After Prison--What?

by Maud Ballington Booth

From the very first I realized that to make the work effectual there must be the establishment of personal friendship, and that it was only as we recognized and helped the individual that we could by degrees affect the whole population. They needed friendship and the touch of human sympathy far more than preachment or argument. To thus help them practically we had of course to know the men that we might enter as much as possible into their lives, so that we could meet them on a more intimate footing than that of lecturer and audience—preacher and congregation. The only way in which one can really understand a man's life is to meet him on the level. We commenced with the chapel services, talking to the men collectively in a strain that would make them feel and realize the faith and hope we felt for them. Then I expressed my willingness to correspond with all those who had no friends to write to. The many letters which reached me as a consequence soon gave us an insight into the thoughts and feelings of the men and we were then able to become familiar with the names and histories of many of them. After this we could follow up our correspondence with personal interviews. It was wonderful how the hearts of the men were touched and opened to us. In no field have I found a quicker and deeper response to the message delivered, and there has certainly been time now to prove that it was not a mere passing emotion or revival enthusiasm, but that a deep and lasting work was being accomplished.

As men began to take the decisive step and declared their intention to lead a different life it became evident that organization would be wise to band them together and to enable them to show their colors in a way that would strengthen and safeguard them, helping them to be a constant example to others. To meet this need we started the V.P.L. or Volunteer Prison League. It is a very simple banding together in each prison of those who stand for right living and good discipline. Each member has a certificate of membership which reads as follows:

"This is to certify that —— is a member of the Volunteer Prison League having faithfully promised with God's help to conform to the following conditions of membership:

First—to pray every morning and night.

Second—to read the Day Book faithfully.

Third—to refrain from the use of bad language.

Fourth—to be faithful in the observance of prison rules and discipline so as to become an example of good conduct.

Fifth—to earnestly seek to cheer and encourage others in well-doing and right living, trying where it is possible to make new members of the League."

This document is hung in the prison cell and as the man pins on his coat the badge of the order, a small white button with the blue star in its centre and the motto of our League in red lettering—"Look up and Hope"—he becomes at once a marked man. He is watched by officers and men alike and that very fact is in itself a reminder to him in the hour of temptation of the obligations he has taken upon himself. When the League has attained some size it becomes a post and the white standard is presented. Their loving loyalty to the flag is very clearly seen among the men by the way in which they earnestly try to live up to the principles it represents. Often in my letters I read such sentiments as this—"Little Mother, as I entered the chapel Sunday and looked at our white flag, I thought again of the promises I had made, of all they ought to mean, and I promised God that with His help I would never disgrace it. No one shall see anything in my life that could bring dishonor or stain to its whiteness."

Naturally there is quite a bond of union among these League men and it exists not between those in the one prison alone, but is a link of prayer and fellowship, and sometimes almost produces healthy rivalry between prison and prison as each Post wishes to keep the best record. The thought that has made this League a strong foundation for the work and that has proved the most rousing inspiration to the men is that the work is not ours but theirs. No philanthropist, preacher or teacher in the world can reform these men. An influence from without may prove very helpful but it is from within that the true reform movement must start. The whole key of this great question, the real solution of the problem lies within the prisons. It rests with the men themselves. We can bring them hope, can help them with our sympathy, can stimulate their ambition and effort, but they must "work out their own salvation." In the League they are made to realize this very keenly; the responsibility is rolled back upon their own shoulders. They cease to think that people must pick them out from their difficulties or that some turn of fortune's wheel must come to place them in happier circumstances, before they can become truly honest and upright. They realize that they must fight their own battle,—commence to rebuild their character, wresting from adverse circumstances every good lesson and using every chance they can gain to raise themselves from the pit into which they have fallen. Of course we lay the greatest stress on the need of Divine help. We know from repeated experiences that the "boys" must be transformed in heart and nature by the spirit of God if they are to be truly successful, but we believe that God helps the man whom He sees willing and anxious to help himself. Nowhere in the Bible do we find that people can drift lazily into the kingdom of heaven. Christian life must be an earnest warfare of watchful struggle in which every faculty of the man is sincerely engaged. Since the starting of the League we have enrolled nearly fourteen thousand men within prison walls. We have found their interest in the work intense, and as news of it has spread from prison to prison even before our coming to them, the "boys" have learned to look upon it as their special work and have longingly waited to welcome that which they have come to feel will mean the dawning of a new hope for the future. To try and convey to you something of this feeling of possession on the part of the men that have prepared our way in prison after prison, I turn back to an old diary of mine and quote from its pages the notes on the opening of our work at Dannemora—November 22d, 1896.