We therefore repeat the expression of our belief that the remedy for the disorders and tumults which have disgraced our prison management, not simply since the law in question was passed, but for a long time previously, lies in a direction quite different from that of a restoration of the forbidden punishments. Discipline in prisons is a science of moral far more than of material arrangement. A true prison discipline-one conformed to the demands of reason no less than to the dictates of humanity—will aim to win the living soul of the convict, not simply the inert and obedient body; and we surely cannot have worse success in seeking to gain the minds of our prisoners, than we have had in laboring to fetter their limbs. By bending our energies to devise and render effective an apparatus of moral forces, rather than to expand and improve our apparatus of physical coercion, we may be able- there is strong ground to anticipate that we shall be able to solve a problem which all concur in regarding as difficult, and which would seem incapable of solution on the principle of force heretofore employed the problem, namely, how we may so organize and conduct public punishment as to check crime and yet restore the criminal.

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The punishments which the Legislature has forbidden are opposed to the tendencies of the times in which we live. The maxims of the civilization of our age and country are the maxims of humanity. Their tendency is to repress wanton cruelty even to convicted felons; to pave the way for their progressive improvement; to develope their better qualities, and hold their worse in abeyance; to guard their morals and higher interests; and all this, not by regulation, not by physical restraint, not by a coercive régime, but by supplying instead something better—that is, a principle of goodness, an inward craving for and impulse toward a better life. To aim at virtue by fencing it from without, instead of strengthening it from within, is but a repetition of the fable of the dog with his piece of meat; a signal instance of dropping the substance, to catch at the shadow. Vindictive punishments, whether public or personal, tend to sear rather than to invigorate, to harden rather than to mollify, to corrupt rather than to mend. Therefore, a degraded and degrading costume, stripes, tortures of every name, and whatever tends to destroy a man's self-respect, should be struck from the catalogue of disciplinary penalties; and instead, let the punishment for prison offences be the forfeiture of a portion of the progress already made toward liberation, or other forfeitures, with or without a period of stricter imprisonment and an abridgment of food, as the case may be; let it even be made, if you please, in aggravated cases, an addition to his original sentence. There is no greater mistake in the

whole compass of prison discipline than the studied imposition of personal degradation as part and parcel of the punishment. The tendency of such degradation is to destroy every better impulse, to extinguish every worthy aspiration. But no imposition would be so improving, none so favorable to the cultivation of forethought, selfrestraint, self-respect, a proper regard for others, or, to sum up all in one word, manhood, as the making of every deviation from the line of right bear on the convict's present condition, and especially on his ultimate release. A punishment like this has been fitly compared to the drop of water that wears away the granite rock; without ever degenerating into cruelty, it would nevertheless speedily subdue the most stubborn nature, and effectually restrain the most refractory conduct. No doubt the convict ought to feel the disgrace of his crime and sentence. This is a fit part of his punishment, ordained by the Creator himself. Beyond this, there should be no degradation of his manhood. No wanton outrage should be offered to his self-respect. But, contrariwise, on entering his prison-house, he should be made to feel, or at least given to understand, that he has a character to redeem, a future of virtuous, useful, honorable industry to create; and every means calculated to foster this sentiment should be used, every agency eschewed which has a tendency to obstruct its growth. Away then with parti-colored dress, lash, shower-bath, yoke, buck, hooks, and the whole array of degrading and torturing devices, in which the perverse ingenuity of man has been so fertile. Let them go to swell the rubbish of buried barbarisms. We would much sooner, if gifted with the power, persuade the Legislature to abolish the new punishment than to revive the old. That punishment, borrowed from the repository of inquisitional inventions, is a plain violation of the spirit and intent of recent legislation.

THE PRISON ASSOCIATION AND THE GRAND JURY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

In this connection we desire to make a brief reference to an arraignment of this Association by the grand jury of Westchester county. We have already alluded to the insurrection that occurred last summer at Sing Sing prison, in which several hundred convicts were engaged. Under instructions from the county judge, the grand jury instituted an inquiry into the causes of the disturbance. In their report thereon, they declared themselves "unable to ascertain any definite reason" for the revolt. Nevertheless, they put forth three propositions touching the cause of that and other outbreaks at Sing Sing. One of the causes they found in "the sweeping changes of officers with every change of political power." On this point we have no

controversy with the grand jury. We heartily join in every denunciation which they have fulminated against this corrupt and corrupting system.

Another cause for the outbreak they found in the abolishment of certain punishments formerly used in the prison, making special reference to the shower-bath, which, as they averred, had been "greatly dreaded by the convicts." On this point we have a controversy with the learned college of grand jurors; but have already, perhaps, expressed our views upon it with sufficient fullness.

