Prisons and Prayer; Or, a Labor of Love

by Elizabeth Ryder Wheaton

COURAGE NEEDED.

The warden must be a man of courage. I do not refer to the kind of courage necessary to face a regiment of depraved and wicked men shorn of their power and their stimulus to do evil, but that high moral courage necessary to clean the Augean stables of abuses of customs, to reverse policies of long standing that are nevertheless wrong in principle and in practice, to fight against unjust, improper and unwise legislative propositions concerning his institution; the kind of courage that prompted the chaplain in Chas. Reade's "NEVER TOO LATE TO MEND," to fight and destroy the iniquitous prison system of Keeper Hawes and his minions; the courage that will keep to the fore-front a persistent opposition to prostituting penitentiaries into eleemosynary institutions and political cribs and feeding troughs for political strikers.

He must have the courage to weed out and eliminate useless barnacles in the shape of incompetent and worthless employes, and substitute in their stead men of capacity, character and intelligence, who are in love with their work and believe in its dignity and usefulness; the courage to face demagogues in their efforts to take from the prison its educative, moral, reformatory and economic force, the right of the unfortunate inmates to learn the gospel of labor under right and just conditions.

OPTIMISM NECESSARY.

The warden needs to be intensely optimistic. He must have a reserve fund of enthusiasm. He must believe profoundly in the high character of his office and educate others constantly to believe in it. The ignorance of the great mass of the people as to the real function of penitentiaries and the methods by which they are carried on is amazing and mortifying to prison officials.

A part of the warden's mission is to acquaint the outside world with conditions as they exist inside, and to inspire the interest and support of the general public in measures for bettering and improving prison conditions. Legislative bodies especially, need to be brought into closer relations and the law makers made to realize their duty to the public and the convict in the enactment of wise, proper and righteous legislation.

Longfellow, in his beautiful poem, "THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP," tells why the master builder achieved success. It was because

"His heart was in the work and the heart Giveth grace to every art."

The warden's heart must be in his work. His whole soul must be animated and permeated with an honest and sincere desire to bring penology up to a higher and nobler standard.

He must have a reserve force of enthusiasm that will not be daunted and destroyed by temporary failures or the lapses of some discharged or pardoned convicts, who, in spite of care and pains, will return to their evil ways. The enthusiasm that can bear the harsh and ignorant criticism and misrepresentations incident to his work; the enthusiasm that in its contagion will inoculate directors, subordinate officers, the press and the people with a desire for more light on penal problems and a purpose to be governed by that light; the enthusiasm that will beget great patience for the exacting, difficult and trying problems before him; that will make him believe that "a convict saved is a man made"; that will make him believe with the great English novelist "It is never too late to mend," and that as infinite care and pains finally brought Robinson, the twice convicted thief, up to the estate of honest manhood, so, infinite care and pains should be exerted with every man under his charge.