The prison mirror. [volume] (Stillwater, Minn.) 1887-1894, 1888-08-08

victs employed at the same kind of work in
California could be. it is estimated. per-
formed by 60 freemen; or of 125 cOnvicts
employed in the shirt factory of Sing Sing.
it is estimated that 93 freemen would per
form the same work; or Of $50 cOnvicts
making cigars in Maryland, IS freemen
would perform the same task in the same
length of time. 1t will be seen from these
figures that in many places the work per-
formed by cOnvcts could be done in half
the time by freemen.
Now, why is this? assert that prisoner
with proper physical treatment can perform
an equal amount of work that a freeman
can. TO drive him to do so would be in
human, and defeat all ends of reformation;
but to give him an incentive to voluntarily
do SO would be wisdom beyond what can be
expected to be approved of by people that
feel only revenge toward their criminal
wards. l have wife and child dependent
upon others; four others confined within
four doors of me are similarly circumStanced
What will become of those wives and inno-
cent children, suffering in want through all
these years? See the poor wife with her
pale, worried face as she comes home at
night from work that she has never been
used to. She goes to the day home for
children of working women and gets her
poor child, and with hardly clothes to keep
them warm, or food to sustain their bodies,
they pass the night, only to enter again up
on the weary round of labor. charity and
starvation. while the able bodied father and
husband is kept at labor for the state with
out chance to support his wife and child,
but must work on for nothing through the
dreary years, until finally, when he is re-
leased his wife is gone. his child grown in
to boy, and many saw him picking from
the gutter OF the street bits of rotten fruit
which was often his whole sustenance for a
day. Often, perhaps, was he pitied as his
rags. whipped by the wind, attracted the
attention of the paSser-by. Finally he
steals-only a jack knife from shop win
dow-is arrested, locked up with men viler
than the waste from the sewer. and is sent
to the reform school, where in five years he
is again turned out graduate in crime in
nine cases out of ten. Nothing has been
paid him. and in most cases nothing learned
in all this time. Soon you have him in
court once more. and because he appears
before the judge again he gets years in
state prison. where again you learn him
nothing. and you give him nothing for what
he does.
Two young fellows We're sentenced short
time ago in this state to ten years each for
rObbing man of 80 cents. Now the state
will keep these boys here for ten years.
when they will be discharged without
trade. and without start in life. that they
would have if given pay for their labor.
l believe crime should be punished.
Every person who deliberately commits
crime should be punished for it.
Who were their fathers? who were their
mothers? had they kind sisters? had they
good brothers? who were their teachers?
Or did they belong to hard set from their
birth up? God have mercy upon the un-
Just for thou hast already had mercy upon
the just by making them just" Who has
ever thought what ten years in prison
means; $3.50 days, $3.50 dishes of prison
$3.50 days without speech; 3, $50 days. every
one OF which the poor condemned has to
pass feeling like rainy day. for if l were
to describe how convict feels. l would
say, HE feels like a rainy day." But
think of that feeling for $3.50 days. MY
God, if the awful punishment was only
known to those who infiict it; if the terrible
effects of it were only known; the idiOcy
and imbecility it causes; the hardened Grim
inals it makes; the ultimate injury it does
to sOciety-if this was all known, that
severe sentence would never have been
passed only in cases now punished cap!tally.
Except in such cases, no man should be
sentenced definitely, but released when all
persons are satisfied he will enter the hon
orable walks of life. During his cOnfine-
ment. he should be taught trade and al
lowed regular price for all his work.
Then you would see him work in manner