



Produced by ellinora, Martin Pettit and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)






THE MAN BEHIND THE BARS

BY

WINIFRED LOUISE TAYLOR

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1914

COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Published October, 1914

[Illustration: Logo]


TO

MY PRISON FRIENDS




PREFACE


Lest any one may charge me with extravagant optimism in regard to
convicts, or may think that to me every goose is a swan, I wish to say
that I have written only of the men--among hundreds of convicts--who
have most interested me; men whom I have known thoroughly and who never
attempted to deceive me. Every writer's vision of life and of humanity
is inevitably  by his own personality, and I have pictured these
men as I saw them; but I have also endeavored, in using so much from
their letters, to leave the reader free to form his own opinion.
Doubtless the key to my own position is the fact that I always studied
these prisoners as men; and I tried not to obscure my vision by looking
at them through their crimes. In recalling conversations I have not
depended upon memory alone, as much of what was said in our interviews
was written out while still fresh in my mind.

I have no wish to see our prisons abolished; but thousands of
individuals and millions of dollars have been sacrificed to wrong
methods of punishment; and if we aim to reform our criminals we must