or who is a very skilled workman can escape this trial in a great
measure, but I speak of the many who are friendless, and hence must
face the world alone. It has been said by those who would excuse their
apathy and lack of interest in the question, that, while there are
honest workmen unemployed, they do not see why people should concern
themselves about the returning criminal. This is very poor logic. You
might as well argue that it is sentimental to feed with care our sick
in the hospitals, because there are able bodied folk starving in the
streets of our cities. The Spartans took their old and sick and weak to
the caves of the mountains and left them there to meet death. Perhaps
that was the most convenient way of getting out of their problems and
shirking a care that meant trouble and expense. But we are not in
long-ago pagan Sparta but in twentieth century Christian America. Quite
apart from his claim on our sympathy as followers of Christ, in the
purely selfish light of the interest of the community, it is dangerous
to deprive men of the chance of making an honest living. Naturally they
will then prey on others and the problem will become more and more
complicated as they go farther from rectitude and honesty.
I know some writers of fiction have played on this theme of the poor
worthy workman and the unworthy "ex-prisoner" with telling effect.
They have made those who tried to help the latter appear in the light
of foolish sentimentalists while the workman is depicted as starving
for want of the friendship they refuse him. This however is but a
stage trick of literary coloring. The honest workman has his union
behind him; he is often out of work through its orders; if he does not
belong to the union, he at least has a character and, in this age of
philanthropy, charity and many missions, he can apply for aid which
will be speedily given, if he proves that he is deserving. He may be
unfortunate but he has not behind him the record, around him the almost
insurmountable difficulties of the man from prison. We ought to help
the latter because in most instances he cannot help himself. Alas,
there are very few ready to render practical help, writers of fiction
to the contrary.
I do not advocate carrying him and thus making him dependent upon
others. I do not believe in pauperizing any one. Give him a fair start
and then let him take his own chance with any other workman and by his
own actions stand or fall.
I was visiting my Hope Hall on one occasion after a lengthy western
trip. Many new men who had returned during my absence were anxious for
personal interviews and so I spent most of the day in this occupation.
One man who was ushered into my presence was considerably older than
any other of the newcomers. Grasping my hand he told me with tears in
his eyes of his gratitude for the Home. I asked him if he was happy.
"Happy," he answered, "why I am happier than I have ever been in my
life." As we talked I studied his face. I could recognize no criminal
trait and I wondered at one of his age with hair already white, being
friendless and homeless and at the place where he must begin life all
over again. I came to the conclusion that he had probably served a
very long term for some one offense committed in his early manhood.
It is not my custom to bring up the past. We do not catechise our men
concerning their deeds of the past. If it will help a man to tell me
in confidence any part of his story, I gladly listen, but I never make
one feel that I am eager to learn the wretched details that in many
instances are better buried and forgotten. In this case, however, I
diverged from my rule sufficiently to ask this man whether he had done
a very long term, that I might answer to myself some of those questions
that would better help me to prove myself his friend in the future.
"No," he answered with a smile, "I have that to be thankful for; I
have never been sentenced to any very long term. I have only done five
short five year bits." Just think of it! Twenty-five years in all! The
record of an habitual criminal indeed. Speaking afterwards to one of
my workers, who knew the man well, I asked him how it was that this
had happened. He told me that it was just the old story, that could
be recorded about many others. In his youth this man had committed a
crime which called for a five year term of imprisonment. He had been
overwhelmed with shame and regret, and during that first term in prison
had learned his lesson. During that period his father and mother both
died; he came back into the world homeless, friendless, a stranger. In
his pocket he had a few dollars given by the State and he started out
hopefully to look for work. He was met by rebuff, disappointment and
failure; then came hungry days and nights, when he had no money to pay
for lodging, and had to sleep in any sheltered corner where he might
hope to escape the vigilance of the police. Then followed starvation,
and he returned to what seemed the inevitable; he stole that he might
live; was arrested and sent back to prison. This was repeated after
each discharge, until at last he had Hope Hall to turn to, a haven of
refuge from the miserable sin and failure of his life.
A story even more startling was told me by a chaplain of one of our
State Prisons. The man of whom he spoke was brought up in the most
wretched environment; his parents were drunkards, his home did not
deserve the name. As a mere child he was cast out on the streets to
earn his own living by begging or theft. If he did not bring back
enough at night to suit his parents, he was beaten and thrown out
on the streets to sleep. He became early an expert young thief;
from picking pockets he advanced to a more dangerous branch of the
profession and became a burglar. When about eighteen years of age he
was arrested and given a long term in prison. During that term he was
for the first time taught the difference between right and wrong; he
learned to read and write in the night school and thus was opened up
a new world before him. He heard the teachings of the chaplain from
the chapel platform and for the first time, he understood that it was
possible even for him to live a different kind of life from that which
had seemed to be his destiny. On his discharge from prison, he was a
very different man from what he had been on his admission. He went out
with the firm resolve to do right. He laughed at difficulties, saying
cheerily that he was going to work and feeling in his heart that
with his earnest desire to do so faithfully, he must make a success
of the future. After a few days of effort in the big city, he found
that it was not so easy to obtain employment as he had anticipated.
Day after day he sought it earnestly, always meeting with the same
disappointment. Leaving the city, he tramped out to the surrounding
towns and villages; for several weeks this man sought for an honest
start in life, but no hand was stretched out to help him. His money
was long since spent; he had to sleep at night under some hedge or
in some secluded alley way. The food on which he subsisted was the
broken pieces and partly decayed fruit picked from the ash barrels of
the more fortunate. At last flesh and blood could stand the strain no
longer, and he returned to Boston, his strength gone, his mind benumbed
and a fever raging in his blood. Crossing the Common on a bleak rainy
afternoon, he stumbled and lost consciousness. Hours passed and in the
shadow he was unnoticed. The poor, lost, unwanted outcast lay there,
with the great happy busy world rushing on within a few feet of him. A
man who was crossing the Common chanced to stumble over the prostrate
figure. He stooped to see what lay in his path and finding that it was
a man, he turned him so that the lamplight fell upon his face and then
with an exclamation called him by name.
Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. This poor, dying, friendless
man had been found by perhaps the one man who knew him best in that
great city. Thinking that he was sleeping or perhaps drunk, the man
shook him, saying, "Who's going to build a monument for you that you
lie out here on the Common catching your death of cold?" Finding no
answer, he repeated his question, adding, "Trying to be honest, are
you? Who cares enough to build your monument, I want to know." Then he
realized that the man was past speech, and lifting him from the ground,
he tenderly guided the staggering foot-steps to his own home. True,
his home consisted of rooms above a saloon; true, this Samaritan was
himself the leader of a gang of burglars, and yet the deed was one of
charity, and his was the one hand stretched out to help this sick and
helpless man. For weeks he was carefully nursed and tended. The doctor
was called to watch over him. When the fever left him and strength
returned, nourishing food was provided, and when he was well enough to
dress he was welcomed in the room where the gang met and not in any
sense made to feel that he had been a burden. All this time no effort
had been made to draw him back into the old way of living. One night
as he sat at a little distance he heard his friends plan a burglary.
They had a map stretched out upon the table before them and had marked
upon it the several positions to be occupied by different members of
the gang, some to enter, while others watched and guarded the house.
One point was unguarded and while they were seeking to readjust their
company to fill this place, the young man rose and coming to the table,
he laid his finger on the spot and said, "Put me down there." The
leader of the gang, who had proved so truly his friend, laid his hand
upon his shoulder and said quickly, "Don't you do it! You have been
trying to be honest, stick to it! You have had a long term in prison
and are sick of it. Don't go back to the old life." But the boy turning
on him (and there was much truth in his answer) said, "When I was sick
and hungry, who cared? When I was trying to be honest, who helped me?
When I lay dying on the common, who was it stretched out a helping
hand, who paid my doctor's bill and who nursed me? You did and with you
I shall cast in my lot." He would not be dissuaded. That night he not
only went out and aided in the burglary but was caught by the police.
In his trial the fact came out that he had only been a few months out
of prison. The fact that he had been so soon detected in crime with his
old gang was evidence of his criminal propensities and he was returned
to prison for an extra long term as an old offender.
There is, however, a court above where all cases will be tried again
and there the Judge will take loving cognizance of the hard struggle,
the awful loneliness and suffering, the earnest desire to do right that
went before this fall, and His judgment will be tempered with divine
mercy.
The watching and hounding of men to prison by unprincipled detectives
is not unknown in this country. In fact, you can find such cases often
quoted in the newspapers and every prison has its quota of men who
could tell you terrible stories of what they have endured. I do not
want to appear hostile to the Detective Department, for detectives are
necessary and many may be conscientious men. The criminal element know
and respect the conscientious detective, but they have a most profound
contempt for the man who vilely abuses his authority and seems to
have no conscience where one known as an "ex-prisoner" is concerned.
Revelations have been made in many of our big cities of the blackmail
levied upon criminals and the threats which have been used to extort
money. There is no need of my quoting cases to prove this point, as it
has been clearly proved over and over again in police investigations
which are fresh in the memory of the public.
The man from prison is a marked man and hence an easy prey to the
unscrupulous detective. Jean Val Jean, the hero of Victor Hugo's "Les
Miserables" is perhaps looked upon as a fictitious creation of the
great novelist's brain, but he is a reality! There are Jean Val Jeans
in the prisons of this land and many a man struggling to remake his
life, longing to forget the disgraceful past, has been dogged and
haunted by his crime, to be taken back at last to the horror of a
living death which, he had hoped, would never claim him again.
The impression and opinion that there is no good in one who has been
in prison not only robs him of sympathy on the part of the good and
honest and makes him an easy prey to the unscrupulous, but lessens
the compunction of society for the wrong it does him. "Oh, well," cry
the righteous in justification of their actions, "he would probably
have done the first job that offered, so it makes no odds. Criminals
are safer in prison anyway." So justice is drugged with excuses and
the helpless one she should have protected is handed over to rank
injustice, with the excuse that he deserves his fate. Has not the
sword of justice once been raised over him, setting him aloof from his
fellows?
Some years ago a young man who had fully learned his lesson in prison
was discharged from Sing Sing, with the earnest desire to retrieve
the past. At first it was difficult to find a position, but at last
he obtained employment with a large firm where he served some months,
giving every satisfaction to his employers. As time wore on, he felt
that the sad shadow of the past was gone forever. One day as he walked
up Broadway carrying under his arm a parcel which he was to deliver to
a customer, he felt a hand suddenly fall on his shoulder. The cheery
tune he had been whistling abruptly ceased. It seemed as if a cloud
passed over the sunshine obscuring it as he turned to recognize in the
man who accosted him, the detective who had once sent him to state
prison. "What are you doing?" asked the detective. "I am working for
such and such a firm," he said. "What have you got under your arm?" was
the next question. "Some clothes I am taking to a customer." "We'll
soon find out the truth of this," said the detective and despite the
entreaties of the man, he marched him back to the store, walked with
him past his fellow-employees and accosted the manager. "Is this man in
your employ?" he asked. The question was answered in the affirmative.
"Did you send him with these clothes to a customer?" Again the
satisfactory answer. "Oh, well," said the detective, "it is all right
but I thought I had better inquire and let you know that this man is
an ex-convict." Then he went on his way, but his work had been well
done. The young man was disgraced before all his fellow-clerks and was
promptly dismissed, not for dishonesty, not for laziness, not because
he had proved unworthy of trust, but simply and solely because he had
once been in prison. Once more he was made to suffer for the crime
which the law said he had fully expiated.
The following instance I give from one of our daily papers, only the
other day.
"How far a policeman may go in an effort to arrest persons charged with
no specific crime, but who have their pictures in the Rogues' Gallery,
may be determined by Commissioner Greene as a result of a shooting in
Twenty-third Street yesterday, when that thoroughfare was crowded.
