Part 2

Long before anything of this work was done the tedious task of teaching the convicts the mechanical trades began. In fact, it was the idea of Colonel Slavens that entirely apart from the problem of building the new military prison, the convicts should be taught trades. So schools were established, and everything from reading to writing to stenography and typewriting is taught in classes that meet three times a week. Expert civilian superintendents were employed to teach the convicts and act as superintendents of the work in the new prison, and they have developed some remarkably fine mechanics. Each convict is allowed to follow his natural bent wherever possible. Electricians, ironworkers, brick masons, tinners, and a score of other trades have been taught the men. Two hundred and seventy-five of the prisoners are being worked on the prison building proper, while an additional 176 are working in the brick plant, lime plant and quarries. A difficulty is encountered in the fact that about the time many of the convicts become first-class workmen their term of service expires. Forty-one per cent. of the prisoners confined at the military prison are deserters, the maximum penalty for which in time of peace is imprisonment for two and one-half years. Many of the others are confined for less serious offenses.

Before any work on the new buildings began, the commandant had to coach a company of prisoners in the gentle art of housemoving. Forty-one houses, occupied by civilian employees and guards, covered the site on which it was desired to build the new prison. These were moved to a site a quarter of a mile away. Then a fill, in some places a depth of thirty-five feet, was made, before the new site was ready for the buildings.

The grounds covered by the old and new buildings comprise an area of about seventeen acres. A wall of concrete, several feet thick, and in some cases rising to a height of fifty-five feet, now is practically completed around this site. A power plant covering half a city block is about finished. The power plant is connected by tunnel with the main building under process of construction. An examination of the power plant gives every evidence of expert construction. It is built of brick and concrete, with an immense circular brick chimney rising to a height of over 100 feet. When it is in operation it will be in charge of a convict engineer.

The main building of the new prison is being constructed on the radial plan, with the cell, hospital and other wings radiating from a central building or rotunda. This is for simplicity in control of the prisoners. By this means eight guards, armed with repeating rifles, patrolling the “gun walks” of the rotunda and cell wings, will be able to keep in subjection the 2,100 prisoners that are expected to occupy the new prison when it is finished. All the necessary utilities for the maintenance of life will be under one roof when the building is completed. There will be a hospital, laundry, bakery, refrigerating plant, amusement hall (used mainly for devotional purposes), and even the cells will be fitted with individual toilet facilities.

There will be a total of 2,182 cells in the five cell wings radiating from the new building. There are now 909 cells, containing 932 prisoners. As soon as the new prison is completed there are enough prisoners waiting in the guard houses of the various military posts throughout the country to fill all of the 2,182 cells, and they will be sent to Fort Leavenworth.

The government manifests no anxiety to give out details touching its business, but the information is vouchsafed that on the lime that is going into the new building, a saving of 80 per cent. on each barrel is effected, and that in the case of brick, it is costing the government 60 per cent. less to make it than it would cost to purchase it in the open market. This, with the saving in labor, gives an idea of how the government is able to erect $2,000,000 worth of buildings on an appropriation of $647,000.

The government has no intention whatever of going into the open market in competition with outside labor. It will manufacture nothing at the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, which is not used in the conduct of the prison itself. In pursuance of this policy in the past, it has built with prison labor six miles of terminal railroad at the fort, and has constructed and is maintaining many miles of rock road.

There are only two other military prisons in the United States. One is a provisional prison on Governor’s Island, and the other a small prison at Alcatraz, Cal., about one-fourth the size of the present Fort Leavenworth prison. The government has not announced whether it will abandon these.

When the new prison is finished about $50,000 will be spent in remodeling the old buildings, some of which are very ancient. One was built in 1877 and another in 1830, but they are still in a fair state of preservation. They were originally built for a quartermaster’s depot.

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_New York’s New Prison._--Great Meadow Prison is now in operation, the latest and only modern structure among New York’s state prisons. The Brooklyn Citizen describes it thus, in part:

A couple of hours’ ride from Albany northward on the Delaware and Hudson Railroad brings the visitor to the station Comstock--a flag stop for a few trains each way per day. The dozen or so dwelling houses scattered about the beautiful landscape with their outlying barns and stables proclaim a farming community. Eastward, about a quarter of a mile from the railroad depot, one sees a big yellow brick building rising like a Gulliver above a squadron of Lilliputian contractor shanties.

