Part 5

“The delinquent child is an embryo enemy of society as now organized,” he said. “The duty of the probation officer is far more than the collecting of fines, receiving reports and carrying out explicit court orders. He has an opportunity to get in close touch with the youthful criminals as few can.

“Of course, the child should be made to obey the law and live up to court orders. There can be no two opinions on this point, but mere external conformity is not real obedience, and the probation officer must strive to reach the sources of the child’s delinquency.

“It is therefore his duty to study each delinquent child as the physician studies his patient. Successful diagnosis is essential to intelligent service. It is not enough that a probation officer visit a child regularly. He must visit with definite plans in mind and make definite record of the same with results. At least these phases of the child’s life must be constantly attended to.”

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 16

MORNING SESSION

At ten o’clock the Wardens’ Association held its meeting, with Vice President W. H. Haskell, of Kansas, in the chair. After paying a beautiful tribute to the deceased President, Warden C. E. Haddox, of West Virginia, Mr. Haskell introduced the Hon. R. W. Withers, of the Virginia House of Delegates, who spoke on “Convict Labor on the Public Highways,” and explained in detail the workings of the Lassiter-Withers road law in his State.

“The roads there used to be described in very uncomplimentary terms, but now there are many miles of good macadam roads in the commonwealth, thanks to the wisdom of the State and the strong arms of the convicts.

“No prisoner with a sentence longer than five years is allowed to work on the roads, and jail prisoners are worked in separate gangs and without stripes. There are twelve gangs now working in different parts of the State. A prisoner awaiting trial may work also, if he so elect. If he is afterwards acquitted he is allowed fifty cents a day for every day that he has worked. If he is fined this amount may go toward the payment of the fine, and if he is imprisoned the time counts on his sentence. The success has far exceeded the expectations of the most sanguine. The men are healthier, happier, better morally; and the counties are getting good roads.

“The State employs an expert engineer at $3,000 and three consulting engineers without pay. The county furnishes material and tools, the State labor and brains. The county makes an application for convict labor for a certain road to the Highway Commission and the road is surveyed, a careful estimate given, blue prints prepared and the county then considers the matter. If it accepts the estimate a requisition for convicts is made and they are put into tents or portable iron cabins, where they are housed at night and in stormy weather. At night a guard with a rifle is on duty, but each convict is also chained by the leg. By day they wear no chains, but are under the surveillance of a gun.

“When they first come from the prison they are not very strong. None of them is allowed to do more than ten hours work a day, less in winter. After a few weeks they show a great change in appearance and in strength, and statistics show that with the better food and the fresh air they increase in weight, on an average, fifteen pounds. Last year in the penitentiary in a population of twelve hundred there were twenty-five deaths, and of those nineteen died from tuberculosis. Most of the prisoners are negroes, and tuberculosis is the most deadly disease among them. During the same period in a road force of seven hundred and eighty there was not a death.

“But another thing is important. You cannot reform men without healthy occupation. Crime comes chiefly from idleness, and inability to work from lack of training. This gives healthful work. Not a man has been found who, after trying it, would not prefer the outdoor work to remaining in the penitentiary. The common phrase is, “The road for me!” Under the old plan the State paid $150,000 a year to keep these men in idleness, and there was nothing to show for it. Now a smaller amount is used with the result of good roads.

“The roads cost on an average about $3,000 a mile. It costs about seventy cents a day for each man, to feed, guard, clothe, transport and recapture him; forty cents a day for feeding, guarding and transporting. At present there are four hundred and fifty men in the twelve camps, of whom more than half are jail men. The long-time convicts naturally become the best road builders, but the short-time men can do a great deal. In twelve months there were but eighteen escapes, and eleven of the fugitives were recaptured. Stone crushers, furnished by the county, are used, but all the work save running the engine is done by the convicts. Virginia furnishes abundance of stone. The men get it out of the quarry, ready for crushing, and after it is crushed pile it by the road ready for spreading. They also, of course, do the grading and surfacing.

“On Sundays the local preachers hold services in each camp and reading matter is provided, but there is no schooling. Whenever possible the road is cut off from public travel while the convicts are at work.

“The system of conditional pardon exists in Virginia. It is granted after they have served half their term if they are recommended by the board, but each man must have honest labor provided for him before he can thus be paroled. This still applies to these men. If they are sick or injured the county physician looks after them. This road-making experiment has been working eighteen months continuously because the climate is so mild the men can work outdoors all winter.”

