The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-07-19
WHAT TO DO
 WITH WASTE MEN
By pr. Edwin F. Bowers

Under the above caption the New Haven Times-Leader, in an able edi- torial, says that
 ''So long as there is an acre of re- claimable land in the United States, why should there be a single able bodied man fdling his life away in a prison cell? Denmark has proved that the convict employed outdoors at a creative task is not only a better man. but better prisoner than the one confined between four walls. There is but one state in the Union where convict labor could not be usefully employed in restoring ex- hausted or abandoned land to fertili- ty, planting forests. draining swamps or watering deserts. The practical objections that naturally arise in ones mind are conclusively answered by Denmarks experience.
 There is no competition with un- ion labor, and the best of it is that the waste man is frequently reclaim ed along with the waste land"
 This is splendidly human, and in distinct accord with modern thought.
 A nation can be judged by the treatment 1t metes out to Its unfor- unates.
 The horrible cruelties and hideous iniquities depicted by John Kenneth Turner in "Barbarous Mexico" ex- press more clearly than could Hugo or a Verestchagin, the savagery and brutaljzed slavery of this unfortunate land.
 The exposure of our penal institu- tional methods by Jack London and Charles Edward Russell chill the blood and overcome the reader with a sickening sense of fear and dread. And now Warden McClaughry, of the Leavenworth model penitentiary' has been proved beyond cavil to be one of the relics of inquistorial days, a true reincaration of Torquemada. The Federal Penitentfary has been shown to be a hell where vile wild orgies ,undreamed of outside the pages of Kraft -Ebing's Psychcopathia on the subject of sexual perverston, were indulged in indiscriminately, with the knowledge and connivance of "whited sepulcher'' McClaughry and his graceless son.
 "Stringing up by the thumbs the eat solitary confinement, Tn the dungeon until reason tottered from her throne, and the poor victim bab- bled and shrieked incoherent nothings at the slimy walls; actual Killings of unfortunate prisoners by the young scion of the McClaughrys and his in- famous guards-these were but few of the tales which a Pope or a Guy
 
 justice to.
 And now we have Alexander Irvine's terrible novel, t'The Magyar" being the results of this minister's ac- tual experiences as a laborer in the peon and convict lumber camps Of our South. An awful arraignmenr- almost beyond belief that these things so graphically described could exist in .'the land of the free and the home of the brave.''
 One lays the book aside as though awakening from some fearful night mare awakes to combat sthe incubus of blackness that weights him down, only to hear the galloping heart beats reiterate within implacable in- exorablity, Its true; it's true; it's true.''
 Save these men of America. Wipe out the convict camps and the legal slavery known as peonage!
 Cast out the heroes of the Mo- Claughry stamp-civflize our barbar- ous penitentiaries. The old Mosiac creed of "An eye for an eye" must be superseded by the methods of that splendid soul Judge B. Lindsey, turn ing criminal into an honest law-re- specting man: substituting the beneh- cient schoolmaster for the bestial f1ogger; developing the honor and in- tegrity of a prisoner by giving him his chance (working under Gods blue sky with the sweet growing things); eliminating forever the dun geons and chains; (putting them in the museum of the past) with. the Iron Maiden, the Bed of Damien, the thumbscrew and the rack. We are in the dawn of a new civilization, an era where the Brotherhood of Man will posulate the Fatherhood of God, Lombroso, Daddy Fuller, Judge Lind- sey and the modern science of penol- ogy will humanize our methods of procedure with criminals.
 The splendid work in Denmark shows what is possible of attainment by open air employment of the con- victed, what marvellous benefits ac- crue to the. State from the develop ment of waste lands and natural re- sources. This is true conservation. Save waste men with waste land.