The big building is the Great Meadow Prison cell house, about 600 feet long, 80 feet high and 70 feet wide. Unfinished end walls indicate that the cell house is only half completed and that another wing of equal length, height and width is to be added. The completed part of the building contains 624 cells on four floors. Each cell is about the size of a New York hall room; is equipped with a white enameled closet and a white enameled stationary washstand and running water, while the furnishings consist of a white enameled iron hospital bedstead with felt mattress, felt pillow, white bed linen and cotton blankets. A small lock cabinet and cloth rack complete the equipment. The cells are finished in natural cement; the doors have upright bars from floor to ceiling, the bars being painted with aluminum color--and the color effect of cement gray and the silvery aluminum is rather pleasing. A touch of quiet elegance is even added by the bright nickel plated water spigot and water control push buttons above the toilet stand and wash basin. The cell house walls are 75 per cent. windows and each cell is flooded with light. At night in each cell an electric light, with a shade throwing the light downward, provides splendid illumination for reading, writing, drawing, etc. The cell house has a comprehensive ventilating system, with ventilating ducts connecting each cell.

Opposite the cell house stands the administration building. When the whole prison plant is completed--which will take several years yet--this building will be used exclusively for hospital, school and library purposes. At present the building is used for all the housekeeping departments of the prison, including bathroom, laundry, tailor shop, shoe shop, kitchen, dining room, storeroom, hospital, chapel, library, warden’s office, principal keeper’s office, guards’ quarters and a small dormitory for the kitchen gang. It is a beehive of activity, with its sixty-odd inmate workers, and a poor place for the night guards to do their day-sleeping. The halls and rooms are daily mopped and scrubbed and every nook and corner is kept scrupulously clean by a gang of porters.

The inmates are marched into the dining hall three times a day for their meals, including Sunday. The farm operated in conjunction with the prison and by prisoners (under direction of proper officials) supplies seasonable vegetables, and now and then fresh meat from the farm’s herd of cattle and pigs. This gives an advantage to the steward of the prison in providing a greater variety of food and a more attractive menu at the same per capita expenditure as the other prisons in the State are allowed which are not favored with a farm. The per capita expenditure in all State prisons is limited by legislative appropriation. The fine air, good water, sound sleep in clean beds and clean rooms, the daily exercise at work on the farm and at such other work as is connected with running the prison--all combine to supply a hearty appetite to the inmates. This appetite is met by a table limited by the legislature, as already stated, and is limited also for the men’s own good by hygienic restrictions.

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_The Prison Farm at Occoquan, Virginia._--An interesting account of the progress of the District of Columbia’s prison farm was recently given by Rev. J. T. Masten, secretary of the Virginia state board of charities and corrections.

The past year’s experience of the prison commissioners of the District of Columbia has made a great impression upon him, as it has on every thoughtful student of criminology. Two years ago Congress wrote in the appropriation bill authority to the prison commissioners of the District to do away with the jail system by placing the prisoners on a farm. The sum of $190,000 was appropriated for the purpose. Under the old system it was costing the commissioners $150,000 to care for the prisoners each year.

The board took the money and bought a farm of eleven hundred acres near Occoquan, in Prince William county, Va.

They took the male prisoners to the farm and used them exclusively in the clearing of the land and preparing it for cultivation and in the erection of the necessary buildings, one-story frame buildings erected by the prisoners. To illustrate the economy of the work the administration building, which is 30 by 175 feet, cost in actual money two hundred dollars, the prisoners doing the work, sawing the lumber from the timber on the property.

The work proved a splendid moral and physical tonic to the men. The prison motto was made, “Reformation, not vindictive punishment.”

At first one guard had charge of six prisoners. Now one man has charge of twenty prisoners and directs them in their work.

The prisoners do not wear chains and are not bound at night. There are no bars at the windows and two men take care of 225 male prisoners at night and one woman cares for sixty female prisoners.

During the first year there passed through the prison farm three thousand men. There were but sixty attempts to escape--just two per cent. Twenty of these attempts were successful, or less than one per cent. of the total number of men confined.

The punishment for the unruly is solitary confinement on a diet of bread and water and this form of discipline has only been found necessary for an average of five cases each month, with an average prison population of 550 men, or less than one per cent. From July 1 to September 8 there had been but four women punished. This shows that the methods in use, the farm work and country quiet, and the ennobling influence of honest toil in the open, have accomplished wonders in the handling of the prisoners.

Then the farm method of handling prisoners is splendid economy. It is estimated that to complete the rock-crushing and brick-manufacturing plant, to finish grading the grounds and building the roads and the erection of additional barns and other outbuildings and to pay the ordinary expenses of the prison for the year the cost will be $120,000, which is thirty thousand dollars less than it cost the District to support the prisoners during the last year under the old jail system.

