Part 3

9. The prohibition of the use of the jail for any other purpose than that of temporary detention.

10. The abolition of the fee system.

11. State control of all minor prisons.

12. The establishment of industrial farms for the convicted misdemeanants.

13. A form of indeterminate sentence for misdemeanants.

14. Their release on parole under supervision.

15. The abolition of contract labor.

The following members of the Committee on Corrections approve and sign the report:

Major R. W. McClaughry Julian W. Mack Arthur W. Towne Frank E. Wade Joseph P. Byers John J. Sonsteby Quincy A. Myers W. H. Moyer A. J. G. Wells J. A. McCullough John H. Dewitt Archdeacon B. M. Spurr

Mr. E. Stagg Whitin disagrees with what is said about the employment of convict labor on public highways in the more thickly-settled northern States.

EYTINGE

By Charles Wheatley.

[In the State Prison of Arizona is a life prisoner who has made a remarkable record. The _Delinquent_ has followed with great interest Mr. Eytinge’s business career while inside the prison, and now, through an article from the Ohio State Journal, presents Mr. Eytinge’s story in part.]

Down in Florence, Arizona, in the State Prison they have penned up a Daytonian for life on a charge of murder. This man went into prison an outcast ready to die--or rather about to be killed by tuberculosis. He had been a “con man,” forger and all-around crook, and today, seven years after his conviction, he occupies a prominent place in the business world.

The man in question is Louis Victor Eytinge, born in Dayton in 1878. At the age of three his parents separated. His mother was a talented musician, while his father had been actor, broker and gambler. Sometime after the separation young Eytinge went to live with an uncle. He was educated in the First District school, Central high school, spent two years at St. Mary’s Institute and one year at the University of Notre Dame.

At the age of 16 Eytinge started on his life of crime by forging a check. He went from bad to worse, and was soon known from east to west and north to south by the list of bad paper he had left behind. Many times his relatives kept him out of jail by straightening out difficulties into which the young man drifted, but finally they became tired of this and refused to have anything further to do with him.

Cut off from home’s ties, Eytinge became even more desperate and finally ended up in the Ohio State Penitentiary following his arrest and a daring attempt at a big jail delivery. While in the penitentiary Eytinge was known as a “bad one” and when released it was found that he was suffering from the advanced stages of tuberculosis. This was at the age of twenty-seven. When relatives learned of his physical condition they weakened in their determination to do no more for him. They sent him to Arizona with an allowance of one hundred dollars per month. He was to remain away from Dayton and live within the law.

Eytinge had not been in Arizona very long, however, until he was under suspicion of murder. A man with whom he had become quite friendly and whom he had taken care of in a financial way was found dead in the desert one day after Eytinge had been seen to leave the city with him for a buggy ride. When the body was found Eytinge had disappeared. He was found later in California and in his pockets were some of the belongings of the dead man.

Eytinge was brought back to Arizona and placed on trial for his life. He was convicted on circumstantial evidence after William A. Pinkerton, one of the greatest detectives of the time, had declared that it was improbable that Eytinge had killed the man “as his criminal bend did not gallop in that direction.” Judge A. C. Wright, of Phoenix, who defended Eytinge, was so sure of the prisoner’s innocence that he went into his own pocket to pay for the appeal of the case.

Eytinge was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. How long can he live in prison? That was the question asked by all who had seen him on the witness stand. Eytinge was near death’s door at the time. His allowance had been cut off and he did not have the funds with which to purchase fresh milk and eggs, two delicacies almost absolutely necessary for the tubercular patient. The State prison was then at Yuma, Arizona. It was a hell hole with its mosquitoes which swarmed into the cells that looked out on the Colorado river. The quarters were damp, dark and dirty, and afforded excellent means of killing a man who at the time was ready to die.

But right there is the story. Eytinge was not ready to die. He was not 30 years old. He clung to the hope that something would bring about his release. He wanted to live, wanted to breathe again the fresh air of freedom and hobnob again with the pals, association with whom had placed him behind steel bars. Eytinge was still a crook.

Enough of the crook! Let us get to Eytinge the business builder and man. It is a great, broad jump we admit, but the telling of how Eytinge accomplished it is a thousand times easier to do than the battle which Eytinge himself had to go through in bringing about that end. Seven years ago Eytinge was a crook of the first water, seven years, mind you, and--today Eytinge is a man. He is looked up to by professional advertising writers the country over. His business letters are the best that are being written today. Eytinge is the star of them all.

