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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75368 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+  VOLUME IV, No. 8.      AUGUST, 1914
+
+  THE DELINQUENT
+
+  A MONTHLY PERIODICAL, PUBLISHED BY THE
+  NATIONAL PRISONERS’ AID ASSOCIATION
+  AT 135 EAST 15th STREET, NEW YORK CITY.
+
+  THIS COPY TEN CENTS.      ONE DOLLAR A YEAR
+
+  T. F. Garver, President.
+  O. F. Lewis, Secretary, Treasurer and Editor The Delinquent.
+  Edward Fielding, Chairman Ex. Committee.
+  F. Emory Lyon, Member Ex. Committee.
+  W. G. McLaren, Member Ex. Committee.
+  A. H. Votaw, Member Ex. Committee.
+  E. A. Fredenhagen, Member Ex. Committee.
+  Joseph P. Byers, Member Ex. Committee.
+  R. B. McCord, Member Ex. Committee.
+
+  Entered as second-class mail matter at New York.
+
+
+
+
+TOM BROWN AT AUBURN
+
+By Hastings H Hart.
+
+Director Child Caring Work, Russell Sage Foundation.
+
+ [This very illuminating book review of “Within Prison Walls,” a book
+ by Thomas Mott Osborne, has, by agreement, been published jointly
+ in _The Delinquent_ and The Survey. The editor of _The Delinquent_
+ had at first planned to give to several persons the pleasant task
+ of reviewing Mr. Osborne’s important book. But Dr. Hart has written
+ so graphic a review that we shall be content with this. The second
+ article in this month’s magazine follows logically this review.]
+
+
+In his book, “Within Prison Walls,” “Tom Brown,” (Hon. Thomas Mott
+Osborne) has given a remarkable study of the mind of the convict.
+This book should be read in connection with Donald Lowrie’s book, “My
+Life In Prison,” which portrays the prisoner from the vantage point
+of actual and prolonged experience but without the advantage of Mr.
+Osborne’s wider knowledge of human life and human philosophy.
+
+Mr. Osborne’s study is an astonishing achievement for a single week.
+To break the crust of officialism and without legal authority to
+command the co-operation of unwilling prison officials; to overcome
+the suspicions and the reticence of the prisoners, to secure their
+general co-operation in his plan, and to gain admission to the inner
+circles of convict life; and then to really put himself in the place of
+a prisoner and to realize how he feels, how he thinks and to catch his
+viewpoint--to do all this in a week was an astonishing piece of work.
+
+Of course, his work was fragmentary and incomplete, but the writer has
+known prison officers who have associated with prisoners for years
+without obtaining such a knowledge of their mental processes as Mr.
+Osborne gained in a week.
+
+It is much to be regretted that Mr. Julian Hawthorne did not seize the
+opportunity of his experience at Atlanta and apply his literary genius
+to record and analyze the effects of prison life upon himself and his
+associates. He might have written a classic equal to De Quincey’s
+“Confessions of an Opium Eater,” but he choose instead to retell the
+gossip and scandals of the State prisons, true and false, as given him
+by second and third-term convicts.
+
+Mr. Osborne, having been appointed by Governor Sulzer as chairman of
+a commission to recommend improvements in the prison system of the
+State of New York, resolved to become a voluntary prisoner at Auburn
+and to put himself, as nearly as possible, in the place of the actual
+convict. He frankly declared his purpose in the prison chapel, asking
+the co-operation of the officers and prisoners to make his experience
+as realistic as possible; and they took him at his word.
+
+He entered the prison gates in citizen’s clothes and was registered by
+the receiving officer as “Thomas Brown, 33,333x.” He was conducted by
+an officer to the tailor shop, where in a corner of the shop without
+any screens and in full view of all passers in and out, are three
+porcelain lined iron bath tubs side by side. He stripped, bathed and
+dressed in the conventional prison suit and was supplied with a “cake
+of soap, one towel and a bible.” He was admonished by the Principal
+Keeper (“P. K.”), was given a copy of the prison rules and was assigned
+to work in the basket shop. During the first two days he was catechized
+as to his past life, occupations, habits, etc., by the principal
+keeper, the chaplain, the doctor, and the clerk of the Bertillon
+identification system, with much repetition.
+
+It had been agreed with the warden that Tom Brown should be placed,
+at first, with the “Idle Company,” a group of prisoners who were
+characterized by one of the officers as “the toughest bunch of fellows
+in the prison.” He was disappointed therefore when he found himself
+in the basket shop where the men were courteous, communicative and
+helpful, and was astonished after two days to discover that this was
+the identical “worst bunch in the prison” of which he had been told.
+Tom Brown was assigned to a cell 4 by 7½ feet and 7½ feet high.
+(Many of the cells are only 3½ feet wide). Many cells of this kind
+contain two men each. The cell contained a stool, a folding shelf, a
+folding bed, a wash basin, a tin cup, a broom, a small wooden locker,
+and an electric bulb.
+
+Tom Brown swung open his cell door at a signal, marched in line,
+carried out and emptied his own cell bucket, ate prison fare in the
+prison dining-room (including prison hash), did his stint in the basket
+shop with refractory material which made his fingers sore, and served
+on a detail moving railroad cars with block and tackle. He received
+from his fellow prisoners donations of sugar, of doubtful origin, for
+his oatmeal. He received communications and newspapers from numerous
+sources by underground communication. He learned to talk without moving
+his lips and he found himself instinctively joining with his associates
+“agin the government.” He details most interestingly the petty items
+that make up the life of the prisoner and revealed how much unhappiness
+may be caused by things which appear insignificant in themselves, such
+as the collapsing of the folding cot, under inexperienced hands, after
+the extinguishment of the lights.
+
+Tom Brown reveals startlingly the horrors of prison life to the man of
+refined sensibilities--the shock of the first night of cell life when
+the lights went out.
+
+ “The bars are so black that they seem to close in upon you,--to come
+ nearer and nearer, until they press upon your forehead.... You can
+ feel the blackness of those iron bars across your closed eyelids; they
+ seem to sear themselves into your very soul. It is the most terrible
+ sensation I ever experienced. I understand now the prison pallor; I
+ understand the sensitiveness of this prison audience; I understand the
+ high nervous tension which makes anything possible. How does any man
+ remain sane, I wonder, caged in this stone grave, day after day, night
+ after night?”
+
+He tells the ghastly story of the collapse of a poor old prisoner in a
+shop:
+
+ “In due time a litter is brought; the pitiful fragment of humanity is
+ placed gently upon it and is carried out of the shop into which he
+ will probably never return. The look on his face was one not easy to
+ forget in its white stare of patient suffering. It seemed to typify
+ long years of stolid endurance until the worn-out old frame had simply
+ crumpled under the accumulated load.”
+
+He experienced the humiliation of being the object of pursuit by
+pertinacious curiosity-hunters and camera-fiends; yet the change in his
+appearance was so great that he escaped recognition by personal friends
+who were watching carefully for him. The crowning horror he describes
+as follows:
+
+ “The cell house has settled down for the night. Only a few muffled
+ sounds make the stillness more distinctly felt. Then, suddenly, the
+ unearthly quiet is shattered by a terrifying uproar. It is too far
+ away to hear at first anything with distinctness; it is all a confused
+ and hideous mass of shouting--a shouting first of a few, then of more,
+ then of many voices. I have never heard anything more dreadful--in the
+ full meaning of the word--full of dread. My heart is thumping like a
+ trip hammer and the cold shivers run up and down my back.
+
+ “I jump to the door of the cell, pressing my ear close to the cold
+ iron bars. Then I can distinguish a few words sounding against the
+ background of the confused outcry: ‘Stop that!’ ‘Leave them alone!’
+ ‘Damn you, stop that!’ Then some dull thuds; I even fancy that I hear
+ something like a groan, along with the continued confused and violent
+ shouting. What can it be!
+
+ “While I am perfectly aware that I am not in the least likely to be
+ harmed, I am shivering close akin to a chill of actual terror. If
+ anyone near at hand were to give vent to a sudden yell I feel that I
+ might easily lose my self control and shout and bang my door with the
+ rest of them.
+
+ “The cries continue, accompanied with other noises that I cannot make
+ out. Then my attention is attracted by whispering at one of the lower
+ windows.... It is so dark outside that I can see nothing, not even the
+ dim shapes of the whisperers....
+
+ “The shouts die down. There are a few more vague and uncertain
+ sounds--all the more dreadful for being uncertain; somewhere an iron
+ door clangs! Then stillness follows, like that of the grave.”
+
+Tom Brown reported this mysterious occurrence to the warden who
+promised to investigate. Next day the warden “has inquired into it, he
+says, and found it was only a case of a troublesome fellow sent up from
+Sing Sing, who was making some little disturbance in the gallery. After
+they had admonished him he wouldn’t stop, so they had to take him down
+to the jail. When the officer entered his cell, he threw his bucket at
+the officer and there was a little row. ‘I’m inclined to think,’ adds
+the warden, ‘that he may be a little bit crazy, and I’m ed further
+investigation, telling the warden that, from information which has come
+to him, he thinks that the officers are “trying to slip one over” on
+him.’