Within three years, the superintendent, Mr. Whittaker, estimates that the farm will be self-supporting, and it may be reasonably expected, the superintendent thinks, that the farm will clear from twenty to thirty thousand dollars a year after paying all the expenses of maintaining the prisoners.

It is found that the new system has caused a decrease in prison population. Many of the prisoners reform, while the class which has no liking for honest toil and has heretofore taken a season in the district jail in search of rest and refreshment which they could not otherwise obtain are fighting shy of the district police courts. It seems now that, at the present rate of decrease, the population of the prison-farm the second year will be some nineteen hundred less than during the first year.

The superintendent, Mr. Whittaker, endeavors to impress upon the men that it is better in every way to work as free men and earn wages than to be sent to the farm and be compelled to work without wages. Three of the best and most useful employees of the farm are men who were once confined thereon as prisoners.

The products of the work on the farm will not be used in competition with those of the public. Such products will be used in connection with the support of other public institutions or in the construction of public roads.

IN THE PRISONERS’ AID FIELD

THE ORIGIN OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE FRIENDLESS.[1]

The Society for the Friendless grew out of the efforts of Rev. and Mrs. Edward A. Fredenhagen to apply the methods of Jesus to the redemption of the submerged masses.

The first home was opened at 1219 Washburn Ave., Topeka, Kansas. Previous to this, a group of leading men had been interested in the work. Foremost among these was Judge T. F. Garver. He became the first president and the counsellor, and his wise counsels as well as his legal talent have aided in directing the society to its present carefully developed legal and philanthropic status.

The first tour, to investigate Kansas, was made in December, 1900. The family reached Topeka in the Christmas holidays of the same year. Work began at once and culminated in April, 1901, in the organization of the first board of directors and the incorporation of the Kansas society for the friendless.

The society was welcomed heartily by Governor W. E. Stanley, and by J. S. Simmons, superintendent of the reformatory at Hutchinson.

The following June Rev. R. A. Hoffman, just leaving the chaplaincy at the penitentiary, became the first district superintendent, with headquarters at Salina, and served the society for six years. He did a great deal of hard and capable work and left to go to the Colorado prison association. The next superintendent to join was Rev. Frank Brainerd, a neighboring pastor of the general superintendent in Illinois. He remained with the society for seven and a half years and did excellent work. He left to become general secretary of the associated charities in Kansas City, Kansas. The third superintendent was Rev. George S. Ricker, a scholarly pastor, who desired to give the remainder of his life to work among the lost classes. He is still with the society, and is senior among all the district superintendents.

By the autumn of 1901 the employment department and the temporary home were well established. Then the next important step was taken in the organization in the Kansas Penitentiary of the first of a series of prison leagues, which were to form the nucleus of the important department of jail and prison evangelism. Chaplain McBrian became the superintendent of this league and for the eight years of his chaplaincy, was the unwavering friend of the Society.

It soon became evident that the religious work in the prison would not have its rightful opportunity unless the department of prison reform should be developed in the state. So the society began a campaign for the passage of the indeterminate sentence and the parole law to apply to the penitentiary the same as it was operating in the Reformatory. This passed the legislature in 1903, and has been one of the most successful laws bearing upon the crime problem, operating in Kansas. Under it the penitentiary has been changed from an old type punishment prison to an up-to-date reformatory. The improvement in prison management has kept pace with the change in the criminal code.

Finding children in the jails of Kansas, the society began, in 1903, a campaign for the juvenile court act. The bill to introduce it in the state senate in 1903 was defeated. Then followed the campaign, covering two years, in which there was delivered over two thousand addresses. Over twenty thousand calls were made on individuals in the state during the biennium. Leading philanthropists came to the society’s aid.

The bill passed unanimously both house and senate, and a juvenile court was established in every county in Kansas. The juvenile court system of this state is modeled after that of Colorado.

Taking the Kansas society as a nucleus, the general superintendent accepted calls into Missouri and outlying states. The first step was to organize a league in the Missouri state penitentiary, under Chaplain Geo. J. Warren, D. D. Since then the general superintendent has made twenty-six major and many minor national tours, the longest one being seven thousand miles. During that period, fifteen states have been opened to the work of the society. Of these eleven still maintain the society for the friendless. Ministers of ability and consecration have accepted calls to be superintendents. There are seventeen of these now in full service, with two laymen giving part time.

There are twenty centers of religious activity in penal institutions, originally projected by the society.

When the society was nine years old the first national convention was held in Kansas City, in January, 1910. In 1906 the original society had been expanded from a state organization to one including all the states and territories in the United States. At the first national convention in 1910 the first elective national board was chosen. Previous to this the board of directors of the “Kansas and Missouri division,” (Kansas and Missouri having been united in one unit of territory), was a holding board for all the work in the other states. In November, 1908, the general office was moved from Topeka to Kansas City, the office being in Missouri and the temporary home on the Kansas side of the line. The first national convention came as a natural sequence. It was to more completely develop this slowly evolving organization, so that it would cover all the territories occupied by the living organism--the society itself.

NEW PRISON HEAD NOMINATED IN MASSACHUSETTS.

Warren F. Spalding, Secretary of the Massachusetts Prison Association, has been nominated by Governor Foss, chairman and executive of the Prison Commission, succeeding Mr. Pettigrove. Of the appointment the Boston Transcript says editorially:

The Governor has supplanted one good man with another good man. That Mr. Pettigrove was not to be reappointed was announced by the governor some weeks ago, and yet Mr. Pettigrove’s friends hoped that he would reconsider, as he had done on so many other occasions. There will be regret at the passing of Mr. Pettigrove, who, in the many years in which he has been prison commissioner has served the State well and given his department the benefit of long experience and real ability. The public, while regretting the departure of Pettigrove, will welcome the incoming of Spalding. As secretary of the Massachusetts prison association for many years, and backed by his long experience in prison labor affairs, Mr. Spalding has been one of the foremost prison men of the United States. The association of which he is the secretary has been a leader in progressive ideas on prison management, and in this Mr. Spalding has been the executive officer and initiator. There will be no question whatever of the progressiveness of Mr. Spalding’s administration and of the value of his services to the State.

Mr. Spalding is not unfamiliar to that office, having been secretary of it from 1879 until he resigned in 1888.

Mr. Spalding was born in Hillsboro, N. H., Jan. 14, 1841, but was educated in the public schools of Nashua, N. H. After leaving school he engaged in the furniture business in his native place for several years, and in 1870 came to Boston. There he became connected with the Boston Daily News, and later worked for the Globe and the Commercial Bulletin, both as a reporter and an editor.

Since 1872 he has been a resident of Cambridge and represented a district in that city in the general court during 1894 and 1895. He has been engaged in prison work for many years, having been secretary of the Massachusetts Prison Association since 1890. In 1896 Mr. Spalding was elected to the Cambridge Board of Aldermen. Mr. Spalding was a private in Co. F, 1st New Hampshire Heavy Artillery, during the Civil War and is a member of Post 186, G. A. R.

The governor’s nomination must be approved by the governor’s council.

PRISON SUNDAY.

This day was observed as usual in several states on either the fourth or last Sunday in October. The Connecticut prison association, in issuing a call, directed attention to the fact that the great need in that state is a change in our treatment of petty offenders. “We made great progress in the treatment of these cases when we established the probation service, which keeps many out of jail. But during 1910 there were 10,468 commitments to our county jails. Six thousand and fifty of these, by their own admission, has been in prison before.”

In New York the prison association sent special letters to about 1,500 pastors, 200 of whom responded favorably. Special literature was furnished each pastor.

NEW YORK’S PRISON NEEDS.

In an interview in the New York Sun, O. F. Lewis, general secretary of the prison association of New York, said recently:

“The principal prison needs of this State are a separate cell for each prisoner in State prisons, employment for eight hours a day for all able-bodied men in State prisons, the marketing of all prison-made products in this State to the State and its political subdivisions, such as counties and cities; the introduction and development of industries in our county penitentiaries and jails; the centralization of administration of our penitentiaries and jails under a proper department of the State; the abolition of idleness and filth in many of our jails; the development of the women’s farm and the farm colony for vagrants and tramps; the creation of a separate institution or separate wings of an existing institution for feeble-minded criminals, not the insane criminals--and other things too numerous to mention.

“They had just such a jail situation in England thirty years ago, when the State took over all the local prisons, that correspond to our county jails. To-day all these institutions are under the management of the prison commissioners of England, a body that no one would think of accusing of the least bit of graft, and the institutions are run with regard to the rights of the prisoner and the welfare of society. That is our great need--that the state should manage the correctional institutions within its borders through boards of managers, at least in part.”

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Abridged from the last issue of the society’s publication, “The First Friend.”

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.]

_Going to School at Charlestown, Mass._--The Hartford, Conn., Times, tells of a summer school for illiterate prisoners which was started this season by Benjamin F. Bridges, warden of the state prison at Charlestown, Mass. A school has existed in the state prison for many years, but it was Warden Bridges who placed it upon a practical basis, such as has made it a power for good.