She began her work by holding a meeting in Sing Sing Prison on the Hudson River in the State of New York. She told the men that she was their friend and believed in them. She declared that there was no one so cast down or disgraced that he could not rise and make something of himself, if he would only try. Many of the men who heard Mrs. Booth that day had no families and had even lost trace of all their relatives. She said they could write her letters and she would answer. They had never before had any one treat them so kindly, and so letters by the hundred reached Mrs. Booth. One young man scarcely more than a boy, wrote her thanking her for the kind letter she had sent him. He called her “Little Mother.” Soon this title became known, and all up and down the prisons of the United States men came to talk of the Little Mother and look for her coming; for her first work in Sing Sing Prison was so successful that she went from state to state organizing Volunteer Prison Leagues.
Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
MAUDE BALLINGTON BOOTH
Founder of the Volunteer Prison League
It is not always easy to do right even when one is well, happy, and in his own home. Think, then, how hard a task the men in prison found it when they became members of the new league! The day a man joined, he had given to him a white button with a blue star and in the middle of the star was “Look Up and Hope.” He promised to do five things:
1. He would pray every morning and night.
2. He would read faithfully in the little Day Book the league sent him.
3. No bad language should soil his lips.