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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
first reform our methods of dealing with them, from the police court to
the penitentiary.

WINIFRED LOUISE TAYLOR.

_August 6, 1914._




THE MAN BEHIND THE BARS




CHAPTER I


I have often been asked: "How did you come to be interested in prisoners
in the first place?"

It all came about simply and naturally. I think it was W. F. Robertson
who first made clear to me the truth that what we put into life is of
far more importance than what we get out of it. Later I learned that
life is very generous in its returns for what we put into it.

In a quiet hour one day it happened that I realized that my life was out
of balance; that more than my share of things worth having were coming
to me, and that I was not passing them on; nor did I see any channel for
the passing on just at hand.

The one thing that occurred to me was to offer my services as teacher in
a Sunday-school. Now, I chanced to be a member of an Episcopal church
and their Sunday-school was held at an hour inconvenient for my
attendance; however, in our neighborhood was a Methodist church, and as
I had little regard for dividing lines among Christians I offered my
services the next Sunday to this Methodist Sunday-school. My preference
was for a class of young girls, but I was assigned as teacher to a class
of ten young men, of ages ranging between eighteen and twenty years, and
having the reputation of decided inclination toward the pomps and the
vanities so alluring to youth.

It was the season of revival meetings, and within a month every member
of my class was vibrating under the wave of religious excitement, and
each one in turn announced his "conversion." I hardly knew how to handle
the situation, for I was still in my twenties, and as an Episcopalian I
had never experienced these storm periods of religious enthusiasm. So
while the recent converts were rejoicing in the newly found grace, I was
considering six months later when a reaction might set in.

Toward the close of the revival one of the class said to me: "I don't
know what we're going to do with our evenings when the prayer-meetings
are over, for there's no place open every evening to the men in this
town except the saloons."

"We must make a place where you boys can go," was my reply.

What the class proceeded to do, then and there, was to form a club and
attractively furnish a large, cheerful room, to which each member had a
pass-key; and to start a small circulating library, at one stroke
meeting their own need and beginning to work outward for the good of the
community.

The first contribution toward this movement was from a Unitarian friend.
Later, Doctor Robert Collyer--then preaching in Chicago--and Doctor E.
E. Hale, of Boston, each gave a lecture for the benefit of our infant
library. Thus from the start we were untrammelled by sectarianism, and
in three months a library was founded destined to become the nucleus of
a flourishing public library, now established in a beautiful Carnegie
building, and extending its beneficent influence throughout the homes,
the schools, and the workshops of the city.

Of course I was immensely interested in the class, and in the success of
their library venture, and as we had no money to pay for the services
of a regular librarian the boys volunteered their services for two
evenings in the week, while I took charge on Saturday afternoons. This
library was the doorway through which I entered the prison life.

One Saturday a little boy came into the library and handed me the
charming Quaker love story, "Dorothy Fox," saying: "This book was taken
out by a man who is in jail, and he wants you to send him another book."

Now, I had passed that county jail almost every day for years; its rough
stone walls and narrow barred windows were so familiar that they no
longer made any impression upon me; but it had not occurred to me that
inside those walls were human beings whose thoughts were as my thoughts,
and who might like a good story, even a refined story, as much as I did,
and that a man should pay money that he had stolen for three months'
subscription to a library seemed to me most incongruous.

It transpired that the prisoner was a Scotch boy of nineteen, who, being
out of work, had stolen thirty-five dollars; taking small amounts as he
needed them. According to the law of the State the penalty for stealing
any amount under the value of fifteen dollars was a sentence to the
county jail, for a period usually of sixty days; while the theft of
fifteen dollars or more was a penitentiary offence, and the sentence
never for less than one year. I quote the statement of the case of this
Scotch boy as it was given me by a man who happened to be in the library
and who knew all the circumstances.

"The boy was arrested on the charge of having taken ten dollars--all
they could prove against him; and he would have got off with a jail
sentence, but the fool made a clean breast of the matter, and now he has
to lie in jail for six months till court is in session, and then he will
be sent to the penitentiary on his own confession."

Two questions arose in my mind: Was it only "the fool" who had made