Warden W. H. Moyer, of the Federal Prison, Atlanta, Ga., read a paper on the question, “Should Indiscriminate Visiting to Prisons and Prisoners Be Permitted?” The speaker distinguished between indiscriminate visits to _prisons_ and to _prisoners_. He declared himself opposed to both. Visits to _prisons_ are usually made only to satisfy a morbid curiosity, and often result in unjust criticism, destructive of public confidence. They should therefore be prohibited, excepting by those who are engaged in educational or charitable work. Visitors to _prisoners_ are rarely prompted by morbid curiosity. With very rare exceptions such visitors are relatives. But only in specially meritorious cases should even these be admitted.

“To the young man of fine sensibilities a visit from his wife or mother would be deplorable. It may seem anomalous to speak of convicts with fine sensibilities, but the expression is perfectly proper and entirely applicable. There are such convicts, and that fact cannot be too well recognized.”

The speaker illustrated this view by relating the example of a young wife who at first decided to reside near the penitentiary in which her husband was confined, but who finally wisely decided to await his return to their distant home rather than to meet him in convict garb and amid a prison environment.

“Such instances are not isolated; there are many others of a similar nature which have occurred frequently in my experience, but, after all, they are at most exceptional, and merely establish what I have already stated, that a hard and fast rule absolutely prohibiting visits to prisoners is not now practicable, although such a rule would be justified in a very large proportion of actual cases.

“Answering, now, the question which is the subject of this paper, I submit my opinion that indiscriminate visits to the prison and the prisoners should not be permitted.”

AFTERNOON SESSION

Col. Joseph S. Pugmire, of Toronto, Ontario, submitted the report of the Committee on Discharged Prisoners. He said in part: “The day of the prisoner’s discharge is a critical time. So much depends upon how he starts life again. The attitude of society toward the released prisoner often hinders those who are trying to save him, and makes his lot hard. They say: ‘There goes a criminal; give him a wide berth; he is not to be trusted, but is coming out to do what he did before.’ I do not excuse his wrong, but I plead for such to have a chance. It is not enough to lecture him and even pity him. We must go beyond that. What impresses me with regard to these men (and I have dealt with thousands) is not that they are resentful and vicious, but that they are as helpless as babes, powerless to help themselves.

“I contend that we are doing society a great injustice, as well as the prisoner himself, to allow him to step into liberty again without some careful oversight. What the discharged prisoner needs is a real friend who will give him the opportunity to rise and do better on the causeway of redemption, meeting him at the prison doors, arranging a helpful environment and providing him with employment of some kind.”

In his address on “The Duty of Society to the Discharged Prisoner,” Bishop Samuel Fallows, of Chicago, emphasized two points: 1. The discharged prisoner is a man and a brother; therefore our sympathy must go out to him. 2. Society must do its utmost to rehabilitate the one who has infracted the law, and above all to give him employment. If a man is willing to work it is the best evidence that his reformation has begun. Statistics show that the majority of those who are again usefully employed turn out well.

In the discussion which followed, Warden Wolfer, of Minnesota, made the suggestion that prisoners should be allowed increased earnings for overtime, to be applied to the support of the families of married men and to give single men a start in business when they leave prison. In this he was strongly seconded by Dr. F. Emory Lyon, Superintendent Central Howard Association, Chicago, and Warden McClaughry, of Kansas; and the latter was subsequently instructed to prepare a resolution on the subject to be submitted to the congress.

In his paper on “The Man with the Bundle,” the Rev. Frank G. Brainerd, Superintendent of the Society for the Friendless, Kansas City, laid stress on providing the discharged prisoner with work and wholesome recreations and inspiring him with high ideals. In speaking of the work of his society, he said: “The men, upon release, are given every necessary assistance and care. It is the custom in the West to take the discharged prisoner directly to the home of the Superintendent, that for a few days he may live under his roof, sit at his table, find a home with his family and be made to believe that wholesome and clean ways of living are for him also if he wills it. It is the custom then to find him congenial employment, to fit him out an extra suit of clothes, a change of underwear and, if necessary, an overcoat. These are contributed by friends of the society over the State. A suitable boarding place is found, new friends are provided, money is loaned and board bills are guaranteed if necessary, and he is given friendship, oversight and counsel in his effort to live a new life.

“Little can be known by the public of the heroism and the pathos of the struggle which many a man makes with the all but overpowering odds against him. Success achieved by others with hardly an effort can be attained by him only after an almost superhuman struggle. Right choices that make themselves for others are absolutely heroic for him. Had he their habits and self-control, half the effort with which he now barely escapes failure would bring him splendid success. Knowing nothing of his battles, others cannot realize the fight he makes for his victories.

