of our life and history of our opinions. But I must content myself here with a few words, and leave volumes to others. That personal property has value is undeniable; whether it be worth what it costs us, in the long run, and from all points of view, may be left to the judgment of generations to come. Law in its origins is Divine; whether our human derivations from it partake of its high nature is debatable. Medicine and psychology, professing much, have not explained to us what or why we are, or what is our degree of responsibility for what we are and do. Politics sits on the bench and argues through the mouth of the public prosecutor; is justice safe in their keeping?

This age did not invent prisons, but inherited them from an unmeasured past. It is a primitive device. The mother locks up her naughty child in the closet or ties its leg to the bed-post. Society does the same with its naughty children, though with one difference—the mother still loves her child. She, following the example of God, chastens in love; but what do we chasten in? If not in love, then in hate or indifference, or to get troublesome persons out of our way without regard to harm or benefit to them. And that is not Godlike but diabolical, being based upon selfishness. The community being stronger than the individual, its selfishness is tyranny or despotism. Many of us indeed may be willing to admit that prisons are perhaps objectionable or altogether wrong in theory; but surely something must be done with malefactors, and if not prison, what?

The only answer hitherto is compromise—the old answer, fresh once more from the devil's inexhaustible repertoire. We are willing to abolish the death penalty, which is more merciful than imprisonment; but we are unwilling to abolish the latter, because in spite of its inhumanity, it seems to protect our property. In other words, we consider our own interests exclusively, and the culprit's not at all—though we still protest that our object in imprisoning is as much the individual's reformation, as our own security. The fact, however, that imprisonment brutifies and destroys instead of reforming is beginning to glare at us in a manner so disconcerting and undeniable, that we feel something has to be done; and in accordance with our ancient habit and constitutional predisposition, that something turns out to be compromise. We sentenced for murder, but put obstacles in the way of carrying the sentence out. On the same principle, we will now retain prisons, but make them so agreeable that convicts will not mind being committed to them.

That is the compromise; and it is already in operation here and there. In the first place, numbers of good men and women, with motives either religious or humanitarian or both, obtained leave to visit prisons, talk with the inmates, give them religious exhortations, supply them with some forms of entertainment, and in other ways try to lighten the burden of their penal slavery. These persons deserve great credit. It was not so much the exhortations or entertainments that did good, as the idea thereby aroused in convicts that somebody cared for them. Between, them and the community there was still war to the knife; but certain individuals, separate from the community, were not hostile but well disposed toward them.

A man fallen into evil may sometimes be redeemed by coming to feel this; he will try to be good for the sake of the person who was kind to him in his misery. I once asked a comrade in Atlanta whether if the warden were to give him twenty dollars and tell him to go to the town, make a purchase for him, and return, he would do so? He said, "No," and when I asked him why, replied that he would know the warden had something up his sleeve, and was not on the square in his proposition. I then named a certain benefactor of the prisoners outside the prison, and asked if he would do it for that person? After some consideration, he said that he would, because he "would hate to disappoint" that person, and would believe in the bona fides of that person's request. This man was held to be rather a bad case; but he was still capable of acting honorably, if the right motives were supplied.

But this is not enough. The great mass of convicts could not be reformed by "hating to disappoint" any particular person who had been kind to them or trusted them. Their personal gratitude to the individual would not stem the tide of their well grounded conviction that people in general were neither trustful nor kind; and the numberless and constant temptations of their life after liberation would prove too strong for them. There have been instances to the contrary; touching and beautiful instances, some of them; but they are far from establishing the principle that Christian Endeavorers, or Salvation Armies, or prison angels, or angelic wardens can effect the reform of men in prison. Some stimulus much more powerful is required.

The next step in compromise was to improve the physical conditions in the prison; to give more light and air and exercise, better food; to mitigate or do away with dark holes, assaults and tortures. There were many zealous critics of these leniencies; they said we were making prisons so attractive that criminals, so far from being deterred from crime by fear of punishment, would commit crimes in order to be sent to prison. And they could quote in confirmation cases of men who had accepted liberation at the end of their terms reluctantly, or had actually refused it, or of men who had voluntarily returned to prison after having been discharged.

There have been such cases; but they prove, not the attractiveness of prisons, but their power to kill the manhood in a man. What does it not suggest of outrage and degradation perpetrated upon a human soul, that he should come to prefer a cell and a master to freedom! There may be slaveries so soft as to invite the base and pusillanimous, but they are more rather than less depraving than cruelties to all that makes honorable and useful manhood. The deepest and essential evil of prisons is not hardship and torture, but imprisonment. If choice could be made between the two, every manly man would choose the former. No disgrace is inherent in hardship and torture; but imprisonment brands a man as unfit to associate with his kind. No mortal creature has or can have the right to inflict it, nor any aggregation of mortals.

