Address of C. E. Haddox, warden of the West Virginia penitentiary, to the National Prison Association, at its annual session, Louisville, Ky., Congress of 1903:
This is the age of industrial development. On every side we see colossal enterprises undertaken and prosecuted to a successful and profitable conclusion.
Great railroad systems span the continent, carrying millions of passengers and countless tons of freight, with safety, celerity and dispatch, to the doors of factory, workshop, store and consumer.
Immense industrial enterprises are constantly being projected, consolidated and carried on in a manner to excite the admiration, mayhap, the wonder and fear of mankind.
Colossal financial transactions amaze the minds of those uninitiated to the magnitude and the intricacies of such undertakings.
The unexplored recesses of the earth are exploited in a manner and on a scale heretofore undreamed of and unknown, and every department of enterprise is carried on to a degree that distinctly stamps this decade as the acme of industrial enterprise and achievements, the golden age of industrial prosperity, and the acquirement of material improvement and material gain.
If it be asked why such strides have been made along industrial lines, the answer is that it is due to ORGANIZATION AND SPECIALIZATION.
The PERSONNEL of the management have devoted their lives, their talent and their energies to the special work before them. They have been drilled and educated along special lines; they have been deaf and blind to outside matters not relevant to the work in hand, and by close and careful study, by unceasing and constant labor, care and effort, having evolved, projected and carried on these immense enterprises.
The National Prison Congress at its meeting this year is mindful of the material progress of the country.
This association is equally ambitious along the lines peculiar to itself to obtain from the various penal institutions of the country the highest and best results morally, educationally, reformatively, and as an incident, punitively and financially.