Liberty! How much that word means to all of us! It is the keynote of our Constitution. It is the proud right of every citizen. The very breeze that flutters our starry flag sings of it; the wild forests, the rocky crags, the mountain torrents, the waving grasses of the wide-stretching prairies echo and reecho it. Yet much as we may think we know of the fullness, sweetness and power of that word, we cannot form an estimate of its meaning to one who is in prison. He has lost the gift and those who have it not, can often prize the treasure more than those who possess it.

People have talked to me about the prisoner becoming quite reconciled to his lot, and in time growing indifferent to the regaining of liberty. I think this is one of the fallacies that the outside world has woven. I do not know from what prison such an idea emanated. So far as my observation goes, I have yet to find the first prisoner who did not long with an unspeakable desire for freedom. Even the older life-men who have been in long enough to outlive all their friends, who have no kith or kin to return to, and for whom there is no home-spot on earth, plead earnestly for the chance to die in liberty. They hope and plan, they appeal and pray for pardon, though it would send them from the familiar sheltering walls into a strange, cold world, but the world of free men. In every cell are men who count all dates by one date, the day coming to them in the future when they will be free again. Sometimes it is very far away and yet that does not make it any less vividly present in their thought. The chief use in the calendar is to mark off the passing days and some have even figured off minutely the hours that stand between them and liberty.

There is a weird cry that breaks out sometimes amid the midnight stillness of the prison cell-house, the venting of a heart's repressed longing, "Roll around, 1912," and from other cells other voices echo, each putting in the year of his liberty. I heard the cry break out in chapel one Christmas day as the gathering at their concert broke up, every year being called by the "boys" who looked forward to it as their special year of liberty. "Roll around, 1912." How far away it seems to us even in liberty, but how much further to the man who must view it through a vista of weary toilsome prison days.

Having talked with many just before their dis when the days and hours leave but a few grains to trickle through the glass of time they have watched so closely, I know just what a strain and tension these last days represent. Often the man cannot sleep for nights together under the excitement and the nervous strain proves intense. Through the dark nights of wakefulness he puts the finishing touches to the castles in the air that he has been building through the weary term when with his body in prison, his mind wandered out into the days to come, and hope, battling with fear, painted for him a rainbow in the storm clouds of the future.

Can you imagine how hard and bitter is the awakening for such a man when he returns to life to find himself a marked and branded being, one to be distrusted and watched, pointed out and whispered about, with all too often the door of honest toil shut in his face? The man discharged from prison is not unreasonable. He does not expect an easy path. We do not ask for him a way strewn with roses or a cheer of welcome. He has sinned, he has strayed from the right road, plunged over the precipice of wrong-doing, and it must at best be a hard climb back again. The men do not ask nor do we ask for them an easy position, the immediate restoration of the trust, confidence and sympathy of the world on the day of their return. They know they cannot expect, having thrown away their chances in an evil past, to find them awaiting their return to moral sanity. I have not found them unreasonable and certainly very few have been lazy or unwilling to prove their sincerity. What we do ask for the released prisoner and what we feel he has a right to ask of the world is a chance to live honestly, an opportunity to prove whether or not he has learned his lesson so that he may climb back into the world of freedom and into a useful respectable position where he may be trusted.

When God forgives us He says that our sins and transgressions shall be blotted out like a cloud or cast into the sea of His forgetfulness. He believes in a buried past. The world alas! too often goes back to that wretched old grave to dig up what lies there, and flaunts the miserable skeleton before the eyes of the poor soul, who had fondly hoped that when the law was satisfied to the last day and hour, he had paid for his crime, and might begin afresh with a clean sheet to write a new record.

How often we hear the term "ex-convict." Do the people who use it ever stop to think that the wound is as deep and the term as odious as that of "convict" to the man who has been in prison? When he is liberated, when the law has said, "Go in peace and sin no more," he is a free man, and no one has the right to regard him as other than this. Any name which marks him out is a cruel injustice. If the State provided for the future of these men; if they were not dependent on their own labors for their daily bread, it would not be quite so ghastly, but when one thinks that this prejudice and marking of discharged prisoners, robs them of the chance of gaining a living, and in many instances forces them back against their will into a dishonest career, one can realize how truly tragic the situation is.