“_E. g._, a Scotch-Irishman, forty-six years old, made the remark during his first meal at our home that it was the first time in his life that he had eaten at a table where they had napkins. He was not without much native ability and an instinctive mannerliness. His mother had died when he was a baby and he had had no home since seven years of age. He had been a drunkard for years, had been in jail several times for pilfering when drunk, and finally was sent to prison for breaking into a box car and stealing merchandise. He was released on parole. There never was a kinder man about the house, and after he was provided with employment and a boarding place no week passed without his coming back once or twice for a little call. He said that it was the only home that he had ever had. He never drank another drop of liquor; he chose an entirely new sort of companions, and when discharged from parole had $200 in bank. During that time, when the family of the Superintendent were away on a visit and the Superintendent himself away about half the time, this man was given the keys of the home and stayed there in full charge for seven weeks.

“Another notable case is that of a man who had been a criminal for thirty years. He had spent thirteen years in prisons and had stolen during the other seventeen years an average of more money each year than any prisoner’s aid society in the United States expends annually. He had never earned a day’s wages outside the penitentiaries. That man has been toiling in heat and in cold and has been self-supporting and absolutely honest for the last year and a half. In the panic last fall he was temporarily out of work and money, yet his courage did not leave him nor his success fail.

“Such men are in direst need. It is a happiness to grip their hands and to strengthen their purpose; to have them sleep under one’s roof, eat at one’s table and breathe hope and courage at one’s fireside. Some are good, some indifferent, some bad. It is not for us to choose among them, but to offer opportunity to everyone who knocks at our doors.”

EVENING SESSION

The presiding officer at the evening session, Mr. Hallam F. Coates, member of the Board of Managers, Ohio State Reformatory, and President of the Association of Governing Boards of Penal, Reformatory and Preventive Institutions, introduced Mr. H. Grotophorst, of Wisconsin, who addressed the meeting on “State Boards of Control,” and claimed many advantages for these as compared with the ordinary boards of public charities. In Wisconsin such a board, consisting of five members (one of them a woman), is charged with the maintenance and government of all the reformatory, charitable and penal institutions established or supported by the State. This board holds in trust all the property and money conveyed or bequeathed to the different institutions; appoints the superintendents, wardens, physicians, etc.; discharges these for cause; directs how the books and accounts of all the institutions shall be kept; formulates the rules for their government; supervises the purchase of all supplies; makes all contracts; locates new institutions; and has the power of parole and of transfer from one institution to another. The speaker claimed the following advantages for such central control, to wit, constant visitation of the institutions; proper coördination between them; the elimination of controversies to which separate boards often give rise; uniformity in rules, salaries and methods of administration; freedom from politics; and above all far greater economy in expenditures.

In his paper on “Prison Management,” Mr. John C. Easley, member of the Board of Directors of the Virginia State Penitentiary, said in part:

“There has been an increase of about one hundred per cent. in the proportion of colored felons in Virginia since 1870. There are nine times as many felonies committed among one thousand blacks as among one thousand whites. In 1880 we found one white felon for every thirty-nine hundred and thirty-two of white population, and notwithstanding the more rapid growth in our urban communities, where the percentage of crime is always greater, and notwithstanding a very considerable influx of foreign population, we found in 1900, when the last census was taken, that the proportion of felons among the whites had been reduced to one in every forty-eight hundred and forty-nine, thus demonstrating that with our present system of public education the percentage of crime among the whites has decreased. Whatever the reason for the increase in negro crime, whether our system of negro education is faulty, whether the negro lacks moral tone, whether his political diet is too strong, whether we are trying to fix the keystone in place while the arch lacks foundation, the situation must be met, and coming consequences must be provided for and against.

“So far as I am informed, the annals of history afford no example of two separate races successfully occupying the same country at the same time, upon the same terms, and when these separate races represent the two extremes of humankind, how great the necessity for caution. To each of you, therefore, I appeal personally to give this subject your most serious consideration, to the end that the best preventive measures may be adopted and crime lessened. There is no prison management so good as that which keeps the prison empty, and there are no measures to keep it empty so effective as those which prevent crime.”

Mr. Easley’s address provoked some discussion. A negro delegate explained that the increase in crime among his race is confined to the lower classes, and does not apply to those who are attempting to elevate the race.

Prof. Henderson presented a paper on “Foreign Views of Our Indeterminate Sentence and Reformatory System,” in which he critically analyzed and answered the objections made against it by some German penologists on a recent visit to this country.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 17

On Tuesday the delegates were given a trip on the James River to Westover and return, and were entertained by the Local Committee with the most lavish southern hospitality.

