With God’s blessing, a long life and a happy one to you, dear sir.
I beg to remain yours truly,
Tom Curran, Steamfitter, Auburn Prison.
I am going to work Tuesday morning at my trade in Syracuse.
The writer, Curran is not his real name, also refused to accept a loan of money which I offered to him so that he could fit himself out with the tools of his trade. He did not get the job in Syracuse, but drifted into another state to a city where, quite by chance three months later, I ran across him in the county jail. The trouble with Tom was the same as in the case of so many others. Perfectly straight when sober, he could not help stealing when drunk, and he hadn’t enough strength of mind to keep out of saloons. How could he have? What had the prison done to aid him in developing strength of character?
The following letter is a very characteristic one.
Auburn, N. Y., October 6, 1913.
Mr. Thomas M. Osborne.
Dear Sir: I trust you will pardon the liberty I take in writing you. But I wish to thank you for the interest you have taken in the men here. I know there are hundreds of people who have our interests at heart, but they imagine we are a sort of strange animal, and treat us as such. You know if you put a dog in a cage for five or ten years, he will become unfit as a pet. Just so with us, we enter here intending to become better men, but the treatment we receive from some of those who are in immediate charge of us, causes us to become embittered at the world in general.
You have done more good in the past few days than any other man or woman interested in Prison Reform. You was not ashamed to make yourself one of us (if only for a week); you lived as we live, ate what we ate, and felt the iron hand of discipline. You came among us as man to man and I heartily thank you for it. When you stood in the chapel last Sunday, and talked to us like a father with tears in your eyes and hardly able to speak, I prayed as I never prayed before, and asked God to care for you and watch over you in your coming struggle to better conditions here. I know you will meet with opposition both here and outside. By that I do not mean the Warden, as he has proven himself to be a just man in every respect. I mean those who are in immediate charge of us. Some of them are not in accord with your project, and showed their disapproval by reprimanding us for greeting you as we did last Sunday. But they are not to blame in one sense, for they have been here so long their feelings have become stagnated and any new movement appears to them an intruder. They may be in a position to prevent us from showing our feelings physically, but, thank God, they cannot control us mentally. And just so long as I can think, so long will I think of you as our friend.