Part 4
“In Massachusetts crime among women is much more an economic than a moral problem,” said Miss Mary Boyle O’Reilly. “The overwhelming majority of women in industry are low wage earners, often victims of seasonal trades with their alternate periods of over-work and semi-starvation.
“These young and unsettled workers, many of them homeless and suffering from malnutrition, are ignorant of business customs. Working at machines and trades that are soon learned, they are entirely at the mercy of their employers.
“In our Massachusetts prisons the population falls as prosperity increases in the great centers of industry, but immediately there is a shut-down in the mills of the State we are then forced to note a pitiable increase in the number of women who fall into evil ways.”
The sensation of the annual meeting (from the newspaper standpoint) was the scoring of conditions at the Deer Island (Boston) House of Correction by President MacChesney.
“The buildings are so far behind the times that they must have been built before my State was established. The sanitary conditions are very bad. There is no attempt at classification or segregation. Youths of tender years convicted of minor offenses are thrown among adult prisoners who have been guilty of serious offenses. Prisoners of all types are thrown together and this should not be so.”
Referring to the women’s prison, Mr. MacChesney said, “I saw one case there that is most deplorable. It is that of a little girl but 17 years of age. She was sent to the institution after being convicted on a charge of vagrancy. She is there thrown among pickpockets and others who have committed serious crimes. Two of your own judges, who were with me, agreed that she should not have been sent there and that girls of that age should be segregated from older and hardened women.”
The men’s dormitories at the institution were also the object of severe criticism. The men’s cells, constructed before the civil war, with no sanitary arrangements at all, were termed barbaric, and, as one member said, “ought to be dynamited.”
While many Massachusetts newspapers expressed satisfaction that the conference had raised the Deer Island issue again, the self-satisfaction or complacency or resentfulness of some of the editorials showed that not all of the “cocksureness” of Puritan times regarding the high character of home habits and institutions has departed from the Bay State.
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_Jail Poetry._--Upton Sinclair recently “did” eighteen hours imprisonment in the New Castle (Del.) workhouse for violating a Sunday blue law. Seven hours of the time were spent on the stone-pile. The inside cells and the “doubling up” practices led to the following verse:
THE MENAGERIE.
Oh, come ye lords and ladies of the realm, Come from your couches soft, your perfumed halls, Come watch with me throughout the weary hours. Here are there sounds to fill your jaded nerves, Such as the cave men, you forefathers, heard Crouching in forests of primeval night. Here tier on tier in steel-barred cages pent, The breasts ye breed and hunt throughout the world. Hark to that snore, some beast that slumbers deep, Hark to that roar, some beast that dreams of blood, Hark to that moan, some beast that wakes and weeps, And there in sudden stillness mark the sound Some beast that rasps his vermin hide.
Oh, come, ye lords and ladies of the realm, Come keep the watch with me, the show is yours. Behold the source of all our joy and pride, These beasts ye harness fast and set to draw The chariots of your pageantry and pomp. It is this blood ye shed to make your feasts, It is their treadmill that moves all your world. Come sit and think how it will be with you When God shall send his flaming angel down And break these bars, so hath he done of yore. So doeth he to lords and ladies grand, Who feed upon the blood of other men And loose these beasts to raven in your streets.
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_American Prison Association._--The American prison association will hold its annual meeting at Omaha, Nebraska, from October 14-19, 1911. Among the subjects to be discussed are: the resolutions of the 1910 international prison congress in their application to the United States; prison construction; mental deficiency and moral delinquents; prison recreation; the prison physician; the prevention of crime and insanity; psychology of the criminal; physical defects as a factor in the making of criminals; the jails of Florida; farm work for misdemeanants; statistics of crime; tuberculosis in prisons; governing boards; payment to prisoners and their families; some facts concerning prisoners’ dependents.
The following standing committees will report: prison discipline; prevention and probation; jails, lock-ups and police stations; reformatory work and parole; discharged prisoners.
Among the speakers will be Professor Charles R. Henderson, Judge C. A. DeCourcey, James A. Leonard, Joseph F. Scott, A. H. Leslie, Frank Moore, J. K. Cutting, Henry W. K. Scott, Charles M. Miller, Franklin H. Briggs, Dr. Theodore Cook, Jr., Dr. Daniel Phelan, Dr. William Healy, Dr. William Martin Richards, George W. Wickersham, W. H. Eichorn, A. W. Gilchrist, L. A. Halbert, Frank L. Randall, Mrs. Imogen B. Oakley, Eugene Smith, Rev. Thomas W. Houston, Guy H. Humphreys, William H. DeLacy, William H. Venn, Miss Eva Booth, Joseph P. Byers.
Surely a splendid program. Every one interested in prison reform should attend the Omaha meeting.
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Baltimore, Md., July 31, 1911.
Editor, _The Review_,
Sir--Referring to the article in _The Review_ for July, regarding “Parole in Maryland,” the reporter of the Baltimore _American_, from which paper this was taken, drew a great deal upon his imagination and as a result did not make correct statements.
Probation has been in service in Maryland for several years, but its use has grown very rapidly during the past two years under the new system instituted by the supreme bench. The mention made of $600 having been collected year before last by the Association and the probability of $5,000 being collected this year referred entirely to non-support cases. The practice of the courts has formerly been to order the husbands to pay their wives direct, but as the system worked very badly this is being gradually changed to a great extent by the courts ordering that the alimony be paid through this Association; a great improvement has been noted under the new arrangement.
The earnings of our probationers last year amounted to about $40,000. This was ascertained by carefully kept records from reports made monthly by the probationers. One can easily see the importance of this work to the city and state if viewed only from an economic point of view.
CHARLES D. REID, _Executive Secretary_.
Transcriber’s Note:
Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like this_. Those in bold are surrounded by equal signs, =like this=. Final stops missing at the end of sentences and abbreviations were added. Four misspelled words were corrected. Words may have inconsistent hyphenation in the text. These have been left unchanged. Obsolete and alternative spellings were left unchanged.