Many a time one can pick up a daily paper and see the headlines, "So and So to be Liberated To-morrow," or, "Convict ... will return to the world," or some such announcement. If a man who is at all notorious has finished a term in prison, the article tells of the crime he committed five, six or even ten years before; what he did; how he did it; why he did it. Some account of his imprisonment—with an imaginary picture of himself in his cell—may be added, with the stripes in evidence, and even a chain and ball to make it more realistic. This heralds the day of his discharge. What a welcome back after his weary paying of the penalty through shame and loneliness, toil and disgrace, mingled often with bitter tears of repentance during those best years lost from his life forever! This raking up of the past reminds his friends and acquaintances of the wretched story which had been nearly forgotten, and tells it to many more who had not heard of it. Is this fair? Perhaps it may be said that this is part of the penalty of doing wrong. I answer that it should not be! In a civilized land our wrong-doers must be punished by proper lawful means. The law does not require this publicity after release. Why should the world ask it? Besides that, could we not quote the recommendation given of old that only those who are without sin have the right to cast stones, and, if that precept were lived up to, very few would ever be cast at all, for the saint in heart and life would be charitable.

It does not take many days of tramping in a fruitless search for work, or many rebuffs and slights, to shake for the most sanguine man the foundation of those castles he saw in the air before his term expired. When money is gone, and there is no roof to cover the weary head, no food to stop the gnawing of hunger, and no friend at hand to sympathize, the whole airy structure topples to the ground amid the dust and ashes of his fond hopes, and the poor man learns in bitterness of heart an anger against society that makes him more dangerous and desperate than he ever was before.

Much is said of the habitual criminal. Some contend that he is born, that, as a poor helpless infant, he is doomed to a career of crime and vice. Others believe that such lives are the outcome of malformation of brain and skull, and yet others have their own pet theories to account for the large number of "repeaters," as they are called in some states, "old-timers," or "habituals," as they are known elsewhere. I have personally known many of these men and have traced their lives, talked with them heart to heart, and I can tell the world, as my profound conviction, that the habitual criminal is made, not born; manufactured by man, not doomed by a monster-god; that such criminals are the result of the lack of charity, of knowledge or thought or whatever else you may like to call it, that makes the world shrink from and doom the sinner to a return to sin, that treads further down in the mire the man who has fallen.

What is a man to do on leaving prison with his friends dead or false to him, with no home, little money, the brand of imprisonment upon him, nervous, unstrung, handicapped with the loss of confidence in himself, and with neither references nor character? The cry of the world is, "Let the man go to work; if he is honest, and proves himself so, then we will trust him and stretch out a hand to help him." Ah, then if that day ever comes to him, he will not need your outstretched hand. Your chance to help and strengthen him will have passed forever; the credit of his success will be all his own, but few can reach that happy day. It is easy to say, let the man work, but where shall he find occupation; who wants the man who can give no clear account of himself? If in honesty of heart he tells the truth and states, "I am straight from prison," he is told to go on his way, and often the voice that gives the command is harsh with indignant contempt and loathing, and yet this man has one inalienable right in common with all his fellow-men, the right to live, and to live, the man must have bread. Some have said to me that it is cruel that the right to end their lives is denied them, for should they commit suicide they would only be condemned, and if they attempted it and were not successful, they would be imprisoned for trying to do away with that which no man helped them to make endurable.

These released men are not of the beggar class. Their hands are eager for work. Their brains have a capacity for useful service, yet they have to stand idle and starve, or turn to the old activities and steal. Does the world say this is exaggerated? I declare I have again and again had proof of it. I believe that with hundreds who are now habitual criminals, and have made themselves experts in their nefarious business, there was a day when they truly wanted to be honest and tried to follow up that desire, but found the chance denied them.

Of course the man who has a home, who has friends standing by him 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.