Petitions for needed reforms have been widely circulated, co-operation with other organizations gladly given, and scores of articles furnished the press, all of which have helped to arouse to action those not identified with the W. C. T. Union, and who perhaps had larger influence in certain directions.
Letter writing, to and for the inmates, has proved helpful. Visiting the friends of prisoners, giving sympathy, advice, and aid, have proved a practical illustration of the words, “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”
Several States have inaugurated the “Prison Gate Mission,” which is an important branch, and aims to have its missionaries meet the prisoners on their release, with help and hope, in the most practical ways. “Temporary Homes” and “Open-Doors” are offering shelter and work, and thousands of lives redeemed attest the genuineness of these varied efforts put forth in quietness but with great faith.
Many of the State superintendents of this department have given years of untiring labor, often furnishing their own supplies at great personal sacrifice. Brave, true-hearted, and practical, they have disarmed criticism, walked unharmed in dangerous places; never dropping into sentiment or refusing attention to established rules, they have won recognition from all right-minded officials and citizens.
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE.
Thus, glancing backward, and passing in hasty review what has been attempted and accomplished since 1830, we catch a glimpse of what is now waiting to be done, and the call is so imperative, that we must express our thanksgiving for the past by bringing all the force of combined action to bear upon needed reforms in the present. We believe that woman has special endowments for these lines of work, and that her absence from them has been a source of weakness and failure.
We must familiarize ourselves with the questions of penology, the relation of the State to its vicious and dependent classes; contract labor and the lessee system with their attendant evils; congregate and separate imprisonment; prison discipline, with reformatory measures and institutions.
We should demand the absolute separation of the sexes, and juvenile from older offenders; also matrons to care for women arrested or committed.
Visit unannounced police stations and courts, with county jails, where women are under care of men, or “left to themselves,” and compare their looks and manners with those in similar places where the right kind of matron bears sway with a firm hand and dignified presence. Women should be associated with men as prison inspectors, and women physicians on boards to care for women and children. Greater efforts should be put forth in the lines of reclamation, opening the way to a return to honesty and self-support; but double diligence should be given to removing the varied causes of crime, thus proving ourselves wise citizens in the truest sense of the word.