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[Illustration: A LIFETIMER'S CELL]


  _After Prison--What?_


  _By
  Maud Ballington Booth_


  [Illustration: Logo]


  _New York      Chicago      Toronto
  Fleming H. Revell Company
  London and Edinburgh_




  Copyright, 1903, by
  FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
  (_September_)


  New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
  Chicago: 63 Washington Street
  Toronto: 27 Richmond Street, W
  London: 21 Paternoster Square
  Edinburgh: 30 St. Mary Street




_DEDICATION_


  _Lovingly dedicated to our boys in prison by
               their Little Mother
                       who
   believes in them and looks with confidence
         to a bright, victorious future
         when they shall have lived down
     the old, sad record, stormed the walls
                  of prejudice,
   wrested just recognition from the skeptical
                       and
       answered convincingly the question,
          "can a convict be reformed?"_




Preface


This message from my pen is not a work on criminology or penology.
No gathering of statistics, nor comparative study of the works or
theories of learned authorities on these subjects will be found within
its pages. It is just a plea from the heart of one who knows them, for
those who cannot voice to the world their own thoughts and feelings. We
ask no sentimental sympathy or pity, no patronage or charity, but only
understanding, justice, and fair play.

My point of view is that of the cell. All I know of this great sad
problem that casts its shadow so much further than the high walls of
prison I have learned from those for whom I work, and my great joy in
every labor is the knowledge that "the boys" are with me. In speaking
of them thus I do so in prison parlance; for just as Masons on the
floor call each other "Brothers"; soldiers in camp "Comrades"; men in
college "Fellows"; so we of the prison use the term "The Boys," and
leave unspoken that hated word "Convict," which seems to vibrate with
the sound of clanging chains and shuffling lock-step.

If I do not write of others, who, during the past century, have worked
in prison reform, it is not that I have disregarded their efforts,
but as this is a record of what I have personally seen and learned,
space and time will not permit the recording of experiences which can
doubtless be read elsewhere.

In sending forth these pages of personal experience I pray that
they may stir the hearts of the free, the happy, and the fortunate
throughout our dear country, that they, in their turn, may champion the
cause of those who cannot fight their own battle, giving to them the
practical help that they so sorely need.




Contents


  I.      GOLD IN THE MINE                        11

  II.     "REMEMBER ME"                           29

  III.    THE VOLUNTEER PRISON LEAGUE             48

  IV.     THE POWER BEHIND THE WORK               81

  V.      LETTERS FROM THE "BOYS"                103

  VI.     UNWELCOMED HOME-COMING                 115

  VII.    WELCOMED HOME                          141

  VIII.   THE SAME STORY FROM OTHER PENS         170

  IX.     LIFE STORIES                           194

  X.      WIVES AND MOTHERS                      217

  XI.     SANTA CLAUS RESURRECTED                241

  XII.    PRISON REFORM                          255

  XIII.   DOES IT PAY?                           273




After Prison What?




I

GOLD IN THE MINE


Long before the discovery of gold in Australasia, geologists had
pronounced the strata auriferous. They had propounded to the world
their theories and scientific conclusions on the subject. Those
who read undoubtedly gave respectful credence to their interesting
treatises because of the learning of the writers, and then as quickly
forgot the facts that had not very strongly appealed to any personal
interest. No one thought it worth while to sell out business, and leave
home to risk or venture anything on the theories advanced. The gold lay
there untouched until one day some shepherds from the bush came into
Melbourne and displayed fragments of rock encrusted with glittering
yellow particles which were found to be pure gold. After that people
believed, for they had seen and to almost all the world "seeing is
believing." The shepherds knew nothing of geology. They could not
speak of the strata, but they had found and could show the gold, and
in their footsteps tens of thousands followed in the great rush that
opened up the mines and sent forth to the world the vast wealth that
had lain hidden for ages.

Many who have faith in the hopefulness of all human nature have
believed and told the world of their belief in the possible reformation
of criminals. They have argued that every soul is precious in the eyes
of the great Father in heaven, and that beneath the stain and dross of
crime and sin must always be some grain of gold worth redeeming. Their
great difficulty is to convince those who are hopeless as to human
nature and who, seeing very vividly the evil, have not the discernment
to see beneath it any possible good.

