The wholesale field was the only thing left. Eytinge began again through that channel. And the letters he wrote! They were full of business from the “Dear Sirs” to the “Yours Very Truly.” These letters did not whine. Eytinge did not have the time nor space for that. He had to talk business, and he talked it so well that it was not long until the two letters were doing all that the forty had ever done.
In the meantime a new administration had taken hold of affairs in Arizona. The State prison was removed from the banks of the Colorado up the Gila Valley to Florence, and with this change came a change for the better in Eytinge’s health. When he entered the penitentiary at Yuma he weighed 119 pounds and now he weighs 190 pounds, is the picture of health and physicians declare that he is cured of tuberculosis.
Finding himself had given Eytinge two things. It gave him a new self, one of which he was as ignorant of as you or I, and it also gave him health. The necessity for money with which to fight off death had done this and it had been his desire for money that had placed him in a position where he had to get it by some other means than by placing some one else’s name on a check.
By this time Eytinge’s letters had begun to attract the attention of people other than those with whom he was dealing. He had become a student of criminology also, and when Governor George P. Hunt, the first Statehood governor of Arizona, began his fight for better penal laws after his inauguration in February, 1912, Eytinge had published a booklet of which he was the author, dealing with this question. A noted sociologist has pronounced this to be the cleverest thing ever published on the question.
Magazines soon began to find Eytinge a man worth telling their readers about. Advertising booklets such as “Letters,” published in Chicago; “Printers Ink,” and others sent men to Arizona to “write Eytinge up.” In this way he became well known to men who held high positions in the advertising field. His advice was sought by business houses whose sales forces needed bolstering up, and he has also been offered numerous positions as business manager and business counsel.
Eytinge has made thousands of dollars out of his business since in prison, but in an article a fellow prisoner has written about him it is said that Eytinge is in debt. Why? Well, principally because he is a man, and goes out of his way to help others. These laws of ours give a discharged prisoner a five-dollar bill and a cast-off suit of clothing when he starts out to face the world. Eytinge says this is not enough, and thousands agree with him, so when he sees a man leaving prison who is deserving and in need, he is the first to come forward with financial aid. He has helped hundreds of men fight through the courts for their freedom, and the families of hundreds of prisoners can thank Eytinge for money that has tided them over the prison term of the head of their house.
Don’t forget that Eytinge now before you is the man who seven years ago entered the penitentiary many thought to die. Yes, the old Eytinge is dead—Eytinge, the crook, has passed away, but it has left an Eytinge whom the world will be glad to greet. Peter Clark Macfarlane, a Collier’s writer, says this of Eytinge: “They had penned him up to die. They sent him to jail, a crook, and lo, his voice was a power for honesty.”
That is the way Eytinge is spoken of by hundreds who have become acquainted with him through correspondence and the few who have taken the trouble to visit him in his work shop. Among Eytinge’s first really influential friends after he got on the right track were McCrary, the old parole clerk at the prison, and J. J. Sanders, the new parole clerk, who was appointed when Governor Hunt made Robert B. Sims warden of the institution. Sims had never had any dealings with prisoners or penitentiaries before, but he had some ideas as to how they should be run. One thing that he remembered, which the wardens of many States seem to have forgotten, is that prisoners are human beings.
These three men helped Eytinge to pull himself up out of the rut. He was made a “trusty” and given a clerkship in the parole clerk’s office. These were about the first honest men Eytinge had ever associated with. Honest men to him up until that time were “rubes” and “dubs” whose money he looked upon as his own. But in his efforts to help the parole clerks guide the footsteps of the prisoners who had been given a chance through the parole law, Eytinge found that happiness can come to a man by doing something for someone besides himself.
Lecturing did not bring these things about. It was the man’s ability to see for himself, and his horizon was the prison walls. Here he saw before him hundreds of men who had violated the laws of society, and he saw also that the happy ones were those who had violated no laws but were trying to help those who had. Step by step Eytinge was bringing himself up out of the mud. He declares today that the happiest moments of his life were those in which he found that he was regaining the confidence of those who had lost all faith in him.