+
+From his fellow prisoners Tom Brown obtained what he believes to be
+the correct version of the incident, as follows: “There had lately
+been sent up from Sing Sing a young prisoner ... pale, thin and
+undersized; weight about 120 pounds; age 21.” On charge of impertinence
+to an officer he had been kept in a dark punishment cell five days,
+on bread and water. (The allowance of water was 3 gills per day).
+He was sent back to work but was unfit and next day remained in his
+cell ill, but “in spite of his repeated requests, the doctor was not
+summoned. The reason probably was that he was in the state known in
+prison as bughouse--that is to say at least flighty, if not temporarily
+out of his mind”.... “In the evening, he created some disturbance by
+calling out remarks which violated the quiet of the cell-block.” “I
+understand,” Tom Brown says, “something of this sort: ‘If you want to
+kill me, why don’t you do it at once and not torture me to death?’ He
+seemed to be possessed with the idea that his life was in danger.”
+
+ “Now here was a young man, hardly more than a lad, in a sick and
+ nervous condition that had produced temporary derangement of mind.
+ What course did the system take in dealing with that suffering being!
+ Two keepers opened his cell, made a rush for him and knocked him
+ down.... During the brief scuffle in the cell the iron pail and the
+ bucket were overturned. Then, after being handcuffed, the unresisting
+ if not unconscious youth was flung out of his cell with such violence
+ that, if it had not been for a convict trusty who stood by, he would
+ have slipped under the rail of the gallery and fallen to the stone
+ floor of the corridor four stories below, and been either killed or
+ crippled for life.
+
+ “Then the two keepers, being reinforced by a third, dragged their
+ victim roughly down stairs, partly on his back, kicked and beat him
+ on the way, and carried him before the Principal Keeper, who promptly
+ sent him down to the jail again.” (i.e., the punishment cells).
+
+ “This scene of violence could not pass unnoticed; and the loud
+ protests and outcries of the prisoners whose cells were near by,
+ ... were the sounds I heard far away in my cell.” A trusty who saw
+ most of the occurrence “so far forget his position as to venture the
+ opinion that it was ‘a pretty raw deal’. This remark was overheard by
+ an officer; and the trusty at once received the warning that he had
+ better keep his mouth shut and not talk about what didn’t concern him.
+
+ “If it is realized that these officers have what almost amounts to the
+ power of life and death over the convicts it can be understood that
+ such a warning was not one to be lightly disregarded.”
+
+After three days further detention in the “jail” the prisoner was
+transferred to the hospital, where he received proper care, but “he had
+at first no clear recollection of the brutal treatment of which he had
+been the victim.”
+
+An interesting side light is thrown upon the official side of prison
+life by an episode connected with this case of punishment. Immediately
+after the episode, Tom Brown questioned one of the officers who refused
+to answer the questions. On the following morning the same officer came
+to Tom Brown, who writes:
+
+ “This morning he is exceedingly bland.... He enters upon a long
+ rigmarole, the gist of which is how necessary it is for a man to
+ do his duty.... Then he casually turns the conversation around to
+ show how closely connected he is to various admirers of my father
+ and myself, and gracefully insinuates that he also shares these
+ feelings.... It is borne in upon me that he not only knows all about
+ last night’s disturbance, but that he was probably concerned in it,
+ and is now deliberately trying to switch me off the track.”
+
+Another side light upon the official side of prison life is that Tom
+Brown discovered that prisoners under punishment were never released
+from the jail on Sunday. When he made an appeal to the Principal Keeper
+to transfer the sick boy from the dark cell to the hospital, the
+Principal Keeper objected strenuously, but when the prison physician
+joined in the appeal, “finally the P. K. with an air of triumph brings
+out his last and conclusive argument. ‘There is a great deal in what
+you say, gentlemen, and I should like to oblige you, Mr. Osborne, but
+you see this is Sunday; and you know we never let ’em out of jail on
+Sunday.’ ... ‘Sunday!’ I exclaimed. ‘In Heaven’s name, P. K., what is
+Sunday? Isn’t it the Lord’s Day? Very well, then. Do you mean to tell
+me you actually think if you take a poor sick boy, with an open wound
+in his ear, out of a close, dirty, vermin-filled, dark cell, where he
+isn’t allowed to wash, and has but three gills of water a day ... and
+put him back into the hospital, where the Doctor says he belongs--do
+you really think that such an act of mercy would be displeasing to
+God?’ ‘Why,’ he gasps, ‘that’s true. I think you’re right. We put ’em
+in on Sunday; why shouldn’t we take ’em out?’”
+
+Mr. Osborne certified that this story is fully corroborated by careful
+inquiry from different men and comments as follows:
+
+ “Doubtless some will say that the statements of convicts are not to
+ be believed. That touches upon one of the very worst features of the
+ situation. No discrimination is ever made. It is not admitted, that
+ while one convict may be a liar, another may be entirely truthful;
+ that men differ in prison exactly as in the world outside. It is held,
+ quite as a matter of course, that they are all liars, and an officer’s
+ word will be taken against that of a convict or any number of
+ convicts. The result is that the officers feel themselves practically
+ immune from any evil consequences to them from their own acts of
+ injustice or violence. What follows this is inevitable. Our prisons
+ have often been the scenes of intolerable brutality, for which it has
+ been useless for the victims to seek redress. They can only cower and
+ endure in silence; or be driven into insanity by a hopeless revolt
+ against the System....
+
+ “The point is this: that no convict has any rights--not even the
+ right to be believed; not even the right to reasonable considerate
+ treatment. He is exposed without safeguard of any sort to whatever
+ outrage and inconsiderate and brutal keeper may choose to inflict
+ upon him; and you cannot under the present system guard against such
+ inconsiderate and brutal treatment.
+
+ “I should not like to be understood as asserting that all keepers are
+ brutal or even a majority of them.” ... But, “we must recognize, in
+ dealing with our Prison System, that many really well-meaning men
+ will operate a system, in which the brutality of an officer goes
+ unpunished, in a brutal manner.
+
+ “The reason of this is not far to seek--a reason which also obtained
+ in the slave system. The most common and powerful impulse that drives
+ an ordinary, well-meaning man to brutality is fear.... In prison,
+ where each officer believes that his life is in constant danger, the
+ keeper tends to become callous; the sense of that danger blunts his
+ higher qualities.... Undoubtedly there is basis for his fear, for some
+ of those men are dangerous, rendered more so by the nerve-racking
+ System. I can conceive no more terribly disintegrating moral
+ experience than that of being a keeper over convicts.
+
+ “I am not now in any way disputing the necessity of a keeper being
+ constantly on his guard; I am not saying whether this view of things
+ is right or wrong; and when I use the word fear I do not mean
+ cowardice--a very different thing, for a brave man can feel fear. I am
+ simply trying to point out that in prison, as elsewhere, when men are
+ dominated by fear, brutality is the evitable result.”
+
+In view of this episode, Tom Brown determined to undergo the horrors
+of the “Jail.” To this the prison warden very reluctantly consented.
+It was agreed that he should be treated exactly like a convict under
+punishment except that a “jail suit” should be cleansed for his use,
+whereas the ordinary prisoners use them interchangeably, without
+cleaning. Accordingly, Tom Brown suddenly knocked off work, declaring
+that the material furnished was unfit and he wasn’t going to work any
+more anyhow. His shop captain, finding him obdurate, had no option
+and was obliged to send him to the Principal Keeper who, finding him
+still obdurate, reluctantly ordered him to the “jail,” which Tom Brown
+describes as follows:
+
+ “A vaulted stone dungeon, about 50 by 20 feet, having on one side
+ the death chamber for electrocuting murderers, and on the other
+ side the prison dynamo with its ceaseless grinding, night and day.
+ It is absolutely bare, except for one wooden bench along the north
+ end, a locker where the jail clothes are kept, and eight cells, of
+ solid sheet iron; floor, sides, back and roof. They are studded with
+ rivets, projecting about a quarter of an inch. At the time that Warden
+ Rattigan came into office there was no other floor; the inmates slept
+ on the bare iron and the rivets! The cells are about 4½ by 8 feet
+ and 9 feet high. There is a feeble attempt at ventilation--a small
+ hole in the roof of the cell, which does not ventilate. Practically
+ there is no air in the cell except what percolates in through the
+ extra heavily grated door.” Two windows in the vaulted room outside
+ admit some light but, except on a bright sunny day, an electric light
+ is necessary in order to see the inside of the cell. “Up to the time
+ of Supt. Riley’s and Warden Rattigan’s coming into office the supply
+ of water for each prisoner was limited to one gill for 24 hours.”