To the world at large a State Prison has been looked upon as an abode
of the utterly evil, depraved and good-for-nothing. In the slums are
the unfortunate victims of drink, the helpless poor and straying
ones who can still be sought and saved, but in the prisons are those
whose lives are spoiled and ruined beyond repair. Many of course give
the subject no thought and their prejudices are the result of utter
ignorance. Others form their conceptions from the sensational accounts
of notorious criminals whose deeds have been exploited in the press.
Some, perhaps, base their unfavorable judgment on the theories advanced
against the possibility of reforming the criminal, and speak as if our
prisons were full of perverted degenerates, at the mention of whom it
is proper to shudder and about whom one can speak as of some species of
human animal quite alien to the common thoughts, feelings, instincts
and possibilities which are possessed by denizens of the outside world.
How truly may it be said that prejudice builds a higher, thicker wall
around our prisoners than those of brick and stone within which the
law has placed them. Naturally in my extensive travels all over this
country and my personal contact with people of every description, I
have had ample opportunity to gauge the thought and feeling of the
world towards those in whom I am so deeply interested, and, though
during the last few years I have seen with joy a very marked change of
feeling, there is yet much gross miscomprehension of the whole subject.

Those of us who have become familiar with the question on the inside of
the walls have found a veritable gold mine of possibility. We realize
fully however that it is only when they see this gold for themselves
that the world will lay aside its doubting for faith in the future
of these men and, casting to the wind prejudice, will stretch out a
friendly hand of good-will to those who come forth from the testing
furnace.

We realized in the early years of its history that such a work as
the one of which I write could only be seen and appreciated by the
world at large in the years of the future when our "boys" had come
back into liberty and had had time to prove the genuineness of their
purpose. Already this day has dawned, and all over the country the
forerunners of the thousands still to come are proving that the work is
no experiment, though naturally many have neither seen them nor looked
into the lives of those still in prison. It is hard to make the wholly
uninformed concede that any good thing can come from such a place.
Many a time when talking to friends after some drawing-room gathering,
at a dinner table or in the cars, they will say with a look of almost
compassion, "But are you not afraid to talk with these men? Is it not
very dreadful to have to come into contact with them?" I try to explain
that they are my friends, that the respect, courtesy and attention I
receive from them could not be excelled in any circle of society; but
the raised eyebrows and incredulous looks tell plainly that I have not
answered the question, simply because to their minds all criminals
are of the same stamp as Tracy, the James brothers and Czolgosz.
They cannot conceive of men of education, refinement or gentlemanly
instincts in prison.

Constantly I am asked, "But how can you talk to these men; what can
you say; how do you touch or appeal to such an audience?" I answer,
"Precisely as I should to any lecture audience or from the pulpit of
any fashionable church." I am talking, not to the criminal with the
theft of a pocketbook or with manslaughter, burglary or murder on his
record but to the man, to the soul, the heart. It is just here that a
grave error could be made. If we always associate the prisoner with his
crime, with the stripes, the cell, the surroundings, we get wofully
far away from him and even find ourselves beyond the point where we
can reach him at all. The crime was one incident of his life, his
imprisonment is but the fact of to-day. Before he was a prisoner he
was a man, and in the future world he will be simply a man, so why not
talk to him and think of him as a man to-day. A lady was recently being
shown over a penal institution (which will remain nameless save to say
that it was not a state prison), and the officer who was explaining
the system took her from room to room that she might understand their
regime. He showed off company after company as a professor might
exhibit specimens in the different classes of zoology, talking of them
loudly in their hearing. At last coming to one of the lower grades he
said, "You will note the inferior intelligence of these men, their
poorer development. These are much lower in mental and moral capacity
and there is very little hope for them. They are many of them very
degraded and seem devoid of moral instinct." Certain malformed heads
and many poorly nourished bodies were pointed out and all this while
these classified animals stood listening. How should we like such an
experience? What thoughts passed through those minds, what fierce hate,
what hopeless despair may not have swept over them as they listened to
the summing up of their case?

Prison communities come from no uncivilized island where they form
a different species of the human family nor are they drawn from one
section of the population confined to the slums. They are from the
great, wide world at large. Some have had homes of ease and comfort
and have been educated in our finest colleges and schools. Society
gives its quota, so does the great world of the common people, while
yet others come from homes of poverty and some from no homes at all.
There are the educated and the ignorant, the rich and the poor, the
industrious and the idle, the brilliant and the poorly endowed. In
fact our audiences in Prison are much like the audiences that we meet
in the free world, save that their hearts are sore and sensitive and
that that great shadow of suffering, the awful loss of liberty, has
brought anguish, despair and shame to quicken every feeling. Nowhere
have I found audiences more attentive, earnest and intelligent than
in prison and I find all who have had any experience will compare
them most favorably with those of the outside. One thing is very
evident--superficiality, seeming and artificiality have been swept away
by the close and bitter contact with life, hence the real man is easier
to recognize and reach. They in their turn are quick to read and judge
the speaker behind the subject, the faith behind the doctrine.

