Most of them have no opportunity for blossoming out in luxurious beauty and abundance. * * * When a plant once wakes up to the new influences brought to bear upon it the road is opened for endless improvement in all directions.
More pitiable than any weeds in a garden and more worthy of sympathy are those poor human weeds in the great prison.
Crowded and kept ignorant in youth, tempted, ill-fed, cold and worried in after years, their lot was hard—and their fall almost inevitable. They must be confined, they must be protected against themselves, they must suffer for the poor start given to them.
But the duty of those who are FREE and fortunate is to treat kindly those who fall, and especially to deal in such fashion with the young as shall minimize the crop of weeds later.
Fortunately, it may truly be said that humanity begins to realize its responsibilities in both lines of effort.
Kindness reaches the convict in his prison.
And Education, the thrice blessed AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOL, does steadily the work that makes useful plants of growing youth, diminishing year by year the crop of weeds.
Kindness and EDUCATION—go to Auburn prison and you will realize how much work they have still to do in our country.
CRIME IS DYING OUT
Many of us feel that crime is the striking feature of modern life, that this century sits among the skulls of crime's victims, and that Father Time, after all his ages of travel, sees no improvement.