AN EXTRAORDINARY. GATHERING

Evening Star, Issue 16090, 15 April 1916, Page 10

AN EXTRAORDINARY. GATHERING

Probably unmatched anywhere before since man first began the practice of locking up his fellow-man was the. meeting of ex-convicts, under the auspices of the Outside Branch of the Mutual Welfare League of Sing Sing Prison, held recently in the Carnegie Hall at New York. Men who had spent the greater part of their lives behind the bars 6tood on the platform and told an audience that pocked the building how their criminal careers had begun and progressed. Tito r.vyx flagrant crimes were admitted without a flush of shame. Ex-burglars, and former "strong-arm" men laid bare their criminal pasts, not for tho purpose of condemning any particular prison, but for the purpose of condemning all prisons and all society for its attitude towards prisoners, with the single exception of the reform regime, of Thomas Mott Osborne at Sing Sing. Dick Richards, the first secretary oi the Mutual Welfare League, was chairman, and a better one could not- have been asked. Jixplaiuing that lie himself had spent 27 years i'n penal institutions, in

.most of which it was against the mlc tn talk, lie asked indulgence for himself •' and the other boys, if we talk too much to-night."' Richards introduced each speaker with a, humorous anccdoto of the hitter's, criminal past, but hn mingled tlto gay and the grave in a way to make a Dickens envious. There were also John Dale (an accomplished ex-burglar) and Harry Uolaskey (who earned the sobriquet "The Subway Terror" f.-r his skill in picking pockets on Xew York's subway trains), who told how they had been started on the wron;; road when mere lads by commitment to institutions where, instead of being reformed, they were schooled in crime. Dale, like .lack Dillon, who had spend 21 of the 50 years of his life in correctional institutions, named a juvenile institution called a" protectory " as the first "prep, school" where the foundations had been laid for their later graduation into State prisons. " I was six years old when I entered," said Dillon. "Of course, it would be absurd tn say that 1 knew how to steal then : but I learned well enough in the 10 years I was there." He leaned forward and shouted at the audience, as if in a measure ho blamed bis hearers for the blight on his past : " Why call an institution that learns children to steal a protectory?" Another man said that he had been such a clever criminal that no preliminary training had been necessary for him, and that he. bad gone straight to Sing Sing for his first conviction. But most of the speakers named a, long succession of juvenile institutions and reformatories where they had " studied" before graduating to State prisons. The burden of their condemnation of the present prison system is that to-day tho average man leaves a penal institution a worse man than he was when he went in. As one of them put it: "If you send a machine to a machine shop you expect to get it back improved ; why do you not demand that when you send a man to prison he be returned to you in a better condition than when he went in?" Most of the ex-convicts had been out of prison more than a year, and all of them averred that they were now "going straight." All of them, too, ascribed their change of heart and their improved position in society to the direct influence of Warden Thomas Mott Osborne and the Mutual Welfare Leagues of Sing Sing and Auburn. Mr Osborne was present and spoke, as also did Mr Fred Dorner, principal keeper of. Sing Sing. In fact, the appearance of a head keeper on the same stage with many ex-convicts was one of tho strangest features of this extraordinary gathering. Mr Dorner admitted the charge of Chairman Richards that in former days he was a .representative agent of the brutal old penal system, but) ho declared that under that system it was impossible for a keeper to be.humane to his prisoners, even if he wanted to. He told liow he himself was once threatened with punishment because ho -wrote a letter of sympathy to an exconvict. The advent of Mr Osborne, he said, had made it possible for him to obey the natural promptings of his own heart in tho treatment of felons.

Mr Osborne, who was tho last speaker, corroborated tho statement that " the old system" brutalised keepers and guards, as well as convict?. He corroborated, also, the remark of an ex-convict that under the old system "keepers had no regard for the moral welfaro of prisoners, because they had no morals themselves." "Tom Brown/' as the Sing Sing warden is known to the prisoners, emphasised a point which the other speakers had been harping upon—viz., that we cannot have prison reform that is worth anything until we have a new moral attitude on the part of society towards those who have offended it. "The more you punish a man, the harder you treat him, the harder his desire for revengo becomes, and he leaves prison determined to get even with the society that has hurt him. Tho only way of hitting back that he knows is to keep on committing crimes, and so tho thing goes from bad to worso in air endless vicious circle." But Mr Osborne went on to say that it is just as important that prisoners understand society as it is that J society understand the prisoners. " Th» | average_ conyiot," he declared, "thinks ! that society is made up entirely of ' graftj era.' _ He thinks tho men out oi prison I are simply ' grafters ' who have not been I caught. His attitude is that of the prii soner who said that the world is made up ! of three classes of people—' those in pri--1 son, those that have been in prison, and \ those that ought.to be in prison.'" , , . j Incidentally, by tho fairness of his conj duct of tho legal preliminaries to Lis own trial, Mr Osborne has gained the confij dence even of many of those persons who i have heretofore mistrusted him. For example, it was suggested that he would not get a fair trial In Winchester County, where Sing tiing Prison is situated, and therefore that he should ask for a change of venue—that is, for a transfer of his trial to another county, In his letter to his lawyer instructing him not to movo for a chanjje of venue Mr Osborne saidt "I do not see how the fight could be logically or effectively carried on elsewhere. Tho shame of tho outrageous and brutal attack upon an innocent man lias been placed on Winchester County. It would not be fair to deny the county the chance to show that such actions are not representative of the real sentiment of its people." Judging by the applause that greets his every public appearance, the real sentiment" of tho people at large is that Mr Osborne is being much fairer to the forces opposed to him than these forces have been to him, even though the rapiers of Mr Osborne's enemies have been tipped with lenity. His refusal to try for a change of venue was as wise as it was brave.—New York ' Outlook.'

Tho Ontario License Board will refuse liquor licenses to any German, even if naturalised, or a native of German descent, if he has expressed sympathy with the Teutonic allies, A paper recently read before tho Canadian Forestry Association described a new by-product from pulp wood, which is to be n].sadifili.-A3 &.miW.?tutA /nr.fed-