The strange part of this great accomplishment is the manner in which it was brought about. Eytinge made the road light for himself. He started out with weak hands to carry the torch that showed him the way. Today Eytinge is his own light; he has thrown away the torch and walks alone. Honesty is his greatest asset, and it was through the writing of business letters that Eytinge found his way.

When Eytinge entered the State prison he realized that he must find some means of making money. One could not forge checks in prison. Eytinge was placed in the chronic ward. Around him were Indians, Mexicans and others who in their spare moments made hat bands, watch fobs and other articles out of horse hair. They decorated these with rosettes hammered out of Mexican dollars. These articles were sold whenever possible to chance visitors at the prison, but it was a slow way of making money.

And then one day the big idea came to Eytinge! Opportunity knocked on the steel bars and Eytinge was there to talk to Her! The crude handiwork of the prisoners was the vehicle by which Eytinge began to make his way. He began by writing letters to retail dealers on the outside asking them to take the agency for the hat bands, belts, watch fobs and other articles. It was not long until the money began to pour in. There was a big demand for the articles, but it was the letters that Eytinge had written that opened up the field. In these letters Eytinge had given the dealers a straightforward account of what the articles really were. He told the truth absolutely and unvarnished, and one day he discovered that he had been doing this.

Does honesty pay? This was the question that Eytinge asked himself. He did not have to ask others--he had the proof before him. He had discovered that honesty did pay and that it paid well. But just at that time this new business received a severe setback. Prison officials became suspicious that many of the letters going out from the prison were not what they purported to be. Some of the salesmen were suspected of filling their letters with fake statements which were little short of appeals for help.

Word went out from the warden’s office that each prisoner could write but two letters a week. Eytinge had been dealing with forty retail merchants. Many a man would have thrown up the sponge and quit. To have thirty-eight customers taken away in that manner would have proved a shock that few concerns would have been able to withstand. But Eytinge did not admit defeat. He soon recovered from the shock and saw that something must be done. Two letters must be made to do what forty had been doing before.

The wholesale field was the only thing left. Eytinge began again through that channel. And the letters he wrote! They were full of business from the “Dear Sirs” to the “Yours Very Truly.” These letters did not whine. Eytinge did not have the time nor space for that. He had to talk business, and he talked it so well that it was not long until the two letters were doing all that the forty had ever done.

In the meantime a new administration had taken hold of affairs in Arizona. The State prison was removed from the banks of the Colorado up the Gila Valley to Florence, and with this change came a change for the better in Eytinge’s health. When he entered the penitentiary at Yuma he weighed 119 pounds and now he weighs 190 pounds, is the picture of health and physicians declare that he is cured of tuberculosis.

Finding himself had given Eytinge two things. It gave him a new self, one of which he was as ignorant of as you or I, and it also gave him health. The necessity for money with which to fight off death had done this and it had been his desire for money that had placed him in a position where he had to get it by some other means than by placing some one else’s name on a check.

By this time Eytinge’s letters had begun to attract the attention of people other than those with whom he was dealing. He had become a student of criminology also, and when Governor George P. Hunt, the first Statehood governor of Arizona, began his fight for better penal laws after his inauguration in February, 1912, Eytinge had published a booklet of which he was the author, dealing with this question. A noted sociologist has pronounced this to be the cleverest thing ever published on the question.

Magazines soon began to find Eytinge a man worth telling their readers about. Advertising booklets such as “Letters,” published in Chicago; “Printers Ink,” and others sent men to Arizona to “write Eytinge up.” In this way he became well known to men who held high positions in the advertising field. His advice was sought by business houses whose sales forces needed bolstering up, and he has also been offered numerous positions as business manager and business counsel.

Eytinge has made thousands of dollars out of his business since in prison, but in an article a fellow prisoner has written about him it is said that Eytinge is in debt. Why? Well, principally because he is a man, and goes out of his way to help others. These laws of ours give a discharged prisoner a five-dollar bill and a cast-off suit of clothing when he starts out to face the world. Eytinge says this is not enough, and thousands agree with him, so when he sees a man leaving prison who is deserving and in need, he is the first to come forward with financial aid. He has helped hundreds of men fight through the courts for their freedom, and the families of hundreds of prisoners can thank Eytinge for money that has tided them over the prison term of the head of their house.

