Winifred Louise Taylor

“ Something moved me to speak to him as I had never spoken to one of my prisoners, to try and make him feel my appreciation of his courage, his unselfishness, his faithfulness. I told him that I realized how he had lived out the qualities of the most heroic soldier. To give one's life for one's country when the very air is charged with the spirit of patriotism is a fine thing and worthy of the thrill of admiration which it always excites. But liberty is dearer than life, and the prison atmosphere gives little inspiration to knightly deeds. ”

“ I can think of Alfred only as a good soldier through the battle of life. As a child, fighting desperately for mere existence, defeated morally for a brief period by defective social conditions; later depleted physically through the inhumanity of the prison-contract system; then drawing one long breath of happiness and freedom through the kindness of the Welsh preacher; but only to plunge into battle with adverse economic conditions; and all this time striving constantly against the most relentless of foes, the disease which finally overcame him. ”

“ Wilson was one of the men behind the bars; but it is as man among men that I think of him; and his last words to me, "We are all brothers and sisters," sum up the truth that inspires every effort the round world over to answer the call of those who are desolate or oppressed—whether the cry comes from little children in the mine, the workshop, or the tenement, or from those who are in slavery, in hospital, or in prison. ”

“ Now, you ask me to forego all this; to work hard just to earn the barest living—for I could never earn big wages; you ask me to deny myself everything I care for just for the sake of a moral idea, when nobody in the world but you cares whether I go to the devil or not, and I don't really believe in either God or devil. Now, how many churchgoing men do you know who would give up a money-making business and accept the barest poverty and loneliness just for the sake of a moral idea? ”

“ Time and again men innocent of the crime have been executed for murder. Everything is against a man accused of murder. The simple accusation antagonizes the public against the accused man. The press, which loves to be sensational, joins in the prosecution, sometimes also the pulpit. The tortures of the sweat-box are resorted to, that the accused may be driven to convict himself before being tried; and one who has no money may find himself convicted simply because he cannot prove his innocence—although the law professes to hold a man innocent until his guilt is proven. ”

“ Almost inaccessible to the outsider is the heart of a convict, or the criminal's point of view of life. In fact their hearts and their points of view differ according to their natures and experiences. But to think of our prisoners in the mass—the thousand or two thousand men cut off from the world and immured in each of our great penitentiaries—is to think of them as the Inarticulate. The repression of their lives has been fearful. All that was required of them was to be part of the machinery of the prison system; to work, to obey, to maintain discipline. ”

“ June morning the sudden thought of the prison would crash with cruel discord; at times everything most bright and beautiful would but the more sharply accent the tragedy of prison life. Deep below the surface of my thought there was always the consciousness of the prison; but, on the other hand, this abiding consciousness made the ordinary trials and annoyances inseparable from human life seem of little moment, passing clouds across the sunlight of a more fortunate existence ”

“ It is true that the injured party is at liberty to bring suit against the individual who charged him with the crime, but as the burned child dreads the fire so the innocent man convicted of a crime dreads the courts.
But we are waking up to a sense of this most cruel robbery; the robbery of a man's liberty, his earnings, his reputation, and too often his health; and we are coming to see that compensation from the state, on receiving convincing evidence of the man's innocence, is only the man's just due—is even far less than fair play. ”

“ On the fly-leaf of a little note-book which I carried when visiting the penitentiary were pencilled these words: "The Christian religion is the ministry of love and common sense," and I have lived to see the teaching of Christianity forming the basis of prison reform, and science clasping the hand of religion in this relation of man to man. Henceforth I shall believe that nothing is too good to be true, not even the coming of universal peace. ”

“ The artistic world is rejoicing over the discovery in Greece of some beautiful fragments of sculpture hidden far beneath the débris of centuries; shall we not rejoice more richly when we are able to dig down beneath the surface of the commonest child that comes to us from our great cities, and discover and develop that faculty in him which is to make him fit to live in usefulness with his fellow men? Seeking for these qualities in the child we shall best conserve, as is done in physical nature, the highest type, until we have raised all human life to a higher level. ”

“ Freedom for the body, exercise for every muscle, is not only advocated by physicians but has become the fashion, until golf is now the great American pastime, and the benefit of physical recreation is no longer questioned.
Even more far-reaching in eventual influence is the modern recognition of the rights and claims of the individual. This awakening is so widespread that it cannot be centralized in any personal leadership. It is like the dawning of a great light upon the life of the twentieth century in all civilized countries, and already it is affecting existence in countless directions. ”

“ One lovely June evening when I went into the corridor of the jail to leave a book, this old criminal called me beside his cell for a few words.
"Don't let that boy go to the reform school," he began earnestly. "The reform school is the very hotbed of crime for a boy like that. Save him if you can. Save him from a life like mine. Put him on a farm. Get him into the country, away from temptation." ”

“ It is hard to be in prison when a boy, but the older convicts regard these boys with compassion, touched by something in them akin to their own lost youth, or perhaps to children of their own. Little Anton looked no older and was no larger than the average boy of fourteen; and to the older men he seemed a child.
Human nature is human nature, and youth is youth in spite of bolts and bars. The springtime of life was repressed in Anton, but it was working silently within him, and silently there was unfolding a power not given to all of us. ”

