Very truly yours, L. RICHARDS, No. 31--.

It may be urged that Richards is a man of very considerable literary ability, which is obvious, and that his case is an exceptional one.

Let us, therefore, take a man of entirely different caliber, of but little education, one whose experience has been a rough one. Following is a letter from a man who is as unlike Richards mentally and physically as one man can very well be from another.

135 State St., Auburn, N. Y.

Oct. 5, 1913.

Mr. Thomas M. Osborne.

Honorable Sir: It affords me great pleasure to write you these few lines. I really do not know how to begin to express myself as I have not got a very good education. But I hope you will understand that my motive in writing you this letter is to congratulate you for your good work. I fully realize the fact that it was no easy task for you to come down here and live here in this place for one week as you did. After hearing and seeing you in the chapel Sunday I came to my cell and got to thinking. The outcome was that I could not remember ever being touched so as I was when I left the chapel and while sitting there hearing you talk. I fully realize what a big thing you have undertaken. At one time I was under the impression that there was no such a thing as a square man, but I have changed my opinion and I am safe in saying that quite a number of other men have also changed their mind about that same thing.

Men who love their fellow man are very few. When I think of you I am reminded of a postal that I received from my brother not long ago, after him not knowing that I was in prison. When he found it out he sent me a postal and on it were these few words: "A friend is one who knows all about you and likes you just the same." Well, Mr. Osborne, I leave here on the 20th of this month and believe me--never again for me. I have played the crooked game in every way it can be played, most every kind of crooked game there is. Now I am done. It is a fast and excitable game, but I come to realize that it is not living and is bound to come to a bad end. But I want to say that prison life did not reform me, nor will it reform any man, for no man learns good in prison. My opinion is that the only way that a man can be reformed is get to his conscience, wake up the man in him. You are aware of the fact that the police make many criminals. I don't believe there is such a thing as a hardened criminal. If the police were not so anxious to send men to prison there would be no so-called hardened criminals. I know what I am talking about. There are too many men sent to prison innocently and there will always be so-called hardened criminals until that is stopped. I done my first bit innocently.

Believe me, it is a terrible thing to sit in one of those cells and know in your heart that you are there in the wrong. Well I wish I had the paper to write you more for I deem it a pleasure to write you.

Yours truly, JAMES MCCABE, No. 32.--

Soon after receiving this letter and before his release, I had an interview with the writer. I found him a very frank and engaging person, a crook by profession, with most excellent ideas on the subject of Prison Reform--which was the main topic of our conversation.

On the day of his release Jim visited me at my office; my first thought was that he had come to strike me for money, but I did him injustice. He came simply to ask my interest and help for a young man who locked in on his gallery and in whom he had become interested.

"Can't you do something for him, Tom," he urged. "That kid's no crook. If you can only keep him out of the city he'll go straight. He sure will. You see him and have a talk with him, and see if you don't think so."

That was all Jim wanted of me, and at first he refused to take the small loan I pressed upon him, although the money he received from the state would not go very far in New York City. "I don't want to take it, Tom," he objected, "and I'll tell you why. You'd be giving me that money thinking I was going straight. Now I'm going to try to go straight; but you've no idea of the difficulties. How am I going to get an honest job? The cops all know me well, they'll follow me wherever I go. I can't enter a theater, I can't get on to a street car. If anything happens I'll be one of the first men the coppers'll be after. How much of a chance have I to get an honest job? Now, if I take your money and then didn't go straight I should feel like the devil."

"Jim," said I, "you'll take that money because you _are_ going straight.

I'll bank on you."

My confidence was not misplaced. Jim went to New York and, having the luck to have a home with a good mother and a brother who is straight, Jim had time to hunt his job until he found it. About two weeks after his release Jim lunched with me in New York, and in the course of conversation remarked, "Say, Tom, don't you think there's such a thing as an honest crook?"

"Sure, Jim," I answered, "you're one."

A little taken aback by this direct application, Jim said, "Well, you know what I mean. I'll tell you a case. There was three of us pulled off a little piece of business once, and afterward one of those fellows wanted me to join with him and freeze out the other fellow. Now, that's what I don't call honest, do you?"

"I certainly do not," I said. "And now I'll tell you what was in my mind.

I call you an honest crook, Jim, because while you've been a crook you have been square with your pals. Because the operations of your mind are honest, you haven't tried to fool yourself. There is nothing the matter with your mental operations. You have been simply traveling in the wrong direction. Make up your mind to shift your course, and you'll have no trouble going straight, because you are naturally an honest man."

Space forbids my going further into Jim's interesting history, but up to the time of writing my diagnosis seems to have been correct. Jim has a good job, is going straight, and just before Christmas he said to me, "Tom, I never was so happy in my life!"

How many more men like Jim are there in prison? Are they not worth saving?

Jim said in his letter, "Prison life did not reform me, nor will it reform any man." That is true; and no man will find help in prison for reforming himself until the conditions are greatly changed--until a system has been established in which a man can gain some sense of civic responsibility toward the community in which he lives. If such a sense of responsibility could be developed while in prison, would it not greatly help in a man's conduct after his release?

The following is not a letter, but a typewritten statement which Grant, the Superintendent of Prison Industries, found on his desk the morning after my last day's talk in chapel. One of the prisoners in Grant's office, upon returning to his cell, had felt moved to write down a description of the incident. This is it.

Sunday, Oct. 5, 1913.

Truly the past week, and to-day in particular, will mark an epoch in the history of Auburn Prison, if indeed, it does not in the entire state.

Mr. Osborne's stay among us has awakened new thoughts and higher ideals among the men confined here than any other agency hitherto tried or thought of.

His coming as he did, precisely the same as the most lowly of malefactors, and receiving no better treatment than would be accorded any others, has awakened feelings among the majority that can hardly be credited, much less described.

Those who in the past week have written articles in the various newspapers ridiculing Mr. Osborne's experiment, would have been put to shame had they been present at the chapel services this morning.

Never in my life before have I witnessed such a scene. When the Chaplain invited Thomas Brown to the platform, the audience could hardly restrain themselves, so great was their enthusiasm. It was at least five minutes before Mr. Osborne could be heard, and during his remarks it was about all any of us could do to keep the tears back.

As he ascended the platform, garbed as the rest of the audience, minus his usual attire but with the same air of determination and force that has always characterized him, he was greeted by the Chaplain and some ladies and gentlemen from one of the churches here; and his acknowledgment of the greeting was exactly as courteous and dignified as if he had not just been through one of the most memorable experiences of his life; and one could not help seeing the man and not the clothes he wore.

His remarks were of a character to cheer the downhearted and to urge to stronger endeavor for the right those who have made errors and find the path none too easy. His advice, as usual, was listened to with the greatest attention, and I have never seen an audience so wholly and unreservedly with a speaker as the boys seemed to be with him.

Where can you find a man who has the many interests that Mr. Osborne has, who will give up everything he has been accustomed to, and risk his health, yes, you might almost say his life--for one never knows what may occur in an institution of this kind--for the sake of those who are apparently nothing to him? We might understand it better if he were doing this for some immediate member of his family, instead of for strangers and outcasts.

Of one thing we are sure, and that is that Thomas Mott Osborne will never be forgotten by the inmates of this prison, and I firmly believe that he has been the means of inspiring love for himself in the hearts of the men here that will never die. In my own case, at least, I can speak with certainty. Although I have never spoken to the man in my life and never expect to, he has certainly inspired thoughts in my heart that never were there before; or if they were, they have been so warped and obstructed by the exigencies of my life for ten years past that I did not realize that I possessed them at all.

He is a man who is entitled to the best love of every human being that comes within the range of his influence, whether they know him personally or not. And he has won hearts to-day that nobody else on earth could.

In closing let me repeat his last words to us this morning. I shall always remember them.

"Look not mournfully upon the past; it cannot return.

"The present is yours; improve it.

"Fear not the shadowy future; approach it with a manly heart."

This is as I recall it. It may possibly not be exact--however the sense is the same.

If Mr. Osborne half realized what an influence for good his stay here had been to every single man in the place, I feel sure that he would not feel that his privations and hardships of the past week had been in vain.

Sincerely, E. O. I., No. 32--.

Of course it may be urged with some force that such letters are not conclusive, for it can not be proved that the writers have received any permanent help; that even those, like Jim, who straighten out may get tired of a virtuous life and relapse. That is perfectly true. For instance, my lively jail friend in Cell Four, Joe, in spite of all efforts to help him upon his release, failed to make good.

But such an argument misses the point. The important thing is that these men have good in them--a statement that can not be made too often. It is true that they are bad--in spots. But they are also good--in spots. And with a right system the good could be developed so as to help in driving out the bad. If Joe had received proper training in prison he would have gone straight after he got out. What I am just now trying to prove is the existence of good--and a large measure of it.

Here, for instance, is a letter from a man who has failed to go straight since his release.

135 State St., Auburn, N. Y., Sunday, Oct. 19, 1913.

Hon. Thomas Mott Osborne, Auburn, N. Y.

Dear Sir: As this is the last letter yours truly will ever write in a prison cell (that is, I hope to God and his blessed and holy Mother it is the last), I don't know of a person other than T. M. Osborne I would rather write to. I don't know of a single case ever recorded in the U. S. if not in the world where fourteen hundred men left a meeting house--men, understand, in public life who would not stop at anything--those same men left that chapel on Oct. 5 crying like babies! And I, being prison steam-fitter here, I heard some very good stories of Mr. Osborne--going around to the different shops Monday morning. It only shows that with a little kindness shown toward these same men that you could do most anything with them, and make better men of them in the future. Before God, I honestly swear and believe that Mr. Osborne could have taken that same bunch of men from Auburn Prison that Sunday, and put them on the road to work and 99 per cent.

would have made good--and that's a very good percentage. I have seen a good deal of this country--east, west, north and south--but believe me Oct. 5 beats everything. It is a scene which I shall always remember. Well, Mr. Osborne, I expected to have a little talk with you on Prison Reform but you have been very busy, so if I get a chance some time I'll drop in and see you. I leave the Hotel Rattigan to-morrow morning a wiser and better man.