Is it merely prejudice that makes me think that letter an exceptionally charming one? Has that boy no good in him worth developing?

These letters are enough, I believe, to prove my point. I could give many more, including those from Dickinson who, united with his wife and children, is working honestly and happily at his trade, earning money to pay his obligations and justifying the Chaplain's faith in his character.

But there is not space for all the letters, so I have selected only those which seem to show most clearly what they all show--the good that is in the hearts of all men, even those who have seemed to be most evil; the wonderful possibilities which lie stored up, five tiers high, in our prisons.

Room must be made, however, for one short missive which I found on my desk the Sunday I came out of prison. It was anonymous and came from New York City. It reads as follows.

Damn Fool! Pity you are not in for twenty years.

The postmark is that of the substation in the city which is nearest to a certain political headquarters on Fourteenth Street.

Is there any possible connection between these two facts? Perish the thought!

One more before closing this bundle of letters. In the first chapter reference was made to a friend to whom I first mentioned my plan of going to prison. Soon after that incident I received a letter from him enclosing one coming from an imaginary Bill Jones to the imaginary Tom Brown. Its cleverness, its wisdom, its underlying pathos, its witty characterization of social conditions and their relation to the Prison Problem make it a real contribution to the discussion.

Oct. 9, 1913.

Hon. T. M. Osborne, Auburn, N. Y.

My dear Friend: Enclosed you will please find a note for a very dear friend of mine, Tom Brown by name, who was recently released from Auburn Prison. Brown is a perfectly good fellow, although you wouldn't believe so if you were to judge him by his prison record alone; but the truth of the matter is that he is a party of decided views, possessing an individuality of his own; and being of this type he was bound to bump into things while on the inside looking out.

Hand him this note, do what you can for him, and believe me as ever,

Yours most sincerely, W---- N. R----.

Enclosed in this letter was the following.

Oct. 9, 1913.

Thomas Brown, Esq., Auburn, N. Y.

Dear Tom:

I note by the papers that you have served your bit and are now out again digging around for your own meal ticket.

I also note from the same informative sources, that following your usual proclivity for action, you started something while in the hash foundry, and consequently got a fine run for your money; the result being that you were shook down for your large and munificent earnings when discharged, and turned loose on a warmhearted world without any change in your jeans. But why worry? You've got a good and lucrative trade now, learned at the expense of the state of New York; and you know as well as I do that a good clever basket and broom maker, besides becoming a competitor of the unhappy blind, who are wont to follow this trade, can also earn as much as one dollar per day weaving waste-paper baskets for the masses.

I also note that a guy by the name of Osborne interviewed you after your release, and that you immediately put up a howl about your not liking the basic principles which call such joints as the one which you just quitted into existence; and that as per usual the foresighted and profound-thinking editorial writers on several of the big New York joy-sheets, which are published as accessories to the Sunday comic supplements, immediately broke into song and wanted to know what in hell you expected such places to be.

But don't mind these newspaper stiffs, Tom. One discovers on coming in personal contact with them that, as a rule, their writings are all based on inexperience and the writers may be classified as belonging to the same species as Balaam's ass. So forget them.

I know this Osborne party personally; and take it from me that if he had been born and brought up in the neighborhood of the gas-house he'd sure have been some rough-neck. He is full of pep and actually thinks for himself. He also has some peculiar ideas relative to the rights and duties of humanity, and your experiences truthfully related to him will probably bring results.

This Osborne guy is no novice in prison dope, and for years has been beefing about society throwing away its so-called "waste material,"

when it might just as well be turned into valuable by-products by an intelligent application of the laws of synthetic social chemistry.

It's his dope that if some Dutch guy can beat it into some big industrial joint, say like those of the United States Steel Company or the Standard Oil, and by an intelligent application of the laws of nature change waste material into valuable by-products and big dividends, that it is up to society to experiment a little with its social junk pile and see what a little of the right kind of chemistry will do to the waste material to be found therein.

I can distinctly remember when the big blast furnaces around this man's town were cussed right along for dumping slag and cinders into the local river as waste material. The aborigines and other natives hereabouts used to form committees to call on our old college friend, Andy Carnegie, and tell him about it. Andy, of course, felt badly, but used to come back with a "What's biting you people, anyway?

Nobody can eat this slag, can they?" He had to put his waste somewhere, so why not use the rivers? Along about this time, however, in blows a Dutch boy named Schwab, he studies the question of slag and other waste material and its utilization; and now said slag is converted into high grade cement, price, $15 per ton, f. o. b. cars, Pittsburgh, Pa.

Ditto the juice from the oil refineries which polluted the rivers when I was a kid. At present writing this former waste material that used to wring hectic curses from all the river water-users from Pittsburgh to Cairo is changed into thirty-two separate compounds; and yet some people actually think that John D. stole his coin when the truth of the matter is that he simply hired a guy to study out plans for the utilization of waste and then beat the other stiffs to it before they were next.