+
+There is a sink in the outer room but “the sink was not used for the
+prisoners to wash for the simple reason that the prisoners in the jail
+were not allowed to wash.”
+
+On entrance, Tom Brown was instructed to take off his clothes and
+put on the jail suit which had been cleansed in anticipation of his
+coming. He says: “If these are the clothes which have been carefully
+washed and cleaned for me, I should like to examine--at a safe
+distance--the ordinary ones. They must be filthy beyond words.” He
+was carefully searched by the captain to discover whether he had any
+weapon or instrument upon his person. His handkerchief was taken from
+him, presumably to avoid danger of suicide, because a prisoner once
+strangled himself with his handkerchief. He was given a small tin water
+can.
+
+The cell contained no seat, bed, mattress or bedding--nothing except a
+papier-mache bucket. A convict trusty handed in through a slot in the
+door a slice of bread and inserted the spout of a tin funnel through
+which he poured into the prisoner’s can exactly a gill of water to last
+through the night. The officers and the trusty departed and very soon
+five other prisoners in adjacent cells made themselves known. Then
+followed an animated discussion on prison fare; ethics of the jail;
+comparative merits of transatlantic liners, politics, prison reform,
+etc. Tom Brown says: “On the whole, more intelligent, instructive and
+entertaining conversation it has seldom been my lot to enjoy.” To his
+surprise he finds that these men, presumably the worst in the prison,
+are human and even sympathetic. One has been sent down “because he
+had talked back to one of the citizen instructors;” two others for
+a little scrap which involved no special bitterness; a fourth for
+hitting a convict with a crow bar because he had called him a bad
+name; the fifth was a sick boy whose ear was still discharging after
+an operation. He had been sent down for making trouble in the hospital
+and was not allowed a handkerchief to take care of the discharge from
+his ear. All prisoners punished, whatever the character of the offense,
+received the same treatment and in addition to confinement on bread and
+water were fined 50 cents for each day of confinement; the fine to be
+worked out at the rate of 1½ cents per day, allowed each prisoner as
+“earnings.” The prisoner also has to wear a mark upon his sleeve from
+that day forward indicating that he has been punished and, if he has
+previously earned a good-conduct bar by a year’s perfect record, that
+bar is taken from him and, finally, some portion, if not all, of the
+commutation time which he may have gained by previous good conduct is
+forfeited. Manifestly a prison punishment is a serious matter to the
+convict.
+
+After four hours confinement Tom Brown was visited by two prison
+officers, it having been understood that he would not stay longer, but
+to their astonishment he refused to go, having determined to experience
+the full limit of jail life. They left him very reluctantly. As the
+night wore on he says:
+
+ “Now that all chance of escape is gone I begin to feel more
+ than before the pressure of the horror of this place; the close
+ confinement; the bad air; the terrible darkness, the bodily
+ discomforts, the uncleanness, the lack of water. My throat is parched,
+ but I dare not drink more than a sip at a time, for my one gill--what
+ is left of it--must last until morning. And then there is the constant
+ whir-whir-whirring of the dynamo next door and the death chamber at
+ our backs.”
+
+The prisoners seek to mitigate their misery. One asks: “Say fellows!
+what would you say now to a nice thick juicy steak with fried
+potatoes?” One “sings an excellent ragtime ditty;” another “follows
+with the Toreador’s song from Carmen, sung in a sweet, true, light
+tenor voice that shows real love and appreciation of music.
+
+“This is the place where I had expected to meet the violent and
+dangerous criminals; but what do I find! A genial young Irishman, as
+pleasant company as I have ever encountered, and a sweet voiced boy
+singing Carmen.”
+
+These entertainments over, the night drags on. The wooden floor proves
+a hard bed until a prisoner instructs him how to make a pillow of his
+felt shoes and his shirt. Bed bugs infest the place and after killing
+one, he imagines multitudes. The sick prisoner accidentally upsets his
+water can and soon becomes delirious, seeming likely to become a raving
+maniac. There is no way to summon an officer, but one of the prisoners
+with amazing tact and patience soothes his agitation until he finally
+falls asleep.
+
+At last Brown falls into a doze but is speedily awakened by a
+patrolling officer who awakens the prisoners at 12:30 and 4:30 A. M.
+but refuses his request to renew the water spilled by the sick prisoner
+because it is “’gainst the rules.”
+
+At 6 A. M. on Sunday, Tom Brown is released from his punishment,
+convinced that the “System” is illogical, antiquated, barbarous, cruel
+and destructive to the character of prisoners and officers alike. He
+is exhausted, body and soul; but he finds strength to make a chapel
+address to the prisoners, which must have been memorable. The prisoners
+are tremendously impressed by the fact that this man of education,
+culture and wealth has voluntarily endured for six days the same
+treatment as themselves, in the endeavor to understand their situation
+and, if possible, to improve it; they recognize that the cell, the
+march, the shock and the dungeon affect the man of culture and
+refinement more keenly than the ordinary prisoner; but the thing which
+affects them most profoundly is the vicarious character of his act.
+They would almost apply to it the words of the prophet Isaiah: “Surely
+he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.”
+
+Mr. Osborne is not content to discover and reveal the vices of the
+prison system but he seeks a practical remedy. To this end he has
+taken counsel, not only with the prison authorities and students
+of penological science, but also with the prisoners who live under
+the system and, some of whom, are keenly alive to its destructive
+influence. A prisoner in the shops gave him the basic idea. He says:
+
+ “For some years I have felt that the principles of self-government
+ might possibly be the key to the solution of the prison problem;
+ but as yet I have not been able to see clearly how to begin its
+ application. There have seemed to be almost insuperable difficulties.
+ In this connection Jack” (Jack Murphy, a prisoner) “made a suggestion
+ which supplies a most important link in the chain.
+
+ “In discussing the various aspects of prison life we reached the
+ subject of the long and dreary Sundays. Jack agrees with all those
+ with whom I have talked that the long stretch in the cells, from
+ the conclusion of the chapel service, between ten-thirty and eleven
+ o’clock Sunday morning until seven Monday morning--over twenty hours,
+ is a fearful strain both physical and mental upon the prisoners.
+
+ “‘Well, Jack,’ I say, ‘from what I have heard Superintendent Riley
+ say, I feel sure he would like to give the men some sort of exercise
+ or recreation on Sunday afternoons; but how could it be managed! You
+ can’t ask the officers to give up their day off, and you don’t think
+ the men could be trusted by themselves, do you!’
+
+ “‘Why not?’ says Jack.
+
+ “I look at him enquiringly.
+
+ “‘Why, look here, Tom. I know this place through and through. I know
+ these men; I’ve studied ’em for years. And I tell you that the big
+ majority of these fellows in here will be square with you if you give
+ ’em a chance. The trouble is they don’t treat us on the level. I
+ could tell you all sorts of frame-ups they give us. Now if you trust
+ a man, he will try and do what’s right; sure he will. That is, most
+ men will. Of course, there are a few that won’t. There are some dirty
+ curs--degenerates--that will make trouble, but there ain’t so very
+ many of those. Look at that road work! Haven’t the men done fine! How
+ many prisoners have you out on the roads! About 130; and you ain’t had
+ a single runaway yet. And if there should be any runaways you can just
+ bet we’d show ’em what we think about it.’
+
+ “‘Do you really think, Jack, that the Superintendent and the Warden
+ could trust you fellows out in the yard on Sunday afternoons in
+ summer!’
+
+ “‘Sure they could,’ responds Jack.... ‘And there could be a band
+ concert.... And it would be a good sight better for us than being
+ locked in our cells all day. You’d have fewer fights on Monday, I know
+ that.’
+
+ “‘But how about the discipline! Would you let everybody out in the
+ yard! What about those bad actors who don’t know how to behave! Won’t
+ they quarrel and fight and try to escape?’
+
+ “‘But don’t you see, Tom, that they couldn’t do that without putting
+ the whole thing on the bum, and depriving the rest of us of our
+ privileges? You needn’t be afraid we couldn’t handle those fellows all
+ right! Or why not let out only those men who have a good conduct bar!
+ That’s it!’ He continues, enthusiastically warming up to the subject,
+ ‘That’s it, Tom, a good conduct league, and give the privilege of
+ Sunday afternoons to the members of the league.’”
+
+This suggestion of Jack Murphy bore practical fruit. Soon after his
+“discharge,” Mr. Osborne, with the co-operation of the Superintendent
+of Prisons and the Warden of Auburn Prison, succeeded in establishing
+a Good Conduct League composed of prisoners, with officers elected by
+their fellow prisoners. The prisoners are given the liberty of the yard
+on Sunday afternoons, with a greatly reduced force of guards. They
+march to and from their cells and their work under the direction of
+prisoners. They prepare entertainments with the permission and approval
+of their officers. This plan has now been in operation for several
+months without the slightest disorder or accident and with marked
+improvement in the spirit and behaviour of the men.