EVENING SESSION

At eight P. M. the Chaplains’ Association held its meeting. In his address, the President, the Rev. John L. Sutton, of New Orleans, said, among other things: “Two of the greatest difficulties encountered in prison reform work are, first, the absolute need of good, moral men as prison officials--men who will take the spiritual meaning of the law and be, indeed, their brother’s keeper; for they are the ones who come into daily contact with the prisoners, and it is from them that the most good can be derived. Hence, here is a gulf that must be spanned, and how? Very easily. Physicians, lawyers, teachers, ministers--in fact, all professional men in positions of importance--must be qualified to take their places in life, and why should the guardians of eighty thousand souls be such a flagrant exception to this wise precautionary method? Why should they continue to be chosen irrespective of ability or character, and, as a rule, be drawn from the political world?

“Second. The other great need in prison reform work is that the churches as a whole bear their part in this great work; and I will speak of only my own church. In seven years’ connection with my conference exhaustive reports and discussions of educational, missionary and temperance questions, all problems of importance, and with which I am in sympathy, have absorbed the time and attention of the preachers, but they have failed properly to consider the needful work of prison reform.

“I hold that over eighty thousand people behind the prison bars now in this great country of ours are in as great need of the missionary care and attention of our churches as the heathen in the wilds of Africa.”

“Reformatory Work from the Standpoint of an Active Minister” was the subject of a paper by the Rev. Hiram W. Kellogg, D. D., of Wilmington, Del. Speaking of the church as a factor in such work, he said:

“What are we doing to prevent delinquency? Is the church a real and determining factor in the life of the community? Is it the guardian of childhood against the ravages of greed and crime? Is it pleading for true home life, this citadel of civilization? Is it protecting motherhood and guaranteeing to every child the right to be born well? Is it curtailing the power of the saloon, the low theater? Is it cleaning the streets of suggestions of sin and making them fit for boys and girls? Is it opening its buildings every night in the week and turning its awful silence into the glad music of happy children’s voices?

“Is it surrounding boy life with safe associations and making the path of religion bright with such joys as will conserve him in after years by sweet memories? Is it supporting public schools and juvenile courts and every institution not of its own immediate work, but which are essential auxiliaries to preventing of wrongdoing?

“In short, is the church bringing its concentrated talent intelligently to the beginnings of human life? This is the hopeful field we have long known, but is it the most effectively worked? You have the facts, and facts rule our age; theories have no value beyond the facts that sustain them.”

Major R. W. McClaughry, Warden of the United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth, Kan., read the following paper on “The Chaplain from the Warden’s Viewpoint”:

“The warden is apt to regard the chaplain as a great help or a great hindrance in his work. The chaplain may often be justified in having the same opinion of the warden. Whenever the personal relations between the warden and the chaplain are to any extent strained, the latter is at great disadvantage. A very few remarks dropped by the warden may so discredit the chaplain with guards and prisoners as to utterly paralyze his influence and destroy his usefulness, and this without any charges having been preferred on either side.

“A friendly and well-meaning warden may often greatly handicap a chaplain in his proper work by loading him up with duties that do not belong to his position--_e. g._, making him postmaster, newspaper inspector, librarian, schoolmaster and general executor and administrator--ante mortem and post mortem--of estates of sick and deceased prisoners.

“I do not think a chaplain ought to be required to inspect and pass upon the incoming and outgoing mail of prisoners. In the first place his training and education unfit him to read between the lines of letters that need inspection, while the mental drudgery imposed upon him, if he carefully reads all outgoing and incoming letters in a prison of ordinary size, unfits him for the proper work of his office. Besides, the knowledge that he has read all their correspondence prejudices against him many prisoners and renders his efforts to help them vain.

“I doubt the wisdom of placing him in charge of the library in a large prison, save as a general adviser and aid to the prisoners in enabling them to select helpful books to read, and this work can be done during his visits to the prisoners in their cells and dormitories. This visitation is the most important work that he can do in the prison, and should on no account be omitted. The preaching service that he renders will be far more helpful and acceptable--as will also his Sunday-school instruction--if it grows out of and is tempered by his experience in cell visitation. A pastor who wishes to become helpfully acquainted with the inner life of his parishioners does not summon them one by one to his office for interviews and see them nowhere else. No more can the chaplain follow that plan and hope to succeed with his parishioners.

“Sometimes a warden deems it his duty to apply certain portions of the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians to his chaplain and require him to ‘bear all things, believe all things, hope all things and endure all things’; therefore it behooves the chaplain to be at all times as ‘wise as a serpent,’ and sometimes ‘as harmless as a dove’; but where the occasion arises (which fortunately is but seldom) for the chaplain to use the language of rebuke, it calls for the highest quality of courage, and the chaplain who then shirks or quails stamps himself as unfit for his high office.