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 inThe Delinquentand The Survey. The editor ofThe Delinquenthad 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 gossipand 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 itswhite 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.”

“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 himon 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.”

“Then the two keepers, being reinforced by a third, dragged their victim roughly down stairs, partly on his back, kicked and beat himon 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.”

“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.’”

“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 anevening 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 someoneequally 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.

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