Their opinion as to the third cause is conveyed in these words: "The influence of the Prison Association we believe to be injurious in this respect that it contributes to a false sympathy on the part of the community, which eventually results in the convicts being regarded as objects of sympathy and pity, rather than offenders against the peace and welfare of the community; and this, on coming to the knowledge of the prisoners (as it certainly does more or less), causes a general discontent." It is not suprising that a body of men who regard the humane treatment of prisoners as demoralizing, should lament the disuse of the cat and shower-bath. We should be sorry indeed if the spirit which dictated this report should become the dominant principle in the management of our prisons. After all, the prisoner is a wretched fellow creature, suffering from the most dreadful of all diseases; and the true function of a prison is, not merely to punish, but to cure as well. The howl of Carlyle, which is re-echoed in this paper, is simply brutal. This is what he says concerning the treatment of prisoners: "A collar round the neck, and a cart whip flourished over the back; these, in a just and steady human hand, are what the gods would have appointed them. To guide scoundrels by 'love' is, I take it, a method that will not hold together. Hardly for the flower of men will love alone do; and for the sediment and scoundrelism of men, it has not even a chance to do."

How much more of truth, as well as christianity, is there in what Dr. Chalmers says of the same class of persons: "The little that I have seen of the world, and know of the history of mankind, teaches me to look upon their errors in sorrow, not in anger.' "" It is in this spirit and on this principle that the benevolent labors of the Prison Association have been conducted. This is God's method with his revolted and rebellious children. So He himself declares: "With loving kindness have I drawn thee." The problem was to win back man's obedience. Loving kindness was God's device to achieve this miracle. If we would accomplish the same thing for our criminal brother, we must just pursue God's plan. Without in

the least relaxing the steadiness of a calm and resolute discipline, we must treat him with tenderness and humanity. It would appear that genuine kindness is a principle which keeps a lingering hold of our nature, even in the last and lowest degree of human wickedness. In offenders the most hardened, there still remains-so says the immortal Howard, so say all the most experienced and skillful prison administrators-there still remains one soft part which will yield to the demonstrations of tenderness and love. This one ingredient, at least, of a better character-susceptibility to kindness—is found to survive the destruction of all others. However fallen a man may be from the moralities which once adorned him, whatever abyss of crime he may have reached in his descent, the manifestation of good will, of heartfelt kindness, on the part of his fellowman, carries with it a softening, purifying, redeeming influence; and through it the very worst of men can be converted into consenting and active agents of their own recovery.

The Westchester jury aimed a blow against the Prison Association, but it recoiled upon themselves. The press, with great unanimity, took up the defence of the Association and its labors, pouring its criticisms, at the same time, with merciless severity, upon the heads of the jurors. We offer a single specimen in an extract from the comments of the New York Daily Times: "The third and last cause of revolt mentioned by the grand jury is—mirabile dictu! the 'influence of the Prison Association,' which leads to a false public sympathy with the convicts, and thus encourages a mutinous disposition in them. Nothing could better show how little study the grand jury were able to give to the subject of their presentment, and how little they knew even of the elements of a question which has been the subject of the most profound thought and elaborate investigation on the part of many of the best and greatest minds of the present century. It is not worth while, however, to argue the case with men who should have lived before John Howard was born, and who entertain ideas that are opposed by practical experience, and have been repudiated by everybody who has examined the terms of prison discipline."

CONVICT LABOR IN ITS RELATION TO FREE LABOR.

For the last few years, as the time for the meeting of the Legislature has approached, an annual excitement has been gotten up in reference to the supposed competition of prison with outside labor, and the alleged wrong thereby done to honest mechanics in free life. Public meetings have been held in different parts of the State, and petitions from mechanics' associations and others sent in, praying

the Legislature for protection to the mechanical interest against the unjust rivalry of felon labor, by prohibiting all such labor in the State prisons as might compete with the labor of artisans outside; that is, all skilled labor whatever therein. Bills have to this end been introduced into the Legislature at its last two sessions. It was through the same influence that a printing contract for convict labor at Sing Sing prison was, two years ago, annulled by authority of the Legislature, although, through the introduction of the printing business into the prison many of the inmates were rapidly and joyfully mastering the art of setting types and the still more important art of self-help, thereby securing themselves against the necessity of a fresh resort to crime on their release and the community against the fresh spoliations to which it would thus be subjected. A journal of high standing, in commenting on the abolishment of this contract, made use of the following language: "We denounced the movement from the outset. The attempt to introduce into our prison system a new craft, ranking among the most honorable and useful of the mechanic arts, was promptly resented as an insult by the whole body of workingmen. * The sum involved is not of so much consequence as the principle at stake. Fifteen thousand dollars [the sum allowed by the State as damages for canceling the contract] will have been well invested, if it shall establish as a rule of future prison management, that none of the skilled mechanic arts are to be introduced among convicts; that they shall be employed at such avocations only as require little instruction or experience and interfere least with ordinary industry; that our workingmen shall not be obliged to compete in market with the products of felons whose time can be hired for a few cents a day."

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In our last report we argued at length the question of skilled labor in prisons in opposition to the view of those who inaugurated the movement against the introduction of such labor therein. It is not improbable, judging from the past, that the attempt to shut out skilled labor from the State prisons will be renewed this winter. Therefore, though we do not propose to enter again, with any degree of fullness, into the discussion, we think it not amiss to summarize the argument submitted in our report of last year. The points of the argument were these: 1. That the product of prison labor, thrown into the general market, cannot interfere appreciably with the interests of mechanical and manufacturing labor outside, there being perhaps 15,000 prisoners engaged in productive labor in the whole United States, in a total population of 40,000,000. 2. That it is contrary to the principles of a sound political economy to suppose that injury to the general interests of society can, by any possibility, arise from