The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1918-04-07
0oLu Hears From Woodruff AboHW Why andHo
Her Novel, <The Imprisoned Fireman. Was Written

should be a training school in which
every inmate should be forced to learn
that for which he is best fitted,
Governmental contracts pertaining to
national needs could be given to such
institutions. Pay each of these working
men a living wage, part of which to 80
toward retrieving the wrong which he
had done his fellows. If a thief steals
your purse, does it help you TO lock him
up and without giving him chance to
pay the money back be taxed by the
state for his maintenance? Would il
not be better to pay that man for his
labor, make him repay you, and in adj
dition enable him to continue support
ing his family at home, instead of max
ing paupers-or worse-of his wife and
criminals of his children? That seems
to me the real and only way to really
protect society," If a man be a drunk
ard, cure him. Drunkenness is dis
ease. If he be lunatic, treat MIN as
lunatic. If he be mentally deficient or
moral degenerate. keep him segregat-
ed but treat him decently. and in some
way find a means of cultivatIng any
good traits he may possibly possess. Our
prisons should be hospitals and vocation
al and industrial schools. with a govern
ing spirit of moral inspiration dominant
ing the administration. When this IS
done and our government faces the pris-
on problem from the angle of pity and
desire to make and not unmake future
citizens, ii will be approaching the ques-
ton through reason, and not prejudice.
1--WE have not vet become civilized
| enough to do without prisons altogether
and we never will so become unless we
use the condition Of imprisonment to
teach those. who have fallen by the way
side how to stand up. I believe in pris-
| ors-but only in the constructive and not
the destructive kind.
| "As for that poor boy of whom I wrote,
much of the plot of The Imprisoned
Freeman Is taken from his life history.
j his love affair his marriage. his es-
capes, recaptures and adventures.
| ",rhe old negro nanny (for ! must have
one in all my stories-is' sort of a
| trade mark, you know, you will recog-
nize as the dear old soul you have seen
here in my own house; she VINO told
irwin Cobb, after hearing him recite
dialect story, that he sho' was mo
like a colored gemman dan any white
! man she ever knowed'-the best COM
| pliment his dialect has ever received, or
50 says this famous author
But now dear Dolly I'm not going 10
tell you one bit more about that pook
If I write you many more sucn long
letters. I'll tell you all that have said
in it, and then you won't read IL
there
stance of the making Of Helen s. Wood
lruff's new story THE Imprisoned Free
man''-the pretty, attractive southern girl
OF whom a noted Boston critic said
when her first book, Mis- Beauty ap-
peared some years ago:
"No stories have been given to the
! public quite so full of charm and feel
ing since Thomas Nelson Pages day.
if he represents the old south, Hes~n ,,
Woodruff represents the new south IN
the same genre. and there Is no reason
WHY she should not give us the very
firest American literature endowed by
her rare charm and human feeling.
The countless hundreds of friends and
admirers of this clever southern girl,
who has been the toast OF the New YORK
-four hundred" we'll as the Htteratl
of that big city ever since her residence
there. ~iil await her new novel, Ihe
, IMPRISONED Freeman with tremendous
interest and genuine personal regard.