Decorah public opinion. (Decorah, Winneshiek County [Iowa]) 1895-1928, 1906-02-14

In the Chicago American of February
3rd appeared an article headed 'Boy
asks to be sent to prison to learn a
trade
perience, and knowing but toe we'll
the fallacy of the statement often
made, THAT one may learn trade in
the Iowa prisons whereby he may in
the future earn an honest living" ]
wish to warn this and all other boys
against taking this means of learning
anything. Nothing is learned nv any
one that will be any advantage in life
from term in any penitentiary, and
especially is this true as regards the
Anamosa prison (where the boy from
Sioux City must go) under the present
administration. 1t is generally sup
posed by society that persons sent to
the prisons are taught some kind of a
trade. The supposition is entirely
erroneous. No trade is taught to con-
victs at Iowa prisons except stone
cntting, to which under the present
administration only long time men,
who are said to be very bad, OF il a
boy should be assigned to the stone
shed he must be one who has offended
the warden or other officers, and is
placed there more for punishment than
for any advantage to be derived by
what he may learn. A man or boy
who learns to cut stone at Anamosa is
made to despise the only trade to be
learned in the prison because he is
taught to believe he is placed there for
extra punishment rather than he
should derive benefit. OF all who
are said to have learned to cut stone,
or who are generally supposed to have
learned some trade in a prison, can
not discover one out of thousand
who are now earning living or ever
have earned living by the trade said
to have been learned while in prison.
The very thought that such work con-
stantly brings to the mind of an ex-
convict makes the work distasteful to
him.
The young man or boy who goes to
the penitentiary does learn things by
which he generally puts in the most
of his life in prison. not as skilled
mechanic, but as man who sees
nothing better to do than to return to
the school il which he secured bis
education The public brands him as
a leach ON society, only tit for the
balance of his life to occupy fellows
place.
The writer of this knows personally
quite a large number of men who have
done several terms in prison some
as many as seven terms, who, when
Young men had just as good a chance
to become good, influential men as
any other man, but they thought as
does the boy in Sioux CITY that they
would do a nice thing by breaking
into the penitentiary. They are still
there, or il they are not, in nine cases
of ten they are at present candidates
to soon return.
This boy from Sioux City, or any
other bov who gets term in
penitentiary will find whon too late
that all the trade he has leared is to
be tramp. He will find that tramp
has harder lot than the boy who
earns but three dollars a week. He
will fin3 that other boys he knows,
and who did not break into prison,
are respected citizens, with a good
occupation, possibly good business,
while he is but common bum, drunk.
or low tramp. and worst of all he will
find the boys with whom he used to
chum when boy working for three
dollars a week (whether rich or poor)
have no use for him. In fact, try as
he will he can not again see life as he
formerly did-he is an ex-convict.
The judge who sends a boy to the
penitentiary has much to answer for,
and if he will look about him he will
be very careful; if he is worthy of
his position, he will not send boy to
the penitentiary if there is pos
sibility of avoiding it.
DAN WALKER.