+
+This inspiring demonstration represents no new discovery by Jack Murphy
+or by Mr. Osborne. It is only a re-discovery of what was practiced
+by Captain Alexander Machonochie at Norfolk Island with transported
+British convicts seventy years ago. The writer saw Colonel Gardner
+Tufts doing similar things with convicts at Concord, Massachusetts,
+nearly thirty years ago, where prisoners were carrying on evening
+literary societies in perfect order without the presence of an officer.
+He saw similar things done by Captain Hickox at the Michigan State
+Prison more than twenty years ago, where the old chaplain gathered
+200 men in a single room for an evening assembly with no officer
+present but himself. This same principal is being worked out in the
+State prisons of Oregon and Colorado, in the Ohio State Reformatory at
+Mansfield and in Doctor Gilmour’s splendid work at Guelph, Ontario. In
+all of these places it has been found that when you build a wall around
+a man he immediately wants to climb over it and that when you turn him
+loose and say, “I trust you and I know that you will not betray me,”
+there is almost always an instant response.
+
+Mr. Osborne believes that this is the first instance of the application
+of the democratic principle to the management of convicts in a large
+convict prison, and that the Auburn experiment differs from others
+in that the prisoners there themselves originated the movement. He
+says that “the good conduct of the prisoners is in reality an outward
+expression of an outward spiritual impulse.” “Hence the name, ‘Mutual
+Welfare League,’; hence the motto, ‘Do good, make good.’ By doing good
+to others the man makes good for himself.”
+
+Mr. Osborne’s demonstrations make it clear that those who believe
+that severity is an essential part of prison methods need not worry.
+Every convict is punished. When you pillory a man before the world as
+a criminal, transport him by public conveyance and march him through
+the streets in irons, put him behind prison walls, deprive him of his
+liberty, subject him absolutely to the will of another man who holds
+practically the powers of life and death, lock him in an ill-ventilated
+prison cell, 4½ by 7 feet (perhaps with an uncongenial cell mate),
+dress him in prison garb, exhibit him to curious visitors at 25 cents
+per head, subject him to strict compliance with thirty to fifty
+exacting rules on pain of loss of privileges and increase of term,
+restrict his correspondence to two censored letters per month, permit
+him to see his wife and children only in the presence of an officer and
+clad in prison garb--under these circumstances no one need question
+that the prisoner is punished, even though he may have the privilege
+of listening to a band concert and watching a baseball game once a
+week, conversing with his fellow convicts in subdued tones at meals and
+witnessing a moving picture show once or twice a month. Let it never be
+forgotten that the convict is punished!
+
+Those who ridicule or condemn Mr. Osborne’s adventure make a mistake.
+It may have been sensational, but there was need of a sensation. His
+experiment was valuable because it was sincere and because it has
+brought out the truth. But it has brought out only part of the truth.
+
+We wish that Mr. Osborne would secure an opportunity to be installed as
+prison guard in some one of the great prisons of the United States like
+the Illinois State Penitentiary, the Indiana State Prison of Michigan
+City, or the Penitentiary at Pittsburgh, Pa. Let him go incog., unknown
+to anyone except the prison warden, and let him come into the same
+intimate familiarity with the life and thinking of the prison guard
+as that which he has acquired in the case of the prison convict. He
+has already discovered the demoralizing tendency of life of the prison
+guard, and has discovered its chief flaw, namely, the ruling principle
+of fear, to which must be added the lack of psychological understanding
+of the prisoner and the entire lack of any adequate preliminary
+training. There must be taken into account also the fact that there
+exists among prison guards, in an exaggerated degree, the sentiment
+that it is dishonorable to “snitch” upon a fellow officer and, while
+a superior officer is likely to report a subordinate for cruelty or
+misconduct, the exposure of such actions by a guard of equal rank is
+very unusual. The difficulty can only be overcome by improving the
+personnel and raising the moral standards of prison guards. The day is
+not far distant when training schools for prison guards will hold the
+same relation to prison work which training schools for nurses hold to
+well-conducted hospitals.
+
+We wish that Mr. Osborne, or someone equally discerning, might put
+himself in the place of the convict all the way through and tell an
+equally convincing story. Let him go forth with a five-dollar discharge
+suit on his back so marked as to betray to every passing policeman the
+shop where it was made. Let him go out with five dollars or possibly
+ten dollars in his pocket to satisfy a sharpened appetite and find a
+job in these hard times. Let him meet the watchful policeman, or the
+plain clothes man, who advises him that “We’re on to you.” Let him
+meet the discharged convict who solicits the loan of a dollar with
+implied threat of exposure. Let him take a job in good faith and render
+faithful service, only to be discharged at the end of the second week
+because somebody has given him away.
+
+Let him be arrested, guilty or not guilty, as a suspect of some
+crime. Let him be subjected to the inquisition of “the third degree,”
+regardless of the rights which are supposed to be guaranteed to every
+citizen that he shall be deemed to be innocent until proven to be
+guilty. Let him experience the starvation, buffeting insults and
+detectives’ lies which are incident to this inquisition.
+
+Then, by all means, let Mr. Osborne’s representative await trial in a
+county jail and discover the beauties of a System which is twice as
+vicious as the Auburn Prison System which he describes. Thrust him
+into a steel cage and exhibit him to all comers like a wild beast in a
+menagerie. Let him share his cell with five other prisoners in a place
+where he cannot keep himself free from vermin, where he cannot take a
+bath, and force him into intimate association, day and night, with a
+mob of prisoners who are kept in idleness, with no occupation except
+to corrupt one another and to concoct plans to escape by bribing or
+mobbing the jailer or by cutting out of jail.
+
+Let him stand trial in a court whose judge is overwhelmed with
+business or is fixed in the tradition that severity is the only remedy
+for crime, with a prosecuting attorney whose reputation depends upon
+making as many convictions as possible. Let him have assigned to his
+defense an attorney who, because of inexperience, incompetency, or
+indifference, cannot present his case properly, in order that his
+innocence may be demonstrated, if he is innocent, or any mitigating
+facts may be made clear if he is guilty.
+
+Or let Mr. Osborne’s representative essay the role of a paroled
+prisoner, going out as a ward of the State under the direction of a
+parole officer, in order that he may discover the efficiency and equity
+of the Parole Board, the fidelity and good-will of the parole officer,
+the patience and fair dealing of the employer, and the advantages and
+disadvantages generally of the parole system.
+
+It is a good thing to call the attention of the public to the
+deficiencies of the convict prisons, and the public ought to know that
+Sing Sing is, and has been for many years, far worse than Auburn. Think
+of a prison where rheumatism and tuberculosis form an inevitable part
+of the prison sentence for a large proportion of the prisoners, whose
+number can be definitely predicted! But the prison problem of the State
+of New York can only be solved by a thoroughly organized and persistent
+attack under the leadership of men and women who have social and
+economic vision.
+
+And the prison problem of the State of New York will not be solved
+until it is recognized as a technical problem, demanding the services
+of tried and expert men. Prisons, like other educational institutions,
+should be headed by superintendents of demonstrated training and
+efficiency, selected without reference to geographical lines.
+
+THE NEW FREEDOM AT AUBURN PRISON
+
+By O. F. Lewis, General Secretary, Prison Association of New York.
+
+ [This article has been reprinted from The Outlook, by special
+ permission of that periodical. The editor of _The Delinquent_ begs
+ to say, that although he himself is the author of this article,
+ he believes the new development of self-government at Auburn, as
+ described in the following article, is of sufficient importance to
+ warrant being called earnestly to the attention of our readers.]
+
+
+The afternoon of the Fourth of July was drawing to a close in the long
+building-inclosed yard of Auburn Prison, in the State of New York.
+Fourteen hundred gray-suited inmates were playing a score of different
+games. The afternoon’s track events had come to an end. The South Wing,
+with between four and five hundred prisoners, had won from the North
+Wing, with some nine hundred prisoners, in the varied contests. A
+silver cup, given by the president of a prominent mortgage company in
+New York, was the tangible goal of the exciting battle.
+
+Suddenly the clear bugle notes of the “Retreat” sounded far down the
+yard, slowly and melodiously. Instantly the boys in gray began to
+fall into line at their appointed places. There was now silence where
+a moment before there had been bowling, baseball, running, dancing,
+piano, band, and the shouts of swarming inmates. Then came the first
+bars of the “Star-Spangled Banner,” played by the prison inmate band.
+Off came the caps, and down across the breast. The flag sank slowly,
+lowered from the tall pole by three inmates. The music ceased, the caps
+were again donned, and from the extreme end of the yard rose suddenly a
+cheer:
+
+    “Rah! Rah! Rah!
+    Rah! Rah! Rah!
+    South Wing! South Wing!
+    Rah! Rah! Rah!”
+
+Then, preceded by the band and with banners flying, the victorious
+athletes of the South Wing marched up the center walk between the files
+of other prisoners, to receive the silver cup from the hands of the
+donor, Mr. Richard M. Hurd.
