Those who have been looked upon by all as the most hopeless are the old timers in State Prison. Speaking one day in a court-room in New York on behalf of a man to whom I wanted the Judge to give a chance and the benefit of doubt in his case, I was told most definitely by that gentleman that there was absolutely no hope for a man who had been more than once in State Prison. He said, "Mrs. Booth, you may have some success with the first offenders, but you can do nothing whatever with those who have been in prison again and again. They are criminals born and there is nothing to do for them but to rearrest them and put them out of harm's way." This discouraging verdict I have heard from the lips of many prison officers, police officers and authorities on criminal questions and so has it been impressed upon the men that they have repeatedly assured me that I was wasting my time upon them. Can anything be imagined more utterly contradictory to the teaching concerning the Almighty power of divine grace? Above all should these be remembered and the greatest hope and most earnest effort be put forth by those who would take hope to the prisoner.
[III
THE VOLUNTEER PRISON LEAGUE]
How small a thing may sometimes all unforeseen lead to momentous results! How often a little turn of the tide which some of us call chance and others Providence, opens up to us new channels that carry us into unexpected futures! It was a letter from some of the prisoners in San Quentin, California, asking me to visit them during my stay in San Francisco that first led my steps over the threshold of a state prison. That day left a deep impression on my heart, and what I had seen made me long for an opportunity practically to help the prisoner.
Never shall I forget the sea of upturned faces, many of them so plainly bearing the marring imprint of sorrow and sin—despair and misery,—yet behind the scars and shadows there was such an eager longing,—such a hungry appeal for a sight of the gleam of Hope's bright star, that one could but feel an intense inspiration while delivering the message. Never before had I seen the stripes,—never heard the clang behind me of the iron gates, nor had I realized the hopelessness that enshrouds the prisoner. It seemed almost an impertinence for me, coming as I did from a happy sunlit world, from freedom, friends and home, to undertake to preach to these into whose lives I had only just entered and whose thought and feeling I could so poorly interpret. Is it a wonder that tears rose more readily to my eyes than words to my lips, and that it was hard for me to control either thoughts or voice? I did not attempt to preach. Undoubtedly their consciences in many a dark lonely hour had preached far more pointedly than I could. As far as possible I tried in that brief hour to carry them away from prison. I felt it would help them if I could make them forget where they were, whereas the emphasizing of their position and condition might only prove embittering. Stories I had gathered from the great fragrant book of nature, or that had come to me from baby lips, I realized would touch their hearts more swiftly than the most forcible arguments or convincing condemnations. The response I read in those upturned faces—the grateful words that reached me afterwards through the mail and the constant memory of that scene as I witnessed it lasted with me deepening into a determination to make their cause mine when the opportunity should offer.
At that time my husband and I were leaders of the movement known as the Salvation Army.
It would have been impossible to start prison work under the hampering influence of regulations which governed that movement from a foreign land. When our connection with the Salvation Army was finally severed, we found ourselves free to enter new fields.
I wish to make it very clear, as many are often misled, that our movement has nothing to do with the Salvation Army, is in no way connected with it, and is absolutely dissimilar in method and government. This distinction I venture to emphasize in order to avoid a confusion that has frequently occurred in the past.
I wish to go no further into this subject save to say, that when we severed our connection with the Salvation Army, it was not the action of impulse or of disagreement with individuals, but from conscientious principles and after much anxious thought and earnest prayer. It was not easy to begin over again and build up a new movement. Starting in two small rooms in the Bible House, with half-a-dozen workers to help us, and absolutely no capital or source of income for the work that opened out before us, the Volunteers had many difficulties to face.