Mr. Spalding is not unfamiliar to that office, having been secretary of it from 1879 until he resigned in 1888.
Mr. Spalding was born in Hillsboro, N. H., Jan. 14, 1841, but was educated in the public schools of Nashua, N. H. After leaving school he engaged in the furniture business in his native place for several years, and in 1870 came to Boston. There he became connected with the Boston Daily News, and later worked for the Globe and the Commercial Bulletin, both as a reporter and an editor.
Since 1872 he has been a resident of Cambridge and represented a district in that city in the general court during 1894 and 1895. He has been engaged in prison work for many years, having been secretary of the Massachusetts Prison Association since 1890. In 1896 Mr. Spalding was elected to the Cambridge Board of Aldermen. Mr. Spalding was a private in Co. F, 1st New Hampshire Heavy Artillery, during the Civil War and is a member of Post 186, G. A. R.
The governor’s nomination must be approved by the governor’s council.
PRISON SUNDAY.
This day was observed as usual in several states on either the fourth or last Sunday in October. The Connecticut prison association, in issuing a call, directed attention to the fact that the great need in that state is a change in our treatment of petty offenders. “We made great progress in the treatment of these cases when we established the probation service, which keeps many out of jail. But during 1910 there were 10,468 commitments to our county jails. Six thousand and fifty of these, by their own admission, has been in prison before.”
In New York the prison association sent special letters to about 1,500 pastors, 200 of whom responded favorably. Special literature was furnished each pastor.
NEW YORK’S PRISON NEEDS.
In an interview in the New York Sun, O. F. Lewis, general secretary of the prison association of New York, said recently:
“The principal prison needs of this State are a separate cell for each prisoner in State prisons, employment for eight hours a day for all able-bodied men in State prisons, the marketing of all prison-made products in this State to the State and its political subdivisions, such as counties and cities; the introduction and development of industries in our county penitentiaries and jails; the centralization of administration of our penitentiaries and jails under a proper department of the State; the abolition of idleness and filth in many of our jails; the development of the women’s farm and the farm colony for vagrants and tramps; the creation of a separate institution or separate wings of an existing institution for feeble-minded criminals, not the insane criminals—and other things too numerous to mention.