+
+I wish I had the power to make the readers of The Outlook sense in
+full the enormous significance for both present and future of this
+recent Fourth of July in Auburn Prison. You have read in these recent
+months so often of the greatly increased liberties granted to prisoners
+that mere games or the unchecked intercourse of prisoners on holidays
+seems no epoch-making novelty.
+
+But history was made at Auburn Prison on Independence Day. For the
+fourteen hundred men not only ran off their own sports during the
+afternoon, but they practically ran themselves, through their appointed
+“delegates,” chosen from among their own numbers by their own votes.
+And assuredly no more orderly group could have been found on that
+Fourth of July anywhere between the Atlantic and the Pacific.
+
+A year ago Auburn Prison was austere indeed. The holidays and the
+Sundays were grievously dreaded by the inmates--dreaded as they had
+been for generations, because a Sunday or a holiday meant that the
+inmates had been locked into their miserable little cells at about five
+o’clock on the previous day, and that, except for a few brief hours
+for chapel or for an entertainment on holidays, they were locked in
+all through the holiday until the next morning, when work recommenced.
+Thirty-six hours, more or less, in a wretched little cell, hardly
+large enough to turn around in, with no modern conveniences of toilet
+or wash-basins--simply a hole in the solid masonry wall of a building
+ninety-eight years old, built at a time when prison meant physical
+torture and oblivion, and when prison architecture aided to the maximum
+that purpose.
+
+Is it any wonder that a prisoner recently said to me, on a Sunday
+afternoon at Clinton Prison in New York State, where they still lock
+up their prisoners from Saturday until Monday, with the exceptions
+noted: “My God! It’s a wonder we don’t all go insane in here!” Is it
+any wonder that at Auburn Prison, according to the words of one of the
+leading prisoners, the inmates used to consider themselves supremely
+lucky if by some means they could get “dope” on Saturday, with which
+to “put a shot into themselves” on Sunday morning? Then they would lie
+befuddled and bevisioned during Sunday--the Lord’s Day! “And on Monday
+morning,” laconically said the prisoner, “we used to have the biggest
+number of fights in the shops of any day in the week. The effects of
+the drug were wearing off, you know.”
+
+This summer the difference is enormous and fundamental. For an hour or
+a little more on each week-day, and for four full hours on Sunday, the
+prisoners are turned out to recreation according to their bent. And
+coincidentally with this all-important change in the prison’s policy
+toward the inmates has come an all-important reduction in the number
+of prison guards needed to supervise the prisoners at their play. On
+the morning of the Fourth, for instance, an entertainment was given
+in the auditorium by a local theatrical company. Practically all the
+inmates--fourteen hundred--were present. Many of the guards sat in one
+little corner of the room, in the extreme rear. They had been invited
+by the Mutual Welfare League, the prisoners’ organization, to attend if
+they desired!
+
+In the afternoon there were four keepers in all in the yard, so I
+was informed. They were thoroughly inconspicuous. The “P. K.” (which
+is short for Principal Keeper) started the afternoon in uniform, but
+shortly changed to street clothes. “You’ll find him playing ball with
+the boys later today,” said one inmate to me. All the guarding at the
+several exits of the yard was done--apart from the few guards--by the
+“delegates” of the Mutual Welfare League.
+
+The Mutual Welfare League! To many prison officials, long in the
+service, the name undoubtedly has a very sentimental sound. I frankly
+confess that several of us in the little party invited by Mr. Thomas
+Mott Osborne to attend the League’s celebration of the Fourth of
+July were skeptical. We were afraid it might prove to be amateurish
+and mushy, even though we knew of the signal value of Mr. Osborne’s
+self-imposed incarceration at Auburn Prison last fall, as shown by the
+Nation-wide attention given to his subsequent story of the fearful and
+unnecessary monotony and desperation of prison life. But, as one of our
+party said on Sunday morning, after we had sat for several hours with
+the Executive Committee of the League: “I didn’t exactly come to scoff
+and remain to pray; but I did come with doubt, and I go away converted.”
+
+What is it, then, about this new freedom at Auburn Prison that has
+not only converted a cautious, conservative president of a board of
+reformatory managers in another State, but has led him within a week
+from his experience at Auburn to urge successfully the introduction
+of a similar league in his own institution? Two facts, principally,
+I think. In the first place, the Mutual Welfare League plan works.
+Secondly, there is a convincing air of sincerity, and even devotion,
+about it all.
+
+May I repeat what seems to me the all-important fact about this
+development at Auburn? The prisoners, in their hours of recreation, in
+their attendance at chapel, in their attendance at Sunday afternoon
+concerts or entertainments, _run themselves in large measure_. They
+have not only given their promise to be good, but they have chosen
+their own inmate officers to see that they keep their promise. There is
+all the difference in the world between being run by a group of prison
+guards, even under the best of benevolent prison despotisms, and being
+run by prisoner guards of one’s own election.
+
+If, then, the most sacred prerogative of the traditional prison
+official can thus be usurped by the prisoners themselves, and if,
+in their own expressive language, they can “get away with it,” in
+the sense of securing better order, more work in the shops, a marked
+reduction in the number of offences committed or reported, and a
+radical betterment in the always limited joy of life in a penal
+institution, what is the inference?
+
+The organization and development of the Mutual Welfare League were
+simple enough. Last fall, when Mr. Osborne, as chairman of a prison
+reform commission that had been appointed by the Governor, sent himself
+to prison for a week, aided thereto by a friendly warden, he informed
+the prisoners at a previous chapel service that he was coming into
+prison to try to understand the prison life from the standpoint of the
+prisoner. He asked the inmates to regard him, “Tom Brown,” not as a
+stool-pigeon, nor as simply a foolish amateur, but as thoroughly in
+earnest in his desire to better prison conditions by experiencing them,
+even if only briefly and partially for a week.
+
+That was point Number One in the development of what has happened at
+Auburn. Those who make light of Mr. Osborne’s brief career in prison
+may have a certain justification, in so far as the real prison life can
+be learned only slowly; but, after all, the results of that October
+week of Mr. Osborne’s, measured by general results both upon himself
+and upon the prison, have been perhaps the greatest in the history of
+the century-old prison.
+
+Point Number Two in the development of the new freedom occurred in the
+basket shop, where Mr. Osborne was given as a teacher and side-partner
+for the week Jack Murphy, whom Mr. Osborne describes as a very fine and
+sincere man. From Murphy’s character came unconsciously to Mr. Osborne
+the suggestion that prisoners could be trusted far more than had been
+the case at Auburn. “Why couldn’t there be started here,” asked Mr.
+Osborne, “a kind of mutual improvement or mutual welfare league among
+the prisoners, whereby, in return for pledges of obedience and loyalty
+to the prison administration, greater freedom and more privileges
+might be obtained?”
+
+The third step toward the present modified form of self-government
+occurred after Mr. Osborne, having emerged from his week’s
+imprisonment, gave public expression to his indignation at the
+alleged mediæval methods of treating human beings behind the bars.
+These published accounts, spread broadcast over the country, are
+well remembered. He set to work then to establish a league among the
+prisoners. And from the beginning he sought to have the League evolve
+its principles and its pledges from among the men themselves, not
+through him or through officials of the prison.
+
+The organization was simple. Any prisoner could join the League. The
+motto was: “Do good, make good.” Unquestionably the incentive in the
+minds of most inmates to join the League was that there might be
+something in it for them. When similar motives are eliminated from the
+minds of men who undertake enterprises on the outside of the prison, it
+will be time to criticise unfavorably such motives inside the walls.
+
+From the League members--and at present nearly every prisoner in Auburn
+is a member, wearing his little green and white button with “M. W. L.”
+thereon--a board of delegates, forty-nine in number, was elected by
+the prisoners themselves. This is Point Number Four. The prisoners did
+their own choosing of their delegate officers. The officers were not
+superimposed upon them by the prison officials. And in consequence,
+if these delegate officers did not act on the level; if they became
+stool-pigeons, bearing all sorts of tales to the prison officials and
+currying favor thereby, then the prison administration would not be to
+blame for the choice of inmate officers. It would be squarely up to the
+inmates themselves. What was the result? A very simple one. Both the
+companies of inmates and their officers instinctively aimed to adjust
+themselves to secure the minimum of trouble, at chapel, in the shops,
+at recreation. Splendid group psychology, and withal so simple. And
+incidentally it can be said that the inmates have been able to handle
+most dexterously not a few “tough guys” who had been giving great
+trouble to the prison administration.
+
+At this stage the movement became bigger than any one man, even Mr.
+Osborne. The latter had imprisoned himself, he had suggested the
+formation of the League; he had organized the League; but now it was up
+to the inmates to make of the League a success.