Same way with the slaughter houses. When Charley Murphy was wiping his beezer on the bar towel and asking, "Wot'll youse guys have next?" most every town had an unlovely spot known as the slaughter-house district, and property was valued in an increasing ratio based on its distance therefrom. Because why? Foul-smelling waste. But along comes P. Armour, Esq., studies the waste question and says to the slaughter-house stiffs, "Gimme the leavings and other things you throw away and I'll not only put Chicago on the map, but I'll likewise build one of the loveliest trusts that ever allowed a fourth-rate lawyer to bust into public life by the attacking of the same."

Well, that's what's wrong with this Osborne party. While he lets other ginks browse around the waste-heaps of the mills and factories seeing what can be done with their junk, he pokes around in the social waste-heap trying to find out if its contents can't be converted into something useful. One might call him a social engineer; though as a rule men of original and new ideas are usually called nuts. But be that as it may, I note that Stevenson, Bell, Morse, Edison, and a whole list of folks who have done useful things, were at one time classed as being a bit odd but harmless.

As there are no personal dividends in the way of kale coming to any one who tries to convert the social waste-heap into something useful, the average stiff can't understand why a guy with a bean on him like Osborne should want to waste his good time monkeying with it, when he might be more socially useful by inventing a new tango step.

You see, Tom, society is so constituted at present that it can't understand why any man should want to do something that will bring him no financial returns; and yet this self-same society, that does all of its reasoning on a dollar and cents basis, can't understand why some poor stiff interred in a penal institution should register a kick against being compelled to work five, ten, or fifteen years for nothing.

Society also doesn't seem to realize that it constitutes and creates its own temptation--to wit, when a gink sizes up the class of stiffs big cities like New York and elsewhere pick up to run their public business, and the shake-downs they stand for from their own duly chosen and elected grafters, the little gink feels it to be his almost bounden duty to stock up a flossy silver quarry and lead them to it.

Of course there have been many changes in prison conditions since this Osborne party got fussing around, both inside and out, but nevertheless there is still room for more. Speaking of old conditions, I am personally acquainted with a party who could throw a piece of Irish confetti up in the air, and who, if he didn't duck, would get it on his conk and be reminded of old times, who can most distinctly remember when the social unit who happened to land in the waste heap lost his hair, manhood, and faith in man and God Almighty, all inside of twenty-four hours.

This was in the days of zebra clothing, short hair, the lock-step, contract labor, and all around soul-murder.

I know, however, that there have been many changes since then; so that although your experience, while proving that the great and assinine waste of good material is still going on in the social mill, and therefore most heart-stirring, will never carry with it the soul-blighting memories of one who for fourteen years marched the lock-step.

Of course, now that you are free, you will be in for your knocks as an ex-con and all that, but why worry? You will still have the privilege of the free air with opportunity always before you. Of course you are bound to meet with that duty loving stiff who knowing of your having been in the social waste heap believes in advertising the fact. But again, why worry? If you feel that you can make good--why?

Some time I want to tell you about my old friend O'Hoolihan and the bird. He spent twenty-seven years in the place you just left and made one of the greatest sacrifices for a little robin redbreast that I ever knew a man to make--well, say for the benefit of a bird.

Yours very truly, BILL JONES.

CHAPTER THE LAST

THE BEGINNING

February 15, 1914.

"The vilest deeds, like poison weeds, Bloom well in prison air; It is only what is good in Man That wastes and withers there."

So wrote the poet of Reading Gaol, whose bitter expiation has left an enduring mark in literature. But the lines do not express the whole truth.

The Prison System does its best to crush all that is strong and good, but you can not always destroy "that capability and god-like reason" in man.

Out of the prison which man has made for his fellow-man, this human cesspool and breeding place of physical, mental and moral disease, emerge a few noble souls, reborn and purified.

All about me while I was in prison--that hard and brutal place of revenge, I felt the quiet strivings of mighty, purifying forces--the divine in man struggling for expression and development. Give these forces free play, and who knows what the result may be? The spirit of God can do wondrous things when not thwarted by the impious hand of man.

It will not be forgotten, I hope, the conversation Jack Murphy and I had about the formation of a Good Conduct League among the prisoners. My partner lost no time in getting the affair under way. On the very afternoon of our parting in the Warden's office he wrote me the following letter. It is made public with considerable reluctance, because it seems like violating a sacred confidence. On the other hand when I spoke to Jack about the matter his reply was characteristic. "Print it if you want to, Tom. Whatever I have said or written you can do anything you like with; and especially if you think it will help the League."

So here is the letter.

Sunday, Oct. 5, 1913.

My dear friend Tom: