Now, it is stated that there are those whose opinions differ with mine in that they think homes for the discharged prisoner unadvisable. I presume their theory is that when the prisoner comes from prison he should not be associated with other one-time prisoners. But what is the alternative? If these men come from prison with the pittance allowed by the prison, where are they to go? Five dollars does not last long. To eke it out as far as they can, they go to board in the poorest lodging house of the city. That brings them down into the saloon neighborhood and throws them at once into the most undesirable classes. They are once more in the element where they will meet thieves, drunkards and outcasts; not like my Hope Hall boys, anxious to reform, but with those still living crooked lives. They virtually go back to associate with the old companions, but old companions who have not started on the right way. This argument would, I suppose, be met with the statement that that is not the idea of those who advise against homes, but that their idea is that a man leaving state prison should go straight to a position, go to board in a respectable place, and at once better his condition. This would be admirable if it could be carried out, but I have found that people are slow to throw open their doors to the one-time prisoner. When we have taken men to our homes, have tested them, can speak from personal acquaintance of their capacity and their sincerity, our friends are much more ready to trust them and give them a position than if we said: “There’s a man in the prison cell today. We do not know anything about him, but we would like you to put him in your factory tomorrow.”
Again Warden Garvin speaks for Connecticut. He has a very different population to deal with in your small state prison from the great population crowded in many of our all too unsanitary prisons of New York, New Jersey, etc. I have had scores of men come to me from state prison whose long prison terms had absolutely incapacitated them for work. Shattered nervously and physically, they have crept out into the world afraid to face the unfriendly crowd. I have taken men from prison who were blind with blindness that had come to them within those dread shadows. I have taken men discharged from the prison hospital so weak that months of nursing has been necessary to put them into condition for work. I have taken men who have been twenty, thirty, and even forty-eight years within the walls.
After all, facts speak louder than theories, and we have the facts to show. It will be a great joy to me if some of your readers feel interested enough in this work to help me by offering positions for my boys. Hope Hall is not a permanent residence but merely a stepping stone to the place in life where men can lose their identity and take up their places as humble units in the great busy working world.
Hoping that I have not imposed upon your space and patience, believe me,
Very truly yours for our country’s
prisoners,
MAUD B. BOOTH.
“Millionaire Tramp” Discards His Overalls.—His old slouch hat, coarse brogans, bandanna handkerchief, and blue-jean overalls have been laid aside, and the “millionaire tramp,” or “man without a dime,” as he has become known to the newspapers of the country, has finished a two years’ traveling study of the life of the homeless and penniless men in fifty cities in the United States. The “millionaire tramp” is Edwin A. Brown, and is a cousin of W. C. Brown, president of the New York Central lines, with whom he was once in the ranch business in Colorado.
Mr. Brown will put into book form the result of his country-wide investigation, in the hope that municipalities will awaken to the “crying needs of shelter homes for the friendless and penniless.” The things he has seen during the last two years have convinced him that all of the cities which he visited, and scores of others, should have municipal lodging houses, like the one in New York City. He would have such institutions furnish clean beds, adequate ventilation, satisfying meals, shower baths, and medical inspection, so that the sick could be separated from the well. The municipal lodging house in New York City furnishes these things and is capable of sheltering a thousand men and fifty women.
A bitterly cold night, a thinly clad boy, a request for the price of a bed—it was this that prompted Mr. Brown to his two years’ life as a student hobo. He found that in his own city the prison was being used for a lodging house. In the course of his travels he “found men sleeping in brick ovens, under platforms, in freight cars and roundhouses and many of them carried the banner—that is, they walked the street all night.