+
+The fifth stage in the development of the League came suddenly and
+through necessity. Early in June an epidemic of scarlatina struck the
+prison. Ultimately, about a thousand prisoners were infected. Few
+were in the hospital, but shop work slackened up to a considerable
+degree. Were the prisoners in consequence to be locked day after day
+in their cells? Was it longer necessary? The answer came one afternoon
+when Warden Rattigan took a long chance. He turned all the prisoners
+belonging to the League out to exercise or play according to their
+hearts’ content in the big yard, principally under the supervision
+of the delegates, who until now had been used to move the prisoners
+to chapel and to entertainments. It was a crucial test. It worked
+perfectly. Order was maintained, and no efforts to escape were made.
+
+“The boys would tear a fellow to pieces that tried it,” one of the
+prisoners explained to me. “We’ve pledged ourselves to behave. Besides,
+do you think we want to lose the privileges we’ve gained?”
+
+By the Fourth of July the daily recreation period, from four o’clock
+on, had been going for about a month. What have been the results?
+
+“Everything,” answered one of the delegates. “Take my own case. Now
+I can sleep nights in that small hole in the wall called a cell. I
+have been here for years, and hardly ever had I had a decent night’s
+sleep. Now I get tired in the recreation hour. And then, too, we have
+something to look forward to. It’s a fearful mistake to make prison
+life so hopeless. You can’t get the best out of a man, in work or
+anything else, if you don’t give him something to work for. Now, if
+we behave ourselves and are decent members of the League, we have a
+decent amount of freedom and privileges. We have competitive games in
+baseball, bowling, and the like. We feel we amount to something. The
+boys march now with their heads up. We eat better. The food tastes
+better. A lot of the sullen resentment and hatred of the prison
+administration is gone. The work in the shops is better. There’s better
+discipline.”
+
+“What about dope?” we asked. “They say it’s a curse at Sing Sing.”
+
+“Very little here now,” said several delegates at once. “It isn’t
+needed now, and it’s frowned upon.” Then up spoke one of the huskiest
+and best proportioned of the Executive Committee of the League. “I’ll
+be frank,” he said, emphatically. “I’ve taken pretty nearly every kind
+of dope that’s known. I took it deliberately. Now I don’t need it, and
+I’ve cut it out.”
+
+“Let me say something else, too,” said another delegate. “There’s
+mighty little prison vice here now. You know what I mean. Formerly,
+when we were all locked up for sixteen hours a day, and hadn’t had any
+decent exercise, or anything to take our minds off of ourselves and
+our grievances, all sorts of bad things happened. That’s the curse of
+the old prison regime. It turned out, among other things, a lot of
+degenerates. Now--well, we get pretty well tired, and our mind’s taken
+off of ourselves, and we sleep. There’s a good deal, too, in having
+that sort of thing put under the ban by the fellows themselves.”
+
+One of us then asked, “How about the growing criticism that prisoners
+are getting to have too easy a time of it? When we tell the public
+in general about this Fourth of July celebration, many will say that
+the prisoners are having more fun and an easier time than the honest
+taxpayer.”
+
+The delegate, in answering, flared up. “Tell those people to try any
+prison for a while! What’s a prison for? To torture a man, and send
+him out hating society, and determined to get even for the years he’s
+spent as the old-line prison made him spend it? Nobody except the
+fellow that’s been through it knows what being in prison is. Does the
+public want us to go insane, get tuberculosis, contract wretched vices,
+rebel in mutinies, live sixteen hours out of twenty-four in a living
+tomb, and have day-in and day-out a miserable monotony of existence
+that dulls our minds and makes us hate the State that munificently pays
+us a cent and a half a day, and then often takes away the earnings
+of months in one single fine for some offense that the very manner
+of existence here almost forces us to commit? Why, what is this hour
+of recreation, anyway? It’s a health measure, a safety measure, a
+reformatory measure.
+
+“Do you think fellows would commit crime in order to get into prison to
+have this little pittance of pleasure? Let me tell you that the very
+people that talk so about putting the clamps on this giving of soft
+snaps to prisoners don’t know what that other system did to us. Why,
+there are a lot of fellows here that had made up their minds to pull
+off another trick just as soon as they got out. Why shouldn’t they? But
+now we have something else to work for.”
+
+Much of the above conversation occurred at a meeting of the Executive
+Committee of the League, to which we were invited. It was essentially
+a novel experience. Here sat, in the warden’s office, and without the
+warden or any prison official present, a round dozen of convicts,
+gray-suited and thoroughly in earnest. They discussed prison conditions
+and prison problems with all the freedom of a board of managers,
+and with far greater knowledge of actual conditions. Prisoners know
+more about a prison than does the warden, the warden than does the
+superintendent of prisons, the superintendent of prisons than do the
+inspectors, and the inspectors than does the public. Therefore, if the
+best efforts and the best loyalty of the prisoners can be harnessed
+up to a reformatory programme of the square deal for both sides, the
+possibilities of the future loom far larger than have reformatory
+possibilities in the past.
+
+So Auburn Prison is pointing the way, by an almost revolutionary
+experiment, to large possibilities in inmate self-government in State
+prisons and reformatories. As I write these lines the newspapers
+bring a word of a similar Saturday afternoon passed in sports for
+the first time in the history of Sing Sing. Within the last week the
+State Reformatory of New Jersey, at Rahway, has adopted tentatively a
+modified form of inmate self-government. Great Meadow Prison, in New
+York State, which has been for several years the conspicuous honor
+prison of the eastern part of the country, marched its six hundred men
+down to the baseball game on July Fourth, a half-mile from the prison,
+under inmate overseers.
+
+Self-government, to the limit of its possibilities, is almost a fetish
+with Mr. Osborne. For many years he was President of the Board of
+Trustees of the George Junior Republic; there he became convinced that
+self-government is workable not only for youngsters but for older
+delinquents.
+
+In the old-line prison the ever-present dread of the traditional warden
+was an escape. His career was judged largely by his ability to suppress
+escapes and frequently by his ability to suppress public knowledge of
+the methods he used to keep order. Today the warden is judged able or
+poor partly by his ability to develop men out of his prisoners, men
+who on going out will make good. The entire theory of the old-line
+prison construction was based on the principle that any prisoner would
+escape if he could, and use desperate means of so doing. The bars and
+steel-work that you see everywhere in prisons throughout the country
+show how ingrained the theory has been. But up at Great Meadow, where
+the bulk of the prisoners roam unattended by guards at their work
+during the day, it is almost ridiculous to see them securely caged
+behind several strata of tool-proof steel at night.
+
+In the last few years demonstrations in scores of prisons and other
+correctional institutions have shown that, if given the chance, when
+on honor, the prisoners won’t run away. The old adage of “honor among
+thieves” has taken on an entirely new meaning. It is now “honor among
+thieves toward the State that trusts them.”
+
+The power of discipline in the League is very limited. The only
+punishment is suspension or elimination from the League. Such action
+is delegated to the Executive Committee of the League. Actually, this
+exclusion from the body politic--since almost every prisoner is a
+member of the League--carries with it two important disadvantages. It
+stamps the excluded inmates as _anti-social, not only to the prison
+administration, but to the body of prisoners_. Secondly, it bars the
+prisoner from enjoying the freedom privileges that the League enjoys.
+Therefore the power of suspension, be it for but a few days, has real
+force. The powers of discipline given to the League by the warden have
+not been accurately fixed as yet. The warden has told the League that
+all minor cases of discipline could be punished by them; wisely, I
+think, the officers of the League have not been desirous of punishing.
+
+So that at present men are turned back to the prison authorities by
+the League for violation of the League discipline. The theory is that
+these men will be put back under the old discipline of silence and
+confinement, because they are no longer members of the League. The main
+body of the prisoners have then no official interest in them, so that
+the suspension involves practically a return to the old prison routine.
+
+Recently a new Board of Delegates has been elected, and one of their
+first acts was to adopt a probation system instead of the definite
+sentence, in the cases of offenders against the League. A committee of
+parole has been established, which shall visit the suspended men at
+least once a week, and as soon as the committee thinks that the state
+of mind of the suspended men warrants the action the Parole Committee
+recommends to the Executive Committee the restoration of the men to the
+full privileges of the League.
+
+“A big test is coming,” said one delegate, “when the members of the
+League go out. It will be up to them to justify by their conduct after
+prison the principles they accepted here and the privileges they
+received.” And the story was told us of one young man who was the first
+of the delegates to receive his release from prison. He is said to have
+made a hard fight to stay straight, mainly because he didn’t want to
+“put the League in bad” by having one of its officers go crooked.
+
+And here opens up still another far-reaching possibility. Why should
+not the members of the League, once released from prison, form
+committees in the various cities and communities of the State for the
+purpose of helping the still later ones who come out of Auburn to make
+good? Heretofore the best that we of the Prison Association of New York
+have achieved has been to employ big-hearted and sympathetic parole
+officers--real friends of the released inmates. And we have scored good
+success. But it has been always a case of supervision and encouragement
+by the officer.