"A detective sergeant, while in a car, saw seated near the rear door
two men whom he recognized, he says, as pickpockets. The men's pictures
and descriptions being, as alleged, in Inspector McClusky's private
album. The detective therefore determined to take them to headquarters.
"When near Lexington Avenue the two men left the car, being closely
followed by their pursuer. The detective sergeant called upon them
to halt, which they refused to do, and he fired. One of the men says
the detective sergeant fired at him, but the detective insists that he
fired in the air. Women screamed and men took refuge in entrances to
buildings. Two policemen then arrested the men, who gave their names
as John Kelley and Daniel Cherry. Commissioner Greene has ordered an
investigation."
I need add no comment. The story is merely an illustration of the old
adage, "Give a dog a bad name, and you might as well hang him." I do
not want my remarks to be one-sided. The detective officer is needed.
Some of the officers are very able, bright men and I have known some
who have been fair-minded and good at heart but that great abuses of
power have been practiced and many men made victims to the old idea
that the once marked man has no rights, no honor, and can come to no
possible good, is an incontestable fact. Public opinion, steered by
Christian charity regarding the rights of those who cannot protect
themselves, is the safe-guard to which we must appeal.
Perhaps the bitterest experience is that of the man who succeeds
in getting a start, who strives hard and in time makes for himself
a position by faithful, honest work and who after it all, has the
building of years torn down, and his life blasted by the unjustifiable
raking up of the past. A story startling the state of Ohio was flashed
all over the country not long since, which very pointedly illustrated
this fact. A man in his youth had committed an offense which had sent
him to prison for five years; I believe it was the striking of a blow
in a moment of anger; he served his term and it proved the lesson
of his life. Coming out of prison, he moved into the state of Ohio
and found work in Columbus. It was humble work at the very bottom of
the ladder, but, as years passed, his industry was rewarded by great
success and at last he became a very prominent and wealthy business
man. He had had to confide his past to one or two people in the city,
so that when he commenced to work, he would not be doing so under false
colors. As time went on and wealth, social position and important
business connections became his, these people in a most unprincipled
manner commenced the levying of blackmail. For many years his life was
made miserable, and he was thus robbed of thousands of dollars.
There was nothing dishonorable in his life; he was a perfectly
straight, successful business man, but he knew well that the prejudice
against the man that has been in prison is so great that his successful
career would be ruined and he himself ostracized, if these blackmailers
published the fact which they threatened to reveal, that he had once
been in prison. At last when he could stand this wretched position
no longer, he made a statement to the papers, through his lawyer,
publishing to the world the fact of his early imprisonment, that he
might thus break the weapons of his enemies. If the world's attitude to
the returned prisoner were more rational and its judgment were passed
on his after life and conduct instead of the mere fact of the past
penalty, such a state of things would be impossible.
Many will have read of the case that came up in the New York papers,
of the fireman who had served faithfully for fifteen years in the
fire department, receiving honorable mention for his bravery. In his
youth he had been in a prison, had served part of his term, from which
he had been pardoned by the then governor of our state; during the
investigation in the fire department this man was called to the stand,
and immediately his past was probed into by the opposing lawyer. He
pleaded with tears in his eyes, that the fifteen years of faithful
service should have lived down that one offense of his youth, but mercy
was not shown him and the head lines of the papers on the following
day announced in the most glaring type the "Ex-convict's" testimony.
Faithfulness, honesty, courage were all as nothing compared to the
stain which years of suffering and hard labor in prison ought to have
obliterated.