Don’t forget that Eytinge now before you is the man who seven years ago entered the penitentiary many thought to die. Yes, the old Eytinge is dead--Eytinge, the crook, has passed away, but it has left an Eytinge whom the world will be glad to greet. Peter Clark Macfarlane, a Collier’s writer, says this of Eytinge: “They had penned him up to die. They sent him to jail, a crook, and lo, his voice was a power for honesty.”

That is the way Eytinge is spoken of by hundreds who have become acquainted with him through correspondence and the few who have taken the trouble to visit him in his work shop. Among Eytinge’s first really influential friends after he got on the right track were McCrary, the old parole clerk at the prison, and J. J. Sanders, the new parole clerk, who was appointed when Governor Hunt made Robert B. Sims warden of the institution. Sims had never had any dealings with prisoners or penitentiaries before, but he had some ideas as to how they should be run. One thing that he remembered, which the wardens of many States seem to have forgotten, is that prisoners are human beings.

These three men helped Eytinge to pull himself up out of the rut. He was made a “trusty” and given a clerkship in the parole clerk’s office. These were about the first honest men Eytinge had ever associated with. Honest men to him up until that time were “rubes” and “dubs” whose money he looked upon as his own. But in his efforts to help the parole clerks guide the footsteps of the prisoners who had been given a chance through the parole law, Eytinge found that happiness can come to a man by doing something for someone besides himself.

Lecturing did not bring these things about. It was the man’s ability to see for himself, and his horizon was the prison walls. Here he saw before him hundreds of men who had violated the laws of society, and he saw also that the happy ones were those who had violated no laws but were trying to help those who had. Step by step Eytinge was bringing himself up out of the mud. He declares today that the happiest moments of his life were those in which he found that he was regaining the confidence of those who had lost all faith in him.

One of the best indications of the regard in which advertising men of the country hold this prisoner is the fact that a paper written by him was read during the convention of the Associated Advertising Clubs of America, which was held at Toronto, Canada, June 21-25. This paper received greater applause than any other read before the convention, and the delegates were so enthusiastic over it that they voted to send Eytinge a vote of thanks.

The paper was read on Thursday at the close of the sessions when many of the visitors were anxious to get away for their homes, but 300 men remained in the hall in rapt attention while the paper was being read. A storm of applause swept through the hall as the reader concluded the message from the man who “puts his brains in an envelope.”

It has been a long, hard struggle for Eytinge. Will it win him his freedom? That is the question many are asking. No one can tell. Perhaps the law will unbend and open the gates to him sometime. Those who know him are hoping that such will be the case, and many are already doing what they can to bring about this result. That Eytinge has hopes that such a thing will come about goes without saying. He has served the average length of time that a “lifter” serves in Ohio, and he is a better man than many of those who are now released from prisons through pardons or influence.

EVENTS IN BRIEF

[Under this heading will appear each month numerous paragraphs of general interest, relating to the prison field and the treatment of the delinquent.]

_The Ethics of Governor Blease._--The executive of South Carolina, who has pardoned 1200 convicts in three years, has written about it all. Here are some of the reasons he gives for pardons.

In telling why he paroled a negro named Sam Gaskins, convicted of manslaughter, the Governor wrote:

“This negro, being engaged to a negro girl, called to see her and in fooling with a pistol it went off and killed her. It seems to have been a very sad accident. However, after a second thought, possibly it was for the good of humanity, for had they married no doubt they would have brought forth more negroes to the future detriment of the State.”

In explaining why he pardoned J. Allen Emerson, a white man, who was serving a life sentence for murder, he said that the imprisonment of Emerson had seriously impaired the health of the man’s sister. “Her life,” the Governor states, “is worth more to her and her children and is worth more to the citizenship and motherhood of this country than the incarceration of her brother is worth to the State.”

In pardoning Roland Parris, who was convicted of assault and battery on his brother-in-law, with intent to kill, the Governor explains that Parris was protecting his sister from abuse. “I congratulate him,” the Governor says, “for being man enough to protect his sister from a drunken husband; in fact, I think there should be an appropriation made by which the Governor could award him a gold medal of honor for his action.”

The Governor thinks that if any white man calls another a certain vile epithet and is killed the verdict should not be greater than manslaughter. If a negro applies the epithet to a white man he doesn’t care to say what he thinks the verdict ought to be, but “people may draw their own conclusions.”

_Germans to See Prisons._--An unofficial tour of inspection of American prisons and reformatories by Prussian Government officers will be made during the month of August. The Prison Association of New York has been asked to arrange the details of the proposed tour. The chairman of the delegation will be Dr. Karl Finkelnburg, who for many years has been prominent as a German prison warden, and who has recently been promoted to the position of director of Prussian prisons under the Ministry of the Interior, a position which had been occupied by the late Dr. Krohne.

