After Prison--What?

by Maud Ballington Booth

Perhaps the strongest testimony we could offer as to the effect of the work on prison discipline, comes from the pens of our well-known wardens. Speaking before the quarterly meeting of the Iowa State Board of Control, Major McClaughry, late of Joliet, Ill., now Warden of the Federal Prison at Fort Leavenworth, said:

"I wish to add a word in relation to influences in the prison that I have found most helpful. Some years ago, Mrs. Booth came to the prison to speak to the prisoners. She first had interviews with some of the men which I permitted rather reluctantly, but I soon noticed her wonderful personal influence over the men she talked with. When later she spoke to the prisoners in chapel, and they were greatly interested in her presentation without cant or denominational prejudice, of the best way to live. I asked her to come again and she came. That time she organized with us what is known as the 'Volunteer Prison League' an association of men, who, realizing what is before them band themselves together and wear the button of the League—which requires a great deal of bravery in a prison like Joliet. The promise to them was, that so long as they followed the motto of the League and looked upward and not down, forward and not back, and helped one another, they should be recognized as a force in the prison itself making for good order and constituted authority.

"I entered upon the experiment, as I say, with a good deal of apprehension, but I am glad to say that it proved to be one of the most potent forces inside of the prison to secure not only cheerful obedience and compliance with the rules and regulations of the prison, but a force that co-operated with the authorities of the prison in the direction of law and order. Wherever that League has been established, while it has gone up and down and had its vicissitudes, like the early church, it has proved most helpful in every respect, and its influence upon the individual men, no person not familiar with its workings can for a moment imagine. Therefore I feel that the Volunteer Prison League, properly managed, is one of the most beneficent institutions that can be introduced into prison life."

This testimony is all the more forceful when we remember that the one speaking has been a prison warden for some twenty-eight years and has also served as Chief of Police in Chicago. He certainly should know of what he speaks.

I opened the work in Dannemora, New York State, where Warden Thayer welcomed me most courteously, did all in his power both in his own home and in the prison, to make me feel at home, but being frank and outspoken he thought it well to impress me with the hopelessness of my task. He said briefly that no obstacle should stand in my way as far as he was concerned, but he did not want to see me heart-broken over a work that he foresaw could never succeed. He told me clearly his opinion and advised me not to try the impossible. After watching the work, however, he became one of my stanch supporters and has repeatedly championed our cause where the usefulness of such work has been questioned.

At a public meeting in New York, he told a story on himself of which I was up to that time ignorant. Speaking of our first enrollment of men in prison, he said, "When I saw those men, one hundred and seven of them, stand up, I began to feel sorry for Mrs. Booth. Here were the very hardest men I had to deal with in the prison; men constantly reported for punishment. I took a list of their names for future reference. I kept that list in my desk, and when the year had passed I brought it out with a view of paralyzing that little woman. Would you credit it? I learned to my own surprise and satisfaction on comparing it with the punishment book that out of those who stood up in the chapel that Sunday morning, only three had required punishment during that entire year. I saw now what I had not realized before, namely, that as an aid to the observance of discipline of the prison no plans had ever equalled the influence of this work."

Warden Darby of Columbus, Ohio, writes:

"The organization of Post No. 10, Volunteer Prison League in the Ohio Penitentiary, has been very gratifying to the prisoners, who are looking forward to a brighter and better future, who are striving to build a moral foundation that will withstand the tides of adversity and trial. The League has been of incalculable benefit, for it has been directly instrumental in bringing many to right thinking, an absolutely necessary prelude to right doing.