This is a hard saying, but I will stand by it. There were criminals of all kinds in Atlanta with whom I was brought into contact. One had grown rich by organizing a system of "white slavery" on a large scale. He dealt in woman's dishonor and turned it into cash, and he saw nothing wrong in it. This man was advanced in years, he was incapable of regarding women in any other light than as merchandise, he was insensible to their misery, and laughed at their degradation. He was physically repulsive; his face and swollen body suggested a huge toad. It would be foolish to associate the idea of reform with such a creature. I felt a nauseous disgust of him; he seemed on the lowest level of human nature.

But, contemplating him during some months, I saw little touches of kindliness and good humor in him; he did not hate his fellows, nor wish them to hate him. If the other prisoners ostracized him or cursed him, he was painfully sensible of it, and even perplexed, and would try to win their favor. I perceived that he had always lived in a world of filth and sin, and knew no other. In that world, he had doubtless not done the best he might, but which of us can say he himself has done that? Had I been born and bred as he was, what would I be? What right had I to call him unfit for my companionship? I had no right to do it, nor had any other man. At last I shook him by the hand and wished him well.

There were men there who had committed merciless robberies, cruel murders, heartless swindles, abominable depravities. I have felt greater temperamental aversion from many highly respectable persons than I did from them. Their crimes were one thing, they were another. Not that crime does not corrupt a man—stain him of its color. But there is always another side to him, a place in him which it has not dominated. Given his conditions, we cannot affirm that he is not as good as we are—that he is unfit to associate with us. And it behooves us always to bear it in mind that to affirm the contrary is an unpardonable sin against him of whom we affirm it; it works more evil in him than anything else we can do, and places us who repudiate him in a truly hideous posture. Shall we be more fastidious than God?

All crime is hateful; but I came to the conclusion that there is only one crime which prompts us to hate the criminal as well as his crime itself. For this crime is one which originates in our heart; it is not forced upon us by need or passion or heredity. Therefore, it permeates every fiber of our being, every thought of our mind, every impulse of our soul; and we cannot say of it, this is one thing and we are another. It is an unhuman crime; and yet there is no punishment for it among human laws; rather, it is regarded as a mark of superiority. The most respectable persons in the community are most apt to commit it. And it was upon the suggestion and initiative of this crime that penal imprisonment was invented, and is perpetrated to this day.

Christ condemned it; Christianity is based upon its repudiation; we call ourselves Christians; and yet it is the characteristic crime of our civilization. The Law and the Prophets are against it; it defies every injunction of the Decalogue, for it takes the name of God in vain, it steals, murders, commits adultery, covets and bears false witness; but we clasp it to our bosoms, and actually persuade ourselves that it is the master key to the gates of Heaven. What is it? It is the thought in a man's heart that he is better, more meritorious, than his fellow.

It is engendered, most often, by a successful outward morality—conformity to the letter of the Commandments—the whitening of the outside of the sepulcher. But the stench of the interior loathsomeness oozes through. The only person unaware of that stench is the man himself. There is but one cure for it—what we call Regeneration; which makes us sensible of that deadly odor, and drives us freely and sincerely to detest ourselves in dust and ashes and bitter humiliation, to pity, succor and love our brethren, and to wrestle with the angel of the Lord for mercy. But we prefer to seek salvation from evil in the building of prisons.

Now, this crime may survive even in prisons; but it is rarer there than in any other aggregation of human beings. Therefore, there is a wonderful sweetness in the prison atmosphere. It is a sweetness which is perceived amid all the dreariness, stagnation and outrage, and it rises above the vapors of physical crime, for it is a spiritual sweetness. There men are locked in their cells, but the whited sepulcher is shattered, and its sorry contents are purified by the pure light of humiliation, confession and helplessness; there are no hypocrites there, no masks, no holier-than-thou paraders. Their crimes have been proclaimed, and branded upon their backs; pretenses are at an end for them. It was wonderful to look into a man's face and see no disguise there. "I am guilty—here I am!" This experience took the savor out of ordinary worldly society for me. I go here and there, and everywhere there is masquerading—the weaving of a thin deception which does not deceive. We were sincere and humble in prison; but that is a result which the builders of prisons hardly foresaw.

There was one more step toward compromise—to take the prisoner out of his cell and send him outdoors without guards or precautions, nothing but his promise that he would return when the work to which he was assigned was done.

I read the other day an agreeable account of this "honor system." The men were employed on road making chiefly, enjoyed the benefit of free air and the outdoor scene, and kept order and faith among themselves. But the prison walls were still around them, though unseen. They were told that any attempt to escape would be punished by deprivation thenceforth of all liberties—any attempt! and if the escape were successful, the fugitive would know that the chances of recapture were a thousand against one. Moreover, it was laid down that the escape or attempt of any member of the gang would react upon the liberties of all.