+
+And so this was the proposition which we members of the Board of
+Managers of the Prison Association made to the Executive Committee of
+the League: “Will you co-operate with us in helping released prisoners
+from Auburn make their parole satisfactorily? Will you have small
+groups of ex-League members ready in various parts of the State to work
+with our county committees to the one end of tiding and helping the
+discharged and released prisoner over the hard months that immediately
+follow his release?”
+
+With enthusiasm the suggestion has been accepted. One delegate spoke
+up: “I’m going out next month. I don’t know where I’ll get work, but
+I’m willing to go anywhere the League sends me. I’m willing and eager
+to give my life to this work, if I’m wanted!”
+
+Such, briefly, is a picture of the Mutual Welfare League. That it is
+significant in its possibilities no one can doubt. What its outcome
+will be a year from now it would be hazardous to forecast. It may
+be but a burst ahead of the general humanitarian movement that
+characterizes prison reform throughout the country. It may be that when
+the altruistic enthusiasm that now holds the more thoughtful members
+of the League wanes, as wane it will to some extent, there will come a
+slump, and an arrogance of demand for more privileges that will give to
+the reactionary among prison administrators a chance to say, “I told
+you so!”
+
+But I much doubt it. The greater danger will come from possible
+stupidity of prison administration, a change perhaps of authority at
+the prison, and a consequent lack of sympathy with the purpose of the
+League.
+
+One thing seems sure. Prisons and reformatories will not go back to
+the old-line repressive and often brutal treatment. The transition to
+what will ultimately become the new treatment of delinquents is being
+attended by various experiments, often startling and sometimes amazing.
+We are not a Nation that thinks for a long time before acting in prison
+reform. Our successes have come so far largely from experimenting,
+retaining the successes and scrapping the failures. How much of the
+honor system, the back-to-the-land movement, the road-work movement,
+and the increasing classification of prisoners will be scrapped, it is
+much too early as yet to say.
+
+The final test will probably be along two lines. We shall determine how
+the “new freedom” works within prison walls, applying the acid tests of
+health, increased efficiency in labor, reformative value, education,
+and general training for a decent life in society. We shall also have
+to show, if we are friends of the “new freedom,” that such treatment
+within the prison produces a larger number of permanent reformations
+after prison, a higher percentage of those who make good.
+
+In short, the ultimate test is going to be not the increased
+possibility afforded the prisoner of enduring his prison term, nor yet
+the increased ease of administration of correctional institutions,
+but fairly and squarely as to whether society, from which all these
+prisoners come, and which has been the sufferer by them, is to be
+permanently better protected from their further depredations by giving
+them what today seems to be a square deal within the prisons, and a
+decent chance to make good after they come out.
+
+EVENTS IN BRIEF
+
+[Under this heading will appear each month numerous paragraphs of
+general interest, relating to the prison field and the treatment of the
+delinquent.]
+
+
+_Road Work and Farm Work by Convicts_--(In the clipping service of
+_The Delinquent_, road work and farm work by prisoners has become the
+most frequent single item of news. All over the country prisoners are
+working, or are “being worked.” We cite this month a number of items,
+taken at random, and showing the wide scope of the movement to use
+prisoners for out-door occupations that will benefit the community and
+the men also).
+
+The first gang of convicts from Sing Sing prison are working on
+Catskill roads, and are camping. Most of them are short-term men....
+In Pennsylvania, at Bellefonte, it is expected that the State will
+raise 10,000 bushels of wheat and 5,000 tons of hay on the State
+prison farm.... A bill providing that Federal prisoners kept in State
+penitentiaries or jails may be used for improving the public roads of
+any State has been introduced into the House of Representatives....
+20 prisoners have been at work in Franklin county, N. Y., and are
+netting $20. a day to the taxpayers, putting in stone roads.... The
+State prison of Wisconsin is running two prison camps. The preliminary
+work in constructing the new industrial home for women is being done
+by the prisoners, making the roadbed, building a railroad spur, laying
+the sewer system, digging the tunnels and otherwise excavating. The
+workers wear khaki trousers, work shirts, overalls and straw hats.
+The road the other camp is working on is the regulation road with a
+fifteen-foot macadam driveway.... At Ames, Iowa, the convicts have had
+a “raise” in wages, as a result of their first week’s showing. They
+were receiving twenty cents an hour; now they get twenty-five. They
+have been working for the Iowa State College, first doing “odd jobs”
+around the institution, then oiling and cutting roads. “Adams, the
+guard with the men, is virtually losing his job as guard and becoming
+merely time-keeper for the bunch.” ... There are now three road camps
+in New Jersey, with 40, 60, and 60 men respectively. The State Road
+Department has a large appropriation for hiring prisoners to improve
+the roads of the State.... At the farm of the New York City Reformatory
+for Misdemeanants, now under construction in Orange county, the results
+are as follows: “Two hundred tons of hay and two thousand bushels of
+potatoes already. A promise of ten thousand tons of fresh vegetables
+each season.” This farm was started only last spring, and less than
+fifty young fellows have been at work on it. The produce is shipped to
+the Department of Correction in New York City.... Sussex county, N.
+J., requires its prisoners to work on the roads.... Warden Sanders,
+of Iowa State Prison, has 175 prisoners at work on farms near Fort
+Madison. With a big auto truck he can take gangs of laborers thirty or
+forty miles from the Penitentiary where help is needed.... At Auburn
+Prison, N. Y., a road camp of long-term men has been established,
+and the prisoners to be sent out in this camp have been chosen by the
+Mutual Welfare League, who stand sponsor for their good work while
+outside. Several men of the gang had never seen an automobile.... In
+Mesa county, Colo., prisoners in the county jail will next summer be
+allowed to choose whether they will make hay, build or repair roads.
+This summer it was hay or the rockpile.... Dr. O. F. Lewis, general
+secretary of the Prison Association of New York, has issued a public
+statement supporting the plan of Commissioner Davis to establish a
+municipal farm of 500 acres on land reclaimed from the sea in Long
+Island Sound, to be worked by prisoners of the Department.... Only
+one desertion from the Ames, Ia., prison camp had been reported up
+to July 22.... Residents of Tybee, Ga., have petitioned the county
+commissioners to use convicts in building roads.... Governor Major
+of Missouri will ask the next legislature to purchase a farm of at
+least 1,000 acres across the river from the State penitentiary, for
+the production of vegetables and meats. He estimates that 400 convicts
+could be employed. Contracts under the contract system expire at
+the end of this year.... Provisions of a bill before the Georgia
+legislature are that the county chain gang shall work four months of
+each year within the city limits of Macon, under the direction of the
+mayor and council.... A survey of the proposed prison farm of Ohio
+has been made by students of the engineering department of Ohio State
+University. The farm consists of 1,455 acres.... Jefferson county, N.
+Y., is contemplating purchasing a county jail farm.... The sheriff
+of Washington county, N. Y., is using a garden for prisoners’ labor,
+partly because “weeding an onion bed is about the most tiresome work
+you can put a tramp to, and you won’t see the fellow again after his
+term expires.”... The North Carolina Good Roads Association resolved
+in July that all State convicts who are suitable for road work should
+be used in the construction of public roads.... Prisoners from Great
+Meadow Prison, N. Y., are building a State road in the Adirondacks....
+The Lancaster, Pa., Automobile Club asks convict labor for public
+roads.... Fifty more prisoners have been sent to the State Prison Farm
+of New Jersey. Ultimately about 300 prisoners will be busy there. There
+will be about 2,000 acres of land to cultivate.... Governor Stuart
+of Virginia has pointed out that there are 1,056 men in the jails of
+Virginia of whom no work is required, and he has urged the several
+State departments interested in the matter to consider ways and means
+to get these prisoners out on the roads.... It has been estimated that
+the State of Ohio has realized 88.8 per cent. profit in raising cattle
+on the penitentiary farm. 278 head of cattle were bought for 8 cents a
+pound in Chicago. It is estimated that the total gain of the cattle,
+which will be sold to State institutions, will be about $4,500. A large
+dairy will be established on the farm.... From the District of Columbia
+Workhouse Farm, which received a maintenance appropriation this last
+year of $130,000, $60,000 will be returned in revenue, coming from the
+sale of brick manufactured on the farm.... The city of Washington has
+purchased 1,800 more acres on which to build a reformatory farm....
+Superintendent Peyton, of the Indiana State Reformatory, wants to teach
+his inmates scientific farming, after the foundry contracts expire in
+November, 1915.... Thomas Mott Osborne has been spending several weeks,
+working with the prisoners, at several of the Auburn Prison camps....
+City prisoners in Burlington, Ia., will again work on the streets.
+Sometime ago the prisoners were removed, but it was found that the
+city was the loser thereby, and that the prisoners wanted to work on
+the streets.... West Virginia is working State prisoners on roads....
+The Sheriff of Suffolk county, N. Y., says that a prison farm is a
+necessity, and he has started to get one.... A life convict has run
+away from the honor camp at Auburn prison.... It is claimed that at
+least a dozen prisoners have escaped in the last few months from the
+New Jersey State prison farm.... Motion pictures showing convict road
+builders from the State penitentiary of Colorado at work will be taken
+in a few days on the Boulder Canon road....
