He saw my name in the papers, as one interested in criminology and he wrote to me about this enthusiasm of his. After several letters had been exchanged he came to the city so we might talk it over. We put him up at the Teepee. He was getting close to forty-five, but was the youngest man of that age I have ever known. Benson and I went over his project in detail. For three solid days we talked of nothing else. Although my work dealt chiefly with accused persons who were waiting trial, still I was always being brought face to face with the horrors of our convict prisons. The unspeakable stupidity of treating young boys as we mistreat old offenders has always seemed to me the crowning outrage of our civilization.
It is hard to realize today how revolutionary Baldwin's scheme for a reformatory then sounded. Only the most feeble and timid experiments in such matters had been tried. We were still in those dark ages, when orphan and destitute children were sent to jail.
The weak point in his proposal—as is the case with almost every reform—was the expense. The state paid about ten cents a day for the maintenance of its convicts, the per capita for the reformatory would be three or four times as much. Baldwin had foreseen this criticism and had collected endless figures to prove that it was only an apparent extravagance. One of the biggest elements in the cost of crime is the expense of "habitual offenders." Baldwin had the life-story of one man who was serving his twelfth term in state prison and he had figured out just how much this man's various crimes and arrests and trials and imprisonments had cost the community and how much cheaper it would have been to have spent enough to reform him while he was young. It was an impressive document. By a number of such tables he made a conclusive case. The greater expense of the reformatory, would be a real economy if he could save one third of the boys. He believed that two-thirds could be reformed. With the help of a constitutional lawyer he had crystallized his ideas into a bill, which he hoped to have introduced into the legislature.
As I have said, Norman and I gave three days close attention to the project. Baldwin had had much practical experience in such matters and had prepared his case admirably. The scheme looked feasible to us—as indeed it has since proved. We were all unsophisticated enough to believe that a good plan once explained to the people would be immediately accepted.
I went before the executive committee of the Prisoner's Aid Society and offered to accept the secretaryship, if they would pledge their support to Baldwin's bill. They could find no precedent for such a measure in their books on European penology and I doubt if I could have swung them into line single-handed. But Benson was one of their board of directors and they relied on him to meet their annual deficit. He was able to bring more potent arguments to bear than I.
By this time I had become a sort of established institution in the Tombs. With the exception of O'Neil, I had won the confidence of the judges. They were, within certain limits, well-intentioned men and they did not like to condemn young boys to the contagion of state prison any more than you or I would. I got their signatures to a letter endorsing the reformatory idea, and through them arranged with the district attorney for such leaves of absence as I would need.
I find myself with very little enthusiasm for chronicling this campaign for a reformatory. It was so dolefully disheartening, so endlessly irritating—it dragged on so much longer than we had foreseen. But it is important not only to my own story, it influenced not only my way of thinking; it has also a broader and more compelling significance. There was hardly one of my friends, the people of my generation who were trying to make this world a more livable place, who were not at one time or another involved in a similar fight. One thing we all had experienced in common—the journey up to Albany to try and cajole our legislators into doing something, the value and wisdom of which no sane man could doubt. A new Acts of the Apostles might be written about the endless succession of delegations which gathered in the Grand Central Station, en route for the capital, fired with enthusiasm for some reform—a new tenement house law, some decent regulation of child labor, some protection against the crying evils of the fraudulent immigrant banks or the vicious employment agencies and so forth. It would take a fat book to even list all the good causes which have inspired such pilgrimages. And the ardor with which the delegations set out for Albany was only equalled by the black discouragement which, a few days later, they brought back.
After some trouble we found an assembly man who consented to introduce our bill. It was pigeon-holed at once. Then we went in for publicity. I wrote articles in magazines and newspapers. Benson and Baldwin got out and widely circulated a pamphlet. They were a strong combination, with the former's knowledge of advertising and the latter's familiarity with the subject. I took the stump.
Everyone, I suppose, who has done similar work, has made the same discovery. You cannot win your point with the ordinary audience by an appeal to reason. At first I treated my subject seriously—with dismal effect. But Norman came to one of my New York city meetings and cursed me roundly for a fool when it was over. I took his advice and went up and down and across the state telling "heart-interest" stories; yarns about the white haired mother whose only son was sent to Sing Sing for some trifling offense and was utterly corrupted by evil associates; about the orphan boy who stole a loaf of bread for his starving sister. How I came to hate those two! Once in my dreams I murdered that "white haired mother" with fierce glee. But I could always rely on them to start tears. If I tried to give my audiences our constructive ideal, what we meant by the word "reformatory," I lost my grip on them. They demanded thrills. Well—I gave them thrills. It was the only way, but it made me feel like a mountebank, like a charlatan selling blue pills.
By the end of the year we had worked up enough popular interest to force a discussion of the bill on the floor of the legislature. On the first reading it was referred to the Senate Committee on State Prisons. After several weeks of suspense the committee announced a date for a public hearing. I remember that at the time we thought this meant victory. At last we were to have an opportunity to present our case in a serious manner to serious men. Baldwin and Benson and I put in the preceding week preparing our briefs. On the day set for the hearing we marshalled our forces in the lobby of an Albany hotel. There was Allen, the president of the Prisoner's Aid Society; Van Kirk, a vice-president of the State Bar Association and the three of us. It was arranged that Baldwin and I should speak first, he was to deal with the financial side of the project and I with its broader human phases. Allen and Van Kirk were to add the endorsements of the organizations they represented. I recall how perfect our case looked to us, how utterly impossible it seemed to fail of convincing the committee.