This made the men guards over one another; it was not honor but self-preservation that was relied on. And in any event, there was the prison at last; the chain might be lengthened to hundreds of miles, but it held them still. They were convicts; when their terms were up, they would be jail birds. Society had set them apart from itself; they were a contamination. "You are not fit to mingle with us on an equal footing." Society might condescend to them, be friendly and helpful to them, but—admit them of its own flesh and blood?—well, not quite that! "We forgive you, but on sufferance; it is really a great concession; you must show your gratitude by good works."

Oh, the Pharisees! the taint of it will not come out so easily; and until it does come out, to the last filthy trace of it, prisons will continue to be prisons, and compromises will be vain.

I repeat—the evil of prisons is the imprisonment. You must not deprive a man of his liberty. His liberty is his life. He may, and probably he will, use his liberty to the endangering of your property or comfort; but has your own career been wholly free from infringement upon the rights of your neighbor? If you send him to prison, you ought to link arms with him and go there, too. You have not been convicted by a court, but your own secret self-knowledge convicts you. When the prison doors close upon you, you will discover that you have suffered an injustice—that you are the victim of a blind stupidity. Not in this way can you be reformed. All genuine reformation must proceed from within you—it cannot be compelled by locks and bars; freedom is essential to it. Locks and bars arouse only the impulse to break through them, and this primal and righteous impulse leaves you no leisure to think of relieving your soul from stains of guilt.

The only imprisonment to which a man can properly be subjected is that imprisonment of good in him which evil-doing operates automatically and spontaneously; any outside meddling with that operation hinders, confuses, or defeats it. Crime weakens and shackles you; to put shackles on the body is no way to remove shackles from the spirit. It is the gross blunder of a brutal and immature era, but we have continued it down to the present day. Jail is still the remedy.

The newspapers the other day told of a man who had been sentenced to forty years in jail for an assault. A woman, hearing the verdict, said, "Well, that's better than nothing; but he ought to have got life!" We are told in the Bible that we must not let the sun go down upon our wrath. The wrath of this lady could not be appeased with forty years. Think of what that culprit will be after forty years in jail. Assuming for the sake of argument the extreme absurdity that he is alive by that time, picture to yourself a fellow creature of his—and a woman—saying, "I won't forgive you yet." I pity her more than I do him, whose troubles in this world will probably soon be over. But when her time comes, with what face, on what plea, shall she ask forgiveness?

But if there are to be no prisons, what shall we do to be saved from crime?

I cannot for my part imagine any hard and fast plan being laid down in advance. But it would seem reasonable, to begin with, to free ourselves from the social crime of claiming superiority to our brethren. Having removed that beam from our eyes, we may see more clearly how to abate the motes in the criminal's. If we can bring ourselves to regard prisoners and jail birds as inferior to ourselves only in good fortune, which has kept us out of jail and put them in, we may find ourselves on the road to remedying their lapses from moral virtues.

The majority of prison crimes are against property, and are motived by want and poverty. If the man had opportunity to work for his living, he would as a rule abstain from stealing. Other crimes are committed in passion; but such criminals need education and training in self-control, and (often) removal of the provocations which set their passions afire. Many other crimes, and almost all vices, are due to physical or mental disease, or to actual insanity. It is the doctor and not the jailer who should seek the cure of these.

But there are also some persons, chiefly brought up or brought down in our cities, who practise crimes, apparently, for sheer love of evil. These gunmen gangs are the most depraved and malignant members of the community; they will not work, and they rob and murder not from want or passion, but because the suffering of their victims gives them pleasure and ministers to their pride and self-esteem. Most of these gangs, as we have too much reason to believe, stand in with the police, giving them a percentage of their plunder, and getting protection from them for their misdeeds.

These creatures, as I have already suggested, are the distillation of the various evils in our cities which society has failed frankly to face, or genuinely to attempt to lessen. They are not responsible for their existence, and, as they indicate a general condition, it can do no good to kill them or otherwise put them out of the way; others would take their place. They are not insane in the common sense, but they are the product of insane social circumstances, responsibility for which rests on us. They must be taken in hand individually, by workers self-consecrated to that duty, and deterred from doing evil, and showed the value of doing good. One might work a lifetime with some of them, and have little to show for it in the end; but it took a long time to build the pyramids and the Panama Canal, and to advance from the dugout of the savage to the Mauretania. It is work better worth doing than any of these.

Taking the situation by long and large, society must cease to be a sham and become truly social. The thing seems inconceivable, and still less practicable; but it is not. Nor has history failed to admonish us that it has sometimes been the most difficult and improbable things which have been nevertheless accomplished; as if their very difficulty, and the labor and self-sacrifice involved in doing them, were themselves a stimulus.