+
+(And the list might be continued almost indefinitely. The above notes
+are from clippings received during the first two weeks of August).
+
+
+_Important Resignations Announced_--A number of important changes
+are taking place in executive positions in well-known prisons and
+reformatories. Warden Wolfer is shortly to leave the Minnesota State
+Prison. Warden Bridges has resigned from his long service at the
+Massachusetts State Prison, Warden Brown has been succeeded in West
+Virginia by State Senator M. Z. White. Chairman Frank L. Randall of the
+Massachusetts Prison Commission is said to be resigning on September
+1st, Superintendent Reid of the Minnesota State Reformatory is to take
+Warden Wolfer’s place, and Henry K. W. Scott, formerly warden of the
+New Hampshire State Prison, is to go to the position left vacant by
+Superintendent Reid.
+
+Henry Wolfer has been in prison work 43 years. He began, says the
+Minneapolis Tribune, in a day when filth, vermin, brutality and torture
+were prominent features of prison life. He ends it as warden of a
+prison declared by many authorities to be one of the finest in the
+world. Warden Wolfer began as guard at Joliet Prison as a boy of 18.
+A recent number of the Delinquent (         ) contained an article
+about the Warden’s remarkable work as an administrator and as a
+business man.
+
+Warden Bridges has been 21 years at the Massachusetts State Prison. The
+Boston Herald says that when he took hold, conditions were chaotic. The
+Warden has made a specialty of inmate education. The correspondence
+courses, run entirely within the prison, are noteworthy. The prison
+paper, the Mentor, is written entirely by hand, and facsimiled. The
+prison is a congregate, old, cramped structure. Recently, sports have
+been developed in the limited prison yard.
+
+Warden Brown of the West Virginia Penitentiary seems to be making a
+place for another appointee. The Wheeling, W. Va., Intelligencer,
+says that the prison is losing the best and ablest executive it ever
+had. He had in three and a half years renovated the sanitary system,
+improved discipline, abolished corporal punishment, elevated the
+standard of the prison school, turned over to the State (by contract
+labor) $120,000 above expenses, instituted a prison savings bank, with
+$35,000 in prisoners’ earnings for the overtime work, and has developed
+a prisoners’ aid society for helping the families of convicts. He has
+also developed two camps.
+
+Whether Chairman Randall of the Massachusetts Prison Commission is to
+leave Massachusetts is at the time of writing unsettled. Rumor has it
+that he has been seriously disappointed at the practically absolute
+failure of his extensive prison reform program to pass the Legislature,
+and also at the failure of the Legislature to appropriate an increase
+in salary which he was given to understand would occur this year, in
+view of the fact that he left Minnesota last year at considerable
+financial sacrifice. There is no question that Massachusetts will be a
+serious loser, if Mr. Randall goes. There seems also a certain amount
+of hostility toward an “imported” penologist. This is a sad attitude of
+mind, but not confined solely to Massachusetts.
+
+
+_Extension Courses of California University in Folsom Prison._--The
+report of the university extension director, in charge of the work at
+Folsom Prison, is interesting:
+
+ “We began in January, and the official enrollment is now 324 students.
+ As I soon found that many of the men had brains no better developed
+ than those of a child of 8 years, classes were formed in elementary
+ English, German and arithmetic.
+
+ “The teaching is done by convicts who have proved themselves fitted
+ for the positions, 15 being on the staff. Aside from financial
+ reasons, this was done because the prisoners need teachers who are in
+ sympathy with them.
+
+ “All are not permitted to take the school work; some because of
+ conduct, others because they are unable to keep up to the required
+ standard; still others do not wish to take it. Any man who is
+ unprepared twice in succession is dropped from the class. Many failed
+ on this account when the work was first began as they were using it
+ merely as an excuse to get out of their prison duties.
+
+ “A man often wants to follow a profession or trade to which he is
+ unsuited. Whenever one comes to me asking help in learning a trade, I
+ find out what trade or profession he is best suited for.”
+
+ When asked if the convicts appreciated the work, Mr. Jacobs’ face
+ lighted up. “They do now,” he said. “My hand is still sore from the
+ greetings they gave me when I returned from a trip East, but they
+ tried all sorts of tricks to get men when the work was first started.”
+
+
+_Funds for Deserted Wives._--According to the Pittsburg Times,
+Pennsylvania’s law which went into effect a year ago, providing
+payment to wives of men committed to the workhouse for non-support
+and desertion during the time the husband is serving his sentence, is
+proving a wonderful aid to women of Allegheny county, as proved by a
+record of the first year’s results. About $5,200 has been paid to 107
+women since July, 1913, when the law went into effect, the average
+having been $12.50 for each woman.
+
+Lawrence M. Fagan, probation officer in Allegheny county, through
+whose hands these funds went, is enthusiastic. “It’s been an excellent
+thing,” he said, “an arrangement which has solved a problem that has
+confronted probation officers ever since the first man was sent to
+prison for non-support. Previously the wives were no better off while
+a man was in jail than they had been before and often were much worse
+off. They had nothing at all coming in in most cases. Seldom did they
+receive more than their earnings which in no case were large.”
+
+These women now can expect help each month. Every man is credited 65
+cents a day for every day he works and the money is given his wife.
+This has amounted to $17.45 a month in some cases, although often it
+has only been a few dollars, but in every case it has been received
+with great welcome.
+
+Mr. Fagan explained that men are sent to the workhouse only as a last
+resort. They are generally given a chance to support their families
+after being arrested for the first time and then if they fail they are
+committed to prison. The payments have averaged $400 from this source
+alone.
+
+The general funds that pass through the hands of the probation officer
+from husbands who are supporting their families on order of the court,
+with the probation office as an intermediary, and from the workhouse to
+wives, reached $55,500 during the past six months. During June alone
+the total was $10,600.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES.
+
+An autobus has been installed to carry prisoners from New York City
+to Sing Sing prison. This will do away with the necessity of marching
+prisoners from the station at Ossining to the prison, a distance of
+about half mile. The prison is thirty miles from New York.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A hospital for tubercular convicts is to be established at the Maryland
+State Penitentiary, an appropriation of $35,000 having been made by the
+legislature. A prison school is also having excellent success.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Prison contracts are to be continued “indefinitely” in the New Jersey
+State prison, according to the Bayonne, N. J., Review of July 2d,
+because there are not sufficient funds for the installation of the
+State-use system. About 1,500 convicts are employed at the prison. Were
+the contracts permitted to lapse, the prisoners would be idle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The county commissioners of Beaufort county, N. C., have voted that
+convicts on the county roads may be whipped. “The superintendent
+shall keep in his possession a lash 18 inches long, attached to a
+stick 18 inches long and not more than two inches in diameter, and
+said lash may split three times half-way from the end,” according
+to the resolution. No convict may be whipped more than once during
+two consecutive days, shall not receive more than 25 lashes at one
+whipping, and must not be beaten on the neck or head. (We append these
+details, because relics of barbarism should also be recorded in the
+Delinquent. Ed).
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Out of a total of 1,478 prisoners confined in the Eastern Penitentiary
+of Pennsylvania 1,008 have signed a petition which will be submitted to
+the next legislature asking Statewide prohibition.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The old State prison at Stillwater, Minn, was practically abandoned on
+July 31st, when the last shoe contract expired. Hereafter all work at
+the Stillwater (new) prison will be done for the State.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+During July some riots of considerable seriousness occurred on
+Blackwell’s Island, New York City. Indictments for assault in the
+second degree have now been returned against the five ringleaders in
+the riots at the Penitentiary on July 8th. A maximum sentence of five
+years is attached to conviction.
+
+STATEMENT OF THE OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, ETC. of THE DELINQUENT,
+
+
+Published monthly at New York, N. Y., required by the Act of August
+24th, 1912.
+
+                      NAME OF                        POST OFFICE ADDRESS
+ Editor, O. F. Lewis,                                135 East 15th St.,
+                                                          New York City
+ Managing Editor, O. F. Lewis,                       135 East 15th St.,
+                                                          New York City
+ Business Manager, O. F. Lewis,                      135 East 15th St.,
+                                                          New York City
+ Publisher, The National Prisoners’ Aid Association, 135 East 15th St.,
+                                                          New York City
+ Owners, The National Prisoners’ Aid Association,    135 East 15th St.,
+                                                          New York City
+
+There are no bondholders, mortgages, or other security holders. O. F.
+LEWIS, Editor and Business Manager.
+
+  Sworn to and subscribed before me this 27th day of March, 1914.
+  H. L. McCORMICK, Notary Public No. 6, Kings County.
+  My Commission expires March 31, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber’s Notes
+
+A number of typographical errors were corrected silently.
+
+Issue number corrected from 7 to 8.
+
+New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the
+public domain.
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75368 ***