After a solid year of this work—I groan still when I think of it—we had committees in almost every assembly district. They called on the various candidates and secured their promises to support the bill. We circulated immense petitions and sent formidable lists of signatures to the successful candidates. We had also stirred the women's clubs to action. The newspapers made considerable comment on the "Petition of the Hundred Thousand Mothers." When the new legislature convened, we had the signatures of over two-thirds of the assemblymen, and a good majority of the senators to pledges to vote for the reformatory.
Instead they gave their attention to the routine jobbery of their trade and just before they adjourned they elected a joint commission, three members from each house, to consider the matter.
I am quite sure, and having travelled so much through the state, I was in a position to know, that if we could have had a referendum, eighty per cent of the votes would have been for our bill. Fifteen of the twenty per cent of hostile votes would have come from the most ignorant and debased districts of the big cities. I doubt if a measure has ever gone before the state legislature with the more certain sanction of the electorate. Democracy is a very fine Fourth of July sentiment. But in those days it had nothing to do with "practical politics."
The new commission did not begin work for six months. As the members received ten dollars a day for each session, they sat for an hour or two a day for several weeks. But at last we had our chance to present our case in a thorough and serious manner. The opposition to the bill was based on the testimony of half a dozen wardens who had been ordered to the stand by the Department of State Prisons. They had nothing to offer but prejudice and ignorance. Van Kirk, his fighting spirit stirred by the snub he had received from the senate committee, acted as our attorney and did it ably. Benson took hold of the press campaign and the newspapers were full of favorable comments. I am sure that when they adjourned after hearing our arguments, every commissioner was convinced of the wisdom of our project.
But our opponents were better politicians than we. We let our case rest on the evidence. Just what wires the Department of State Prisons pulled during the recess, I do not know. But when the commission reconvened, a sub-committee introduced a substitute bill, which was accepted without discussion and unanimously recommended to the legislature. It was a travesty on Baldwin's scheme. The age-limit was raised to admit men of thirty. Instead of being for first offenders, the new bill read for persons "convicted for the first time of a felony"—which opened the door to a large class who have become almost hopelessly hardened by a life of petty crime. Ordinary cellular confinement was substituted for the original plan of cottages. It was not at all what we had been fighting for.
As soon as I read the new bill, I went before the Prisoner's Aid Society and begged them to repudiate it, to stand for the original project or nothing. But in the first place they were not sufficiently informed in the matter to recognize the difference between the two bills and in the second place the four years of unwonted activity had overstrained them. They wanted to rest. Ever since they have boasted of their enterprise in getting this mutilated reformatory established.
I would have given it up in disgust except for personal loyalty for Baldwin. He felt that the reformatory, even in its emasculated condition, was an opening wedge and that as superintendent he might gradually be able to persuade the legislature to amend the charter back to his original design. Certainly he deserved the position, the institution would not have been established at all except for his persistent efforts. Norman and I went into the fight again to bring pressure to bear on the governor to appoint Baldwin. We got no help from the Prisoner's Aid Society; it had fallen hopelessly asleep. A few of our county committees came to life again and circulated petitions. My rector at New Lemberg was the most active. I think he was afraid I would visit him again. But the public was tired of the issue. The governor appointed a political friend.
I resigned from the Prisoner's Aid Society and went back to my work in the Tombs. I felt that I had wasted four years.
IV
Early in this campaign for the reformatory our peaceful life in the Teepee was shaken up by the advent of Nina.