“I was punished repeatedly on bread and water, the dark cell. The warden was a hard, stern man. His motto was—‘break them first and make them after.’
“Then came the day for the second installment of my flogging and my discharge from prison. I went out with the skin on my back blistered and broken and my mind bent on revenge. I went out of there with a hatred for law and order, society and justice, discipline and restraint, and everything that was orderly and systematic. I had a hatred for courts, jailers, prison keepers, and wardens. I hated policemen, prosecutors, judges and jurors.
“If I had reasoned right, I might have made a better start than I did. But I had no experience to guide me. I planned for revenge and I turned on society to get it, because society furnishes the judges, the jurors, the policemen, the prosecutors. Before I got fairly started on my career of revenge I was back in prison.
“When I went back I learned more brutality and violence. I knew the bread-and-water punishment, the dark cell, the strait-jacket and the water cure. I thought violent thoughts, I planned violent plans, and I executed those plans as best I could as soon as I got outside. I suppose a man’s actions are the creatures of his thought, and his thoughts are naturally the products of his environment and the conditions under which he is forced to live.
“If you put a boy in prison at the age I was, as prisons were then, he will become a criminal as sure as the day follows the night or the night follows the day. I imagine those conditions were responsible for many criminals of my age or thereabouts, who were considered incorrigible. I won’t say confirmed, because I believe there is no such thing as a confirmed criminal. I have seen many miraculous reformations. One man may be reformed through a woman, a woman’s plea, a mother’s love. Others might be reformed through the assistance and kindness of friends. But still another might be reformed by an act of kindness from some unexpected source. I believe that one who has been brutalized can be turned right by an act of kindness and be regenerated. It looks reasonable.
“When I stood up in this court to be sentenced for twenty-five years, I was a criminal, as I have described. I had learned the lesson of violence in prison, and I believed that I lived in a world of violence, had to use violence, and use it first. I had no more thought of right or wrong than a wolf that prowls the prairie. I hunted because I was hunted myself, and I showed no consideration for anybody or anything because I knew I would receive none.
“I was a habitual criminal. I had formed the criminal habit. Habit is the strongest thing in life, and criminals such as I have described obey the impulse to commit a crime almost subconsciously. So far as the right or wrong is concerned, he gives it no more thought than you would when you walk down the street and open the gate to enter your front door. It is a habit with you.
“The twenty-five-year sentence I received made no impression on me whatever. I expected it, and had expected it for years. It was simply an incident, an obstacle, another delay—a violent one, to be sure; but I had dealt the game of violence, and when forced to play at it I am not the one to complain.
“So I went back to the county jail and my lawyer went back to his law. Then came the fire that destroyed the records of my conviction and sentence, and put me in the perpetual criminal class at the county jail. I became more permanent than the sheriff. I saw them come and go, and after years of comparative peace and quiet and fair treatment in the county jail I began to change my views and think different thoughts, and I looked forward to a different sort of life.
“A few friends rallied around and began to plan ways and means to help me. They investigated, found it impossible, and told me.