Another gross misconception is the belief that all men in prison are
dishonest. People forget how many and devious are the causes for which
men can be imprisoned. Sometimes when I have asked a business man to
employ one of our "boys" the answer has been, "I am in sympathy with
your work and pity these poor fellows, but in my business I dare not
do it as there would be opportunities to steal and it would not be
right to those whose interests I must protect." This has shown me how
constantly the thought of theft and robbery is associated with all
who come from prison. There are many within the walls who have never
misappropriated a cent. This does not mean they are guiltless, for
their crime may have very justly brought them to conviction but there
is no reason to imagine that because of that punishment they must be
ranked as dishonest.

Then there are those within prison walls who, though evil well nigh all
their lives, claim our sincerest pity. They may have done desperate
deeds, may perhaps be ranked as habitual criminals and may represent
to-day the most hardened and determined offenders and yet in strict
justice they should not be spoken of with harsh condemnation, before
the sad pages of their lives have been read. The judge and jury take
cognizance only of the offense; the police and prison record note the
list of charges and the number of returns to prison but those of us
who seek to know the man beneath the criminal have a right to go back
and ask ourselves, "What chance did this man have to do right, to act
and to be as we are?" The answer sometimes is a pathetic revelation
of a loveless babyhood and childhood where blows and curses took the
place of kiss and caress; a youth where revolt against society in
an embittered heart made it easy to develop every evil tendency and
to follow the lead of those in the under-world who proved the only
possible friends and associates.

Many, many letters have I received from just this class of prisoner. I
remember especially one that spoke of such a history. It was written
just after my first visit to Joliet State Prison and was in the
natural unrestrained language of one who had never learned the art of
deftly turning sentences. He began with an apology for bad spelling and
poor writing in which he explained that it was the first letter he had
attempted to write in seven years, for he had no one in the world who
cared whether he lived or died. Then he thanked me for what I had said
to them Sunday, adding, "You said you loved us. Nobody ever said that
to me before in my whole life and I hardly know what the word means.
You spoke of home. The nearest approach to it I ever had was my time
in the kitchen of one of the state prisons where the officer was very
kind to me." Briefly this was his story. He was born in a poorhouse
in Ireland and never knew father or mother and received in childhood
no touch of love or sympathy. When still very young he was sent out
to work and soon found evil companionship and was led into trouble.
He came out to this country only to continue on the same path which
was in fact the only path he had ever known. It naturally led him to
state prison and his whole life here has been spent within the walls
except for the few short holidays in the slums between the day of his
discharge and the next arrest. All through the letter I could see that
he had never dreamed there was another life for him. He confessed he
had never tried to be good, had had no inducement or chance to be
so. Very pathetic to me was the closing sentence in which he said,
"Now that I know somebody cares, I will try." Let me diverge from my
point enough to add that he made a success of the effort and became
an earnest member of our League. On his discharge from prison he had
a happy experience at our Home and from there launched out into a new
life. He soon proved himself a good workman and in time became the
possessor of a happy little home of his own and has for several years
been a useful member of society.

I have mentioned but one but I could fill a volume with such stories. I
do not think that the happy and fortunate in this life need look upon
it as foolish sentimentality to pity the prisoners. Surely our pity
is no more misspent upon them than upon the heathen for they too have
never seen the light that they might follow it.

A young man came not long since to our Home. He was a poorly developed,
broken-spirited, frightened looking boy. His parents died when he
and his brothers and sisters were very young. He was brought up in a
juvenile asylum, bound out to people who were hard on him, ran away
and herded with criminals. He never knew home, love, sympathy or
friendship. Our Home was the first true home he had ever known. It
took weeks to work a change in the physical, mental and moral attitude
of the man but when the change commenced it was wonderful to notice
how he developed. Naturally he became devotedly attached to the one
bright happy spot in a very sad and gloomy life. When we sent him out
to his first position which was some way from the Home, he broke down
and sobbed like a child whose vacation is over and he was so utterly
homesick that those who had offered him employment had to return him to
us so that we could place him somewhere nearer the Home, for, as they
wrote, they feared that his homesickness was incurable.

Again wholesale condemnation should be withheld by the thought that
there are some innocent men within prison walls. It is natural that
justice should sometimes miscarry and yet alas, the stigma and brand
remain with the man even after his innocence has been proved. A man
was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder and served sixteen and a
half years. Most of the evidence had been purely circumstantial and he
was convicted mainly on the testimony of one witness. He was only saved
from the gallows by the earnest efforts of those who had known of his
previous good character. Last winter the woman who had borne witness
against him came to what she believed to be her deathbed and sending
for the priest she confessed that she had committed perjury. The matter
being brought to the Governor, the man was at once liberated.