The Mankato free press., 1903-02-06
..PRISON REFORM
Maud Ballington Booth Ad-
desses Mankato. Audience.
Notable Address by This Brilliant
Woman.-A Plea for Reformed
Former Prisoners.
From Fridays Daily.

From Fridays Daily.
The opera house was well filled last
night for the lecture course entertain
ment, the address on Prison Reform by
Maud Ballington Booth. Secretary A. C.
Gran of the Y. NJ. c. A. presided and in
troduced the speaker as one who was
known and loved more than any other
woman on the American platform"
/ Mrs. Booth gave an intensely interest
ing lecture. While her voice is often
pitched in an unpleasing high key, still
she succeeds in holding the undivided at
tention of her audiences, through the
earnestness and enthusiasm which she
displays in her subject. She is speaker
of unusual ability.
Mrs Booth said that she came to speak
of no ideas, notions or hobbies of her
own, nor on thoughts gained from the
writings of others, but to speak mes
sage that comes from the lives of those
whom she represents the prisoners. The
theme was one that could not be solved
by press, pulpit OF school, and it was all
very well for penologists to gather sta
tistics ON the subject. There is only one
standpoint from which the tangled skein
can be unraveled- cell. One can un-
derstand the prisoner only when in close
contact with him, and on his level. The
whole key to the situation is within the
prison, and only there if rightly under
stood can it be solved.
The speaker said that she had been en-
gagged in the work for seven years, and
had come into close, friendly relationship
with thousands of men, and had learned
their past histories, the difficulties that
beset them, etc. She had felt much of
the hope and sunshine as well as the
dark side of prison life. People had tried
to deter her, looking upon the population
of the state prisons as being composed of
utter wrecks, not worth saving. -
The soil is not to be blamed if the
right kind of crop is not produced. 1t
should be remembered that some fields
are neglected and that a crop of weeds
has grown rank where work should have
been done.
Mrs. Booth said that her work in the
prisons was Joy and delight. Nowhere
had she received such responsive audi
ences, and nowhere are people living up
to the teachings of the savior as there.
She had seen miracle after miracle
wrought by that unseen touch of the dear
hand that was stretched to cleanse the
leper. The message she brought from
the prisons was one of gladness and hope.
If the message that came down from
Calvary is believed, then the majority of
those within prison walls can be saved.
What Mrs Booth had seen had intensi-
fed her belief that there is in every heart
a tender spot if it can only be reached, a
tender harmony that will vibrate to the
chords of heaven if one knows how to
touch it. She did not look upon her
prison audiences as being hopelessly de-
graded. They are not much different
from outside audiences. She preferred the
son who sinned and repented to the one
who went his way in pride. She did not
believe in the maudlin sympathy that
says the prisoners are ill-treated, that they
should be maintained in luxury and let
out soon. She believed in punishment
for crime and in firm prison discipline,
and the prisoners were all with her on
that.
Not all the bad men are inside of the
prison walls. There are as many out
side as inside, and they are the most
dangerous. Some are just able to skirt
the law. Some of these are in office and
some of the polluted are able to pass in
society, and these latter are the most
dangerous of all. The world has it that
those who are detected are the ones to be
Stunned. The law is more merciful than
the world The former opens the prison
door when the mans time is up and
sends him out ON an equal footing with
all the world. The latter says, "There
goes an ex-convict." That is where the
injustice comes in, and it is against that
that Mrs. Booth was raising her voice. 1t
was that that sent the men back to
prison again and again. Les Miserables
is not fiction but fact. Thousands of
men have been let out of prison who in
tended to be honest, but they were given
no chance. The doors of honest labor
were closed against them, and men who
knew them wanted to know them no
more. They were thus reduced to starva
tion and want and were forced into
crime and prison. Many would have
been railroaded back to prison had Mrs.
Booth not stood by them and exposed
those who were bounding them They
are murderers, burglars, ETC., but they are
not all bad. Many instances of noble
impulses on the part of prisoners could
be told.
People seem to be densely ignorant of
what our prison population is. Mrs.
Booth said that she would not exchange
her prison audience for any fashionable
church audience. Nowhere did she find
an audience SO absolutely silent and at
tentive, nowhere an audience so intelli-
gent in grasping points, and nowhere an
audience so critical. They are intensely
sensitive, but they repay the speaker
many times over when a chord is touch
ed. The prisoners are above the average
of intelligence. They come from every
circle of society on the outside, some have
taken college courses, and every profess
sion and trade is represented, some have
had great wealth, and some constant
struggle with poverty, some have had
tender bringing up, and others no oppor-
tunities whatever. They are not an audi
ence of laziness or the tramp style, but