Part 51

In every prison and in every prisoner there are lessons for each of us. You will not waste time to-day if you walk through this great Auburn prison and think of the men there think why they came there, think how they could have been saved, think what will gradually empty prisons and make them unnecessary.

A man with one arm opens the first iron gate--his mutilated body foreshadows the mutilated minds and souls within.

Before the door of the prison there are bright flowers--the name of the prison itself stands out in brightly colored blossoms to prove the gardener's ability and strange sense of the appropriate. Many of the causes that bring men there are written out in just such bright colors--when first seen--and many a prisoner must have thought of that as he passed through the iron door.

A party of six or seven go through the prison with you.

There is a woman of middle age, stout and cheerful, in a bright purple dress. There are two children, a moon-faced man, a tall, thin man, and others whom you do not notice.

Carelessly they look at a nervous woman sitting in the reception room talking to a convict. They take no interest in her, no interest in the convict. To you the prison guide says:

"She comes here to see him as often as the rules allow. She's his wife. She's been coming for seven years. I tell you, women get the hard end of it in this world."

Women do indeed get the hard end of it. There are twelve hundred men in that prison--and every one of them has caused some woman to suffer. And every one has broken the heart of one other woman--his mother.

Through a narrow door you travel with your fellow-visitors.

At every step you marvel at the curious indifference of average humanity to the one interesting thing--their fellow-man.

There are shown to you piles upon piles of loaves of bread--fresh and brown. The guide says: "We bake every day. Nine hundred loaves a day."

The stout woman in purple sighs with amazement, the children gape, the man with the round face has an anxious look--he seems to be a taxpayer.

But not one looks at or thinks of the convict who turns quickly away to hide a thin, white face. To you the guide says: "He's a forger. You can see he's sensitive about being here. Some of them never seem to get used to it." ----

The stout woman in purple is delighted with the enormous copper vats for making the convicts' coffee. She is charmed with the great iron pots for boiling soup.

But you will be more interested in these facts:

There is a great chapel--BUT NO CONVICT IS COMPELLED TO ATTEND.

There is a huge wash room--fitted with showers for the hardy, with porcelain tubs for the old and crippled--AND EVERY MAN IS COMPELLED TO TAKE HIS BATH.

How much of progress, how much that is hopeful for humanity, is told in those words!

Religious services are optional--no more compulsion of man's soul or of his belief.

Bathing IS COMPULSORY. Truly, we progress, and the prison rules prove it.

There were showers in every prison and in every insane asylum one hundred years ago--but those showers were used only to torture the criminal or the lunatic. He was doused with cold water until senseless.

There were chapels in the old-time prisons, and all were forced to accept and profess such views as the majority or the ruler chose to profess.

That prison at Auburn is a monument to humanity's sorrows and weaknesses. But it tells in every department of human decency and of a constant striving by those who are fortunate to help others.

In the prison yard a squad of convicts are marching. The lock-step is there no longer. Prison reform has ended that. The convict is no longer forced into a gait which stamps him ever after.

There are electric lights in the hundreds of cells--and there is absolute cleanliness throughout the vast structure. No hotel is cleaner, if any be as clean.

The convicts get their letters twice a week. They have pictures in their cells--and they may have musical instruments if they wish; and many a man, beside his narrow plank bed, has a strip of rag carpet made at home. Their lives are horrible--for confinement kills men's souls; and one has said who knew prison life:

"It is only what is GOOD in man That wastes and withers there; Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate, And the Warder is Despair." ----

While you go through the prison you see the things mentioned--electric lights, clean halls, bathing apparatus, and the rest. But you STUDY the human beings working at their fixed tasks, or moving about in their dismal, heavy suits of stripes.