Tuesday, November 17
On Tuesday the delegates were given a trip on the James River to Westover and return, and were entertained by the Local Committee with the most lavish southern hospitality.
EVENING SESSION
At eight P. M. the Chaplains’ Association held its meeting. In his address, the President, the Rev. John L. Sutton, of New Orleans, said, among other things: “Two of the greatest difficulties encountered in prison reform work are, first, the absolute need of good, moral men as prison officials—men who will take the spiritual meaning of the law and be, indeed, their brother’s keeper; for they are the ones who come into daily contact with the prisoners, and it is from them that the most good can be derived. Hence, here is a gulf that must be spanned, and how? Very easily. Physicians, lawyers, teachers, ministers—in fact, all professional men in positions of importance—must be qualified to take their places in life, and why should the guardians of eighty thousand souls be such a flagrant exception to this wise precautionary method? Why should they continue to be chosen irrespective of ability or character, and, as a rule, be drawn from the political world?
“Second. The other great need in prison reform work is that the churches as a whole bear their part in this great work; and I will speak of only my own church. In seven years’ connection with my conference exhaustive reports and discussions of educational, missionary and temperance questions, all problems of importance, and with which I am in sympathy, have absorbed the time and attention of the preachers, but they have failed properly to consider the needful work of prison reform.
“I hold that over eighty thousand people behind the prison bars now in this great country of ours are in as great need of the missionary care and attention of our churches as the heathen in the wilds of Africa.”
“Reformatory Work from the Standpoint of an Active Minister” was the subject of a paper by the Rev. Hiram W. Kellogg, D. D., of Wilmington, Del. Speaking of the church as a factor in such work, he said:
“What are we doing to prevent delinquency? Is the church a real and determining factor in the life of the community? Is it the guardian of childhood against the ravages of greed and crime? Is it pleading for true home life, this citadel of civilization? Is it protecting motherhood and guaranteeing to every child the right to be born well? Is it curtailing the power of the saloon, the low theater? Is it cleaning the streets of suggestions of sin and making them fit for boys and girls? Is it opening its buildings every night in the week and turning its awful silence into the glad music of happy children’s voices?
“Is it surrounding boy life with safe associations and making the path of religion bright with such joys as will conserve him in after years by sweet memories? Is it supporting public schools and juvenile courts and every institution not of its own immediate work, but which are essential auxiliaries to preventing of wrongdoing?
“In short, is the church bringing its concentrated talent intelligently to the beginnings of human life? This is the hopeful field we have long known, but is it the most effectively worked? You have the facts, and facts rule our age; theories have no value beyond the facts that sustain them.”
Major R. W. McClaughry, Warden of the United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth, Kan., read the following paper on “The Chaplain from the Warden’s Viewpoint”:
“The warden is apt to regard the chaplain as a great help or a great hindrance in his work. The chaplain may often be justified in having the same opinion of the warden. Whenever the personal relations between the warden and the chaplain are to any extent strained, the latter is at great disadvantage. A very few remarks dropped by the warden may so discredit the chaplain with guards and prisoners as to utterly paralyze his influence and destroy his usefulness, and this without any charges having been preferred on either side.
“A friendly and well-meaning warden may often greatly handicap a chaplain in his proper work by loading him up with duties that do not belong to his position—e. g., making him postmaster, newspaper inspector, librarian, schoolmaster and general executor and administrator—ante mortem and post mortem—of estates of sick and deceased prisoners.
“I do not think a chaplain ought to be required to inspect and pass upon the incoming and outgoing mail of prisoners. In the first place his training and education unfit him to read between the lines of letters that need inspection, while the mental drudgery imposed upon him, if he carefully reads all outgoing and incoming letters in a prison of ordinary size, unfits him for the proper work of his office. Besides, the knowledge that he has read all their correspondence prejudices against him many prisoners and renders his efforts to help them vain.
“I doubt the wisdom of placing him in charge of the library in a large prison, save as a general adviser and aid to the prisoners in enabling them to select helpful books to read, and this work can be done during his visits to the prisoners in their cells and dormitories. This visitation is the most important work that he can do in the prison, and should on no account be omitted. The preaching service that he renders will be far more helpful and acceptable—as will also his Sunday-school instruction—if it grows out of and is tempered by his experience in cell visitation. A pastor who wishes to become helpfully acquainted with the inner life of his parishioners does not summon them one by one to his office for interviews and see them nowhere else. No more can the chaplain follow that plan and hope to succeed with his parishioners.
“Sometimes a warden deems it his duty to apply certain portions of the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians to his chaplain and require him to ‘bear all things, believe all things, hope all things and endure all things’; therefore it behooves the chaplain to be at all times as ‘wise as a serpent,’ and sometimes ‘as harmless as a dove’; but where the occasion arises (which fortunately is but seldom) for the chaplain to use the language of rebuke, it calls for the highest quality of courage, and the chaplain who then shirks or quails stamps himself as unfit for his high office.
“If the prophet Nathan, when he sought that interview with Israel’s king, had hesitatingly remarked that he had a very unpleasant matter to talk about, which might get into the newspapers and create a royal scandal, etc., the proud monarch would probably have kicked him downstairs. But the fate of a great nation depended upon his courage and when he said, ‘Thou art the man,’ his shaft of truth pierced the joints of the royal armor and brought the monarch to his knees. Comparing small things with great, even so may the fate of a public institution sometimes depend upon the fidelity to duty of one who esteems himself the least among all its officials, and when his word is backed by high courage and a consistent and blameless life, it may prove more potent for good than the utterances of wardens or commissioners or governors.
“From the warden’s point of view I beg to suggest that the clergyman who is called for the first time to the chaplaincy of a prison or reformatory should have the major part of his expectancy of life before rather than behind him. To make the chaplaincy a ‘snug harbor’ for the superannuated is unjust to the chaplain and to the institution. At no time in his life does a minister need to have his physical, mental and spiritual forces in fuller play than when he undertakes the chaplaincy of a prison or reformatory. He may grow old in the service, and his strength increase with his years because of his manner of life and the experience that faithful service has brought to him, but under ordinary circumstances the younger man has the best prospect of success.
“The question may arise, ‘Is anyone sufficient for these things?’ Not in his own strength, but ‘as thy day thy strength shall be’ is the promise held out to the sincere and faithful worker. And some of us can recall the names of men who have achieved splendid success in that particular line of prison work. Especially does the name of one come to me who took part in the organization of this Association, who served his Master and his fellow-men so successfully in the Michigan State Prison that when he was granted rapid transit ‘in the twinkling of an eye’ from the very corridor of the prison to the glory which was awaiting him, left a memory so fragrant and so well beloved that the name of Hecox is still an inspiration to hundreds of hearts, which, years ago, were turned by him into the paths of righteousness.”