“ Our plans worked smoothly, and a few weeks later, when all Chicago was given over to the World's Fair, the desire of Anton's heart came true and he was restored to home and freedom. Or, as the newspapers would have put it: "Our anarchist governor let loose another murderer to prey upon society." Poor little murderer! In all that great city there was no child more helpless or harmless than he.
The image of little Anton Zabrinski, as of the prison itself, grew faint in my heart for the time, under the spell of the long enchanting summer days and magical evenings at the White City. ”

“ Every instinctive impulse of movement, the glance of the eye, the smile of understanding, the stretch of weary muscles, the turning of the head, all must be guarded or repressed. The whole tendency of prison discipline has been to detach the individual from his fellow man; at all costs to prevent communication between convicts; and to stifle all expression of individuality except between cell-mates when the day's work was over. And companionship of cell-mates is likely to pall when the same two men are confined in a seven-by-four cell for three hundred and sixty-five evenings in a year. ”

“ As I look back through my twenty-five years of prison friendship it is like looking through a long portrait-gallery, only the faces are living faces and the lips unite in the one message: "We, too, are human beings of like nature with yourselves." ”

“ Afterward it was told in the prison that Evans died of joy at the prospect of release. For him to be carried into the new life on this high tide of happiness seemed to me a gift from heaven. For in the thought of the prisoner freedom includes everything to be desired in life. The joy of that anticipation had blinded Evans to the fact that his health was ruined beyond repair. He was spared the realization that the life of [Pg 202] freedom, so fair to his imagination, could never truly be his; for the prison-house of disease has bolts and bars which no human hand can withdraw. ”

“ No longer do they eat in silence with downcast eyes; the table is a meeting-place of human beings where talk flows naturally. No longer is life one dull round from prison cell to shop, where talk and movements of relaxation are forbidden; and back in silent march to prison cell, with never a breath of fresh air except on the march to and from the shops. This monotony is now broken by a recreation hour in the open air every day, given in turn to companies of the men taken from the workshops in which exchange of remarks is now allowed. ”

“ It is largely owing to the sympathy of the present warden that light and air have come into the moral and mental atmosphere of this prison. In the natures of the men qualities hitherto dormant and undiscovered have come to the surface and are in the ascendant, aroused by the warden's appeal to their manhood; and the warden's enthusiasm is the spark that has touched the spirit of the subordinate officials and has fused into unison the whole administration. And the warden is fortunate in the combination of men working with him. ”

“ The basic principle of reform in those who prey upon society is the changing of energies destructive into energies constructive. It is the opening of fresh channels for human forces. Change of environment, the breaking of every association connected with criminal pursuits, life in the open in contrast with the tainted atmosphere of crowded tenements and dance halls—all this has a healthful, liberating influence on the mind; abnormal obsessions are relaxed, different brain-cells become active, and the moral fibre of the man as well as his physical being absorbs vital elements. ”

“ I knew that if I said a word and went into court fresh from the penitentiary I would certainly be hanged, and I had not reached a point when I was ready to sacrifice my life for a stranger.
"In the feverish life I led in the short time out of prison I forgot all about this, until I found myself here for ten years and then I thought: there is a man in this prison doing hard work, eating coarse food, deprived of everything that makes life worth having, and suffering for a crime of which he knows as little as the dust that is yet to be created to fill these miserable cells. ”

“ Later I learned that even in prison there are lights among the shadows, and that sunny hearts may still have their gleams of sunshine breaking through the darkness of their fate; but my first impression was one of unmitigated gloom. When I expressed something of this to the warden his response was: "Yes, every life here represents a tragedy—a tragedy if the man is guilty, and scarcely less a tragedy if he is innocent." ”

“ I wish to make a few remarks from personal observation upon this subject of prison reform. I will admit, to begin with, that upon the ground of protection to society, the next best thing to hanging a criminal is to put him in prison, providing you keep him there; but if you seek his reformation it is the worst thing you can do with him. Convicts generally are not philosophers, neither are they men of pure thought or deep religious feelings. They are not all sufficient to themselves, and for this reason confinement never did, never can and never will have a good effect upon them. ”

“ Western county homes were at that time hard places; in some respects existence there was harder than in the prison, where restraint and discipline are in a measure a protection, securing a man undisturbed possession of his inner life and thoughts, during working hours at least. The ceaselessly intrusive life of the home, with the lack of discipline and the unrestrained intercourse of inmates, with the idleness and the dirt, is far more demoralizing; crime itself does not sap self-respect like being an idle pauper among paupers. ”

“ As long as capital punishment is upheld as necessary to the protection of society each State should have its State executioner; and executions should take place at the State capital in the presence of the governor and as many legislators as may be in the city. In relegating to the penitentiary the ugly office of Jack Ketch we escape the realization of what it all is—how revolting, how barbarous—and we throw one more horror into the psychic atmosphere of prison life. ”

“ We knew that it was necessary for Johnson to be given time to enable his mind to grasp the fact [Pg 153] of coming release and to make very definite plans to be met at the prison-gates by some one on whom he could depend, for the man of forty-seven would find a different world from the one he left when a boy of eighteen. It gives one a thrill to hold in one's hands the papers that are to open the doors of liberty to a man imprisoned for life, and it was with a glad heart that I took the next train for the penitentiary. ”