I had watched with interest the career of one of our "boys" who had
been a most notorious prisoner, living a desperate life and having
long experience in crime, which had brought him to the position where
many spoke of him as beyond hope. He had been out of prison over a
year and was doing well; he had been graduated from our Home and held
a position to which we sent him, most creditably, and was now living
with his wife in a little flat in Harlem, working in a shop where his
service was giving thorough satisfaction. Some flats were entered and
property stolen in the upper part of the city. There was no trace
of the perpetrator of the crime. A detective who had known this man
in the past, learning that he was in the city, started out to hunt
for him. He discovered the fact that he lived in Harlem: without a
scrap of evidence against him, he went to the house and put him under
arrest, and the first I knew of the case was a flaring account in
the papers headed, "Mrs. Booth's Protégé Gone Wrong." We received
almost immediately a letter from him from the Tombs, and one of my
representatives went at once to see our "boy." The second newspaper
article gave an interview with the detective, in which he mentioned
the fact that he had been at my office and that I had told him that
I had long since suspected this young man of wrong-doing; that I had
no faith or confidence in him, and could no longer help him. At the
time the interview was supposed to have taken place, I was fifteen
hundred miles away. When the case was brought up for investigation, my
representative was present to stand by the man, and to tell the judge
what we knew concerning him. There not being a particle of evidence to
connect him with the crime, the judge, with some irritation, was about
to dismiss the case, when the detective stepped forward, and asked that
the man be held to enable him to make further investigation. "What are
you going to investigate?" asked the judge, "you have no evidence to
go on." "Oh," said the detective, "I want to look up his past; he has
been many times in prison." Then, I am glad to say, the judge meted out
justice, and turning to the detective, reproved him most severely. He
told him that he was there to judge present facts and evidence, not to
condemn a man because of his past, and that it did not matter what the
man had been, if there was no evidence that he had perpetrated crime,
no one had any right to hold him or to investigate records that did
not concern the case. The man on his discharge went back to his former
employment, but it had been a severe and bitter trial, for naturally
he felt in his own heart the injustice of the whole incident. He has,
however, courageously fought through his dark days and now for years
has been a successful and prosperous man.
Of course there are men who come out of prison planning to do evil.
They are those who have not learned their lesson, and to whom
imprisonment has proved merely a deterring influence instead of
a reforming one. Some men deliberately go to the first saloon to
celebrate their discharge and some may be found in the old haunts the
first night of freedom. But even with these cases, which are apparently
utterly hardened and careless, there may have been a time before they
drifted so far, when they also longed for the friendly hand, which
might have helped them back from the deep waters to the safe ground
of honest living. Careless and hardened as they may seem to-day, we
have no right to think that there may not be an awakening to better
possibilities to-morrow; so while there is life, we should see to it
that so far as our part of the question is concerned, there is the
possibility of hope also.
VII
WELCOMED HOME
"Home, home, sweet sweet home,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home."
How often and how fervently are those simple words sung out by earnest
loyal hearts from end to end of the English-speaking world. The refrain
has burst forth at Christmas gatherings, at home-comings from school,
on every festive occasion, around all true home hearths, and its echo
has been heard on plain and prairie, amid mountain peaks and forest
fastness, as wanderers have in thought turned homeward. There is
perhaps no place where the old tune and well loved words sound with
more pathos, than when the refrain is raised in a prison audience and
rolled through the chapel or around the gallery by a thousand manly
voices. Heads are bowed, eyes grow dim with tears and sometimes lips
tremble too much to frame the words. I have heard it thus and have
tried to read the faces of the men as the song called up to them
the past. Some have sung with a longing and yearning in which still
lingered the note of glad possession, while for them arose a picture
of a dear home-spot where they were still held in loving remembrance
and to which in the future they would again be welcomed. Others under
still deeper emotion have seen a vision of the home that was, the
memory of childhood's happy hours gone forever with the passing of the
mother-heart into the far-away grave. Fathers sometimes drop their
heads upon the seats before them and strong men though they are, give
way to bitter tears as they picture the little white-robed tots who
kneel up in their beds to pray that papa may some day come home, and
ask the mother over again in childish perplexity why he stays away
so long, and then drop to sleep wondering at her tears. But some of
those in the great audience know no home as a future bright spot, for
they have never known the sacred influence which should be every man's
birthright. Even in their hearts there is a longing to possess that
which they have missed, and the song awakens a strange, untranslatable
thrill that makes them feel lonely and forsaken without knowing why.