Maud Ballington Booth

“ They have repeatedly said to me that the shuffling uncertain gait, the head hung down, the shifty look in the eye, and the fact that he can hardly give a straight clear statement of what he needs, have all gone to rob him of confidence, and people have turned away merely to say, "I could not think of employing such a one." Alas, in the past, that picture has been only too true of many a long termed man in the first days after his discharge from prison. But what has made him so? The world says a guilty conscience, a shiftless unstable character; he merely shows what he is, a criminal born! ”

“ The refrain has burst forth at Christmas gatherings, at home-comings from school, on every festive occasion, around all true home hearths, and its echo has been heard on plain and prairie, amid mountain peaks and forest fastness, as wanderers have in thought turned homeward. There is perhaps no place where the old tune and well loved words sound with more pathos, than when the refrain is raised in a prison audience and rolled through the chapel or around the gallery by a thousand manly voices. Heads are bowed, eyes grow dim with tears and sometimes lips tremble too much to frame the words. ”

“ Can you imagine how hard and bitter is the awakening for such a man when he returns to life to find himself a marked and branded being, one to be distrusted and watched, pointed out and whispered about, with all too often the door of honest toil shut in his face? The man discharged from prison is not unreasonable. He does not expect an easy path. We do not ask for him a way strewn with roses or a cheer of welcome. He has sinned, he has strayed from the right road, plunged over the precipice of wrong-doing, and it must at best be a hard climb back again. ”

“ Looking out over the great field, notwithstanding the difficulties that still confront us, there is one word that shines out supreme, "Hope!" At first it was flashed to us from above because of our faith in the Divine, now it flashes up from below, as we catch the gleam of the grain of gold in the many human souls still in the shadow. So we can go forward with hearts strong to endure, brave to suffer and warm to sympathize, for we know beyond a doubt or fear, that in the last great day of reckoning, we shall find that the toil has paid in that coin which is current in the world beyond. ”

“ One day as he walked up Broadway carrying under his arm a parcel which he was to deliver to a customer, he felt a hand suddenly fall on his shoulder. The cheery tune he had been whistling abruptly ceased. It seemed as if a cloud passed over the sunshine obscuring it as he turned to recognize in the man who accosted him, the detective who had once sent him to state prison. "What are you doing?" asked the detective. "I am working for such and such a firm," he said. "What have you got under your arm?" ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our idea has never been to prepare a big banquet to which the hungry are bidden for one good meal. Many of our families are out of town or scattered from one end to the other of this long island, and even could we gather them all together, we want our help to be more lasting. The Christmas tree decked for the children is a treat always enjoyed by little ones, but even that sends them back to a very gloomy home that seems all the colder with its fireless stove and empty cupboard, after the glitter and brightness of the festivity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [Pg 17] loss of liberty, has brought anguish, despair and shame to quicken every feeling. ”

“ The real punishment of the prisoner commences after the liberty he has so longed for comes. The day he looked forward to arrives, he steps out into the world a man, alone in the crowd, marked, branded, not entirely alone for he has chained to him a corpse, his dead past. At the time that success seems almost in his grasp his past arises, like an evil spirit and drags him down in the mire again. ”

“ SANTA CLAUS RESURRECTED
Christmas is a sad season in prison, because it is, perhaps of all days, the one when thoughts most surely circle around home and when pictures of past happy days shine out in vivid contrast to the lonely narrow cell with its bare walls and heavy barred door. But if it is a sad day for the men within the walls it is equally so for many of the families who have to abandon the thought of any Christmas cheer to brighten their poverty. ”

“ Dear Little Mother:—I am sorry that I must begin by asking your pardon for not having written for so long a time, but I am deeply thankful that my next words can be, that I have done well in every sense of the word. After the dull emptiness of the past, my life here comes like the opening of summer after a long winter of weariness and discontent. Day by day the influences that had grown up in the old life have been losing their place, and new interests coming into my heart that make me happier and stronger and better. ”

“ Often the man cannot sleep for nights together under the excitement and the nervous strain proves intense. Through the dark nights of wakefulness he puts the finishing touches to the castles in the air that he has been building through the weary term when with his body in prison, his mind wandered out into the days to come, and hope, battling with fear, painted for him a rainbow in the storm clouds of the future. ”

“ Could they have seen it as I saw it, they would have turned away to say, "So there is hope for the convict." Hope! Yes, indeed! That is what I am reading day by day in the life experiences of our "boys" in prison. That is the message that is being sent back in louder, more certain tones from the lives of thousands who have stood the test of liberty. In a work like ours, the happy, hopeful side is what gives us courage to face the hard, stern difficulties that cannot be slighted or forgotten, but must from their very urgency be faced and combated. ”

“ But what of those who have no home, no friends, no place to turn? Especially does this need confront us in the case of the long time prisoner. Think of coming back into life after fifteen or twenty years' imprisonment! After six weeks in a hospital room, the streets seem to us a roaring torrent of danger. One feels as if every car were bent on running one down and the very pedestrians are possessed to one's imagination with a desire to collide with one at every step. ”

“ It is easy to say, let the man work, but where shall he find occupation; who wants the man who can give no clear account of himself? If in honesty of heart he tells the truth and states, "I am straight from prison," he is told to go on his way, and often the voice that gives the command is harsh with indignant contempt and loathing, and yet this man has one inalienable right in common with all his fellow-men, the right to live, and to live, the man must have bread. ”

“ I have seen splendid, able men in charge thrown out because of a political change in the state. They had put their heart and soul into their work, and through years of experience had made themselves familiar with the needs and difficulties of their position. They were in the midst of much needed changes, when they had to step out, and turn over the reins of government to some new man, who however good, and able a citizen, was absolutely new to the conditions in state prison, and would have to begin at the beginning and learn it all over again. ”

“ The vast majority of men in prison really desire to live honest lives again. But they need a champion who will help them in their new-made resolution, one who will aid them, while in prison to be true to God and themselves. One who will meet them at the prison gate upon their discharge and take them home. One who will stand between them and the frown and censure of a world which forgets that they have already been fully punished for their misdeeds. One who will aid them in finding honest employment and to whom they can always turn for help and counsel. ”

“ How much it has meant of cheer and sunshine to the men, can only be realized as we gather from day to day the news that comes to us from all over the country. It must be remembered how shut off these men are from friendship, from the world, from all matters of interest that can carry them out of their dull, dreary routine in cell and workshop life, to understand what this link with the outer world has proved to many of them. ”

“ I have personally known many of these men and have traced their lives, talked with them heart to heart, and I can tell the world, as my profound conviction, that the habitual criminal is made, not born; manufactured by man, not doomed by a monster-god; that such criminals are the result of the lack of charity, of knowledge or thought or whatever else you may like to call it, that makes the world shrink from and doom the sinner to a return to sin, that treads further down in the mire the man who has fallen. ”