(e) The inducement for thieving would be largely gone. Very few
steal for the sake of stealing. A man usually steals to fill his
own stomach, or some one else's, whom he loves. But here all would
be provided for.
(f) Besides he would feel that all he could earn was for the common good and was not going to make any individual rich at his expense.
(g) Our experience in the Prison Gate Homes contradicts it. True, we have had some thefts especially at the beginning, but when I was last visiting our Colombo Home, the Officers in charge assured me that they were now of the rarest occurrence, while the gentleman who owned the tempting cocoanuts that were hanging overhead told me that he had never had such good crops from his trees, as since our colony of thieves and criminals had been settled there!
(4.) Some one else may perhaps object that we shall have thrown upon our hands a swarm of helpless, useless, cripples and infirm. Well, and what if we do? Are they not our fellow human beings, and ought not some one to care for them? We shall look upon it as a precious responsibility, and I speak fearlessly on behalf of our devoted officers when I say, that they would rather spend and be spent for such than for the richest in the land. If, as I have already shown, the effort can be made self-supporting and self-propagating, the mere fact of their misery or poverty only impels us to love them the more and to strive the more earnestly for their emancipation.
CHAPTER IX.
THE PRISON GATE BRIGADE.
This has already been in operation for two years in the cities of Bombay and Colombo and a branch has been recently established in Madras. Now that it will be connected with other branches of our Social Reform, we may look for a rapid increase of this useful though difficult work.
The establishment of our Labor Yards will greatly help us in finding work for this class, without branding them with the perpetual stigma of their crime. The chief difficulty in the working of these Homes consists in the almost insuperable objection of the men to be known as criminals after their release from jail. This is of course perfectly natural. Besides, it is important that we should hold out before them hopes of bettering themselves by their good conduct, and earning an independent and honest livelihood at no distant date. When once our Labor Yards and Farm Colonies are in active operation, we shall be able to do this for our rescued criminals, continuing at the same time the fatherly supervision and help which they so very much need.
The following quotations from our last annual report will serve to explain this branch of our work, and to give a glimpse of the encouraging success with which we have already met in our efforts to reach and reform the criminal classes.