Dr. Finkelnburg, who will arrive upon the Imperator about the end of the first week in August, will be accompanied by Professor Darmstaedter, of the University of Berlin, and also by a member of the Prussian Parliament. The tour of correctional institutions will cover a period of thirty-five days, during which time many of the most important prisons and reformatories of the Eastern and central positions of the country will be visited.

In recent years American correctional institutions have been frequently the object of careful study by foreign countries. In 1910, several hundred foreign delegates not only attended the International Prison Congress at Washington, but made a ten day’s tour, by invitation of the Federal Government, of many institutions. In 1913 a tour of inspection was arranged for four official representatives of the Prussian Government--Messrs. Plaschke, Schlosser, Hiekmann, and Remmpis. During a month and a half nearly fifty separate institutions were carefully inspected. The official report to the Prussian Government of these gentlemen has not yet been received from that Government by the United States.

The German Government is discussing the proposed revision of the penal law of Germany. Some of the most modern and successful features of American prison and reformatory management are being carefully considered in this connection.

_A “Relic of the Dark Ages”_--So the American newspaper correspondents called the Vera Cruz prison in Mexico.

Most famous of all Mexico’s prisons, noted for the untold thousands tortured within its walls, the castle prison of San Juan de Ulua, stands today on a little island overlooking Vera Cruz pretty much as it stood in the centuries of its existence. On April 28 the flag of Mexico fluttered down from its flagstaff. The stars and stripes rose in its place as Captain Paul Chamberlain and a company of marines from the North Dakota took possession.

In his despatch to the navy department reporting the taking over of the fortress Rear Admiral Fletcher said:

“The prison has been taken over under mutual agreement made between myself and Colonel Vigil, in charge, which agreement was signed and approved by Admiral Badger. There are in the prison 43 prisoners who have been sentenced for crime, 75 who have been accused of crime but have not been brought to trial and also 325 who have not been accused of any misdemeanor whatever. These 325 were arrested mostly within the last two months in order to be forced into the federal army and for no other reason. The above data were obtained from the officer in charge. The conditions in the prison under which the 325 men are living are described as frightful.”

Secretary Daniels directed the release of these 325 men, ordering that the seventy-five awaiting trial should be held pending investigation by the American authorities into the charges against them.

“No stage manager putting on ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ could imagine anything more creepy than the sight which met the eyes of the American officers when the keys were turned in the rusty locks and they entered the ancient vaults,” wrote an American newspaper man describing his visit to the prison.

In the grim, forbidding, gloomy pile of San Juan de Ulua the Spanish inquisitors found a building suited to the purposes and one which appealed to their torture-loving tastes. Only a fifteenth century Spaniard could have designed such a castle.

_First Field Day at Auburn (N. Y.) Prison._--Despite several hundred light cases of Scarlet fever, at the century old prison at Auburn “on Memorial Day traditions were set aside when the 1,400 prisoners there were given three hours in which to loaf or play and enjoy themselves in the open air,” says the Poughkeepsie Press. “At two o’clock in the afternoon they were marched into the yard in their usual companies, and at a bugle signal they were disbanded. Then they played baseball, and participated in other outdoor sports. There were cheers for the winning contestants and a good time generally. At the end of the three hours the bugle sounded the recall, the companies were formed again, and when the men marched back into the prison there was not a prisoner missing, and there had not been a single infraction of discipline.

“In this instance the short outing was a complete success. It did not destroy discipline, nor will it tend to create the supposition that the men are pampered at Auburn.”

_Road Making in New York._--In accordance with the policy of the State Prison Department and by means of an appropriation made at the last session of the legislature, the Department has placed groups of convicts from the various State prisons at work improving roads in different parts of the State. The plan will be extended as fast as possible with the available appropriation and it is hoped that some 500 miles of earth road will be improved during the summer.

At present there are five convict squads on the roads. Three squads have been sent out from Dannemora. They are all engaged in Clinton County one squad improving a bad stretch of the old military turnpike. Two more squads are out from Great Meadow, one working on the Comstock-Whitehall road and the other on the Ticonderoga-Schroon lake road in Warren county.

So far the plan has proved most successful. The convicts are keen for the chance of work in the open air and the result to the counties in which the work is being carried on is gratifying in improved traffic conditions.