How shall we approach a prison to see it fairly and to study it intelligently?
Let us imagine ourselves visitors from a world outside of this.
Far off in infinite space there is a small whirling planet—our earth.
Little creatures move about this planet, chained to it by the force of gravity. But they MOVE as they choose, and they call themselves FREE.
There are millions of free square miles, and hundreds of millions of free human beings.
But there just below us is the prison at Auburn. There the human beings are not free. There suffer those who for any reason have violated the established rules of the little globe that supports them.
They have not even the freedom of the little patch of soil fenced in for them. They cannot walk, speak, sit down, lie down, or stand up as they please.
They have broken some of the rules established for the protection of all. They have misused their freedom, and in punishment their freedom is taken away from them.
They live in small cells, in a very big prison.
Gray stone, iron bars, striped suits, enforced silence, enforced work, enforced regularity of life—all these punish most keenly those whose first crime was lack of self-control and lack of regularity. ——