THURSDAY NIGHT SESSION.

Dr. Milligan, the president, called the session to order at 8:15 o'clock. Dr. Batt, chaplain of the Massachusetts State Reformatory, offered prayer.

Joshua L. Baily, Pennsylvania: In my visits to jails, penitentiaries and other similar institutions, I have found that what has sometimes appeared a defect in the administration is due not so much to incapacity on the part of the wardens or jailers as to the poor construction of the buildings. I therefore desire to offer the following resolution :

"Resolved, That the Executive Committee having in charge the preparation of the program of the next annual congress of this association be respectfully requested to make provision for the consideration of the proper construction of prisons, penitentiaries, reformatories, etc., having especially in view effective sanitation and the separation of untried prisoners from the convicts, and that the committee invite the co-operation of competent architects."

The resolution was referred to the Committee on Resolutions. The president next introduced Mrs. Maud Ballington Booth, who spoke as follows:

THE DISCHARGED PRISONER.

MRS. MAUD BALLINGTON BOOTH, NEW YORK, N. Y.

I have spoken to you so fully on other occasions that the message I bring tonight may sound like an old story, especially to those wardens of whose prisons I am almost an inmate and who have heard me so often. Yet I am glad for this opportunity, glad that I can bring to you not only a message from my own heart, but a message from the hearts of those whose faces rise up behind you and who are far more present with me this evening than this audience upon which I look, -the faces of those who, thousands strong, in the great prisons of our country wait to know the deliberations of such a congress as this. After all, it is all for their sake that we have met here, and it is because of them that we have so much that is wise and good and strong from the lips and hearts of those who care. It all comes back to that one point those who care. If the world had awakened a hundred years ago to really care; if the world had recognized that it was the duty of the free, the honest and the strong to steady the feet of the weak, to give the word of cheer to the downhearted, we should not be facing so great a problem as we face today. If all reformatories were reformatories indeed, the population in our state prisons would not be so large as it is. If our prisons were what they should be, then the population which flows into them would flow out again a good, upright, well-trained, well-regulated population, to take up the burden of life and of citizenship in a new path. And so we come back to the fact that that which is pre-eminently necessary is to care, to value that which we seek, to realize that it is worth while.

During the twelve years of my work within prison walls, from New York to far-away California, one of the cheering aspects of this question to my mind has been the fact that I have always found that those who are in touch with the living flesh and blood side of the problem are not hopeless about the reformation of the prisoner. There are people in all conditions of life who will shift the whole question in a few scathing words: "You are wasting your time on those convicts. You will find it is no use doing anything for them. Once a convict, always a convict." Yet whenever I have talked with our wardens in their own homes about the men in their charge, I have found sympathy, hopefulness, kindly words. If there are any here who have come for the first time into this Congress, who have never been in touch with the prisoner or those who understand him, let me tell you that it is not a hopeless, heart-breaking proposition. On the contrary it is a wonderful field in which those who have gone astray can be brought back to the right path and the outlook becomes more hopeful as the years sweep by and we see greater advances in work for the amelioration of the prisoner's lot. And if you could hear from the old-time prisoners, as I have heard over and over again, their comment upon the changing years, you would feel that those who have so earnestly sought to bring about these changes, our wardens who are giving their thought, their time, their strength, to this work,have already received their reward. I have had men say to me, "Oh, Little Mother, I remember what it was ten, fifteen, twenty years ago. I remember the time when we were not treated like men, but were merely convicts. I remember the time when this thing or that thing was allowed within the prison walls," things that only broke the men in spirit and body and mind. But those times have passed, and I come to you as one who belongs to the inside and also to the outside world, to tell you that much splendid work has already been done.

It is not always a task that brings applause. I have wondered sometimes at the thanklessness of the task. I know some states in this country where one day there is a hue and cry because the prisoners are so badly treated; the warden is starving them or doing this or that or the other; and with much struggle and striving the warden will ask the legislature for funds with which to build a real prison, in which he can relieve the condition of the men under his charge. He knows how he has been compelled to crowd them, even two, three and four in a cell built for one. And he demands that every man shall have a cell, with enough light and air; he demands that his prisoners shall be treated like human beings. Then out comes the public press with the announcement that we shall next hear that our criminals are to be housed in a palace and every prisoner will have his private bathroom. The public applauds, but behind the scenes there are those who care nothing for the world's word; they are faithfully and patiently plodding on, and their work is telling. It is telling upon the physical condition of the men in prison. It is telling upon their mental attitude. It seems to me that the thing for us to do as we go home from this Congress is to cry to the great world that those who have not been burdened must stand by those who are fighting.

Those who work within the prison walls can feel that they are working for that which is precious beneath the rough exterior; something that some day can be made beautiful. I have had a great deal of happiness in the work which God has brought to my heart. I did not come here to speak of the work of the Volunteers of America, or of the work of the Volunteers Prison League, but I may say in passing that during the twelve years of the existence of this work we have had so much success as to fill our hearts with thanksgiving. It pays! The work was first looked upon as an experiment. Now, it is not a work that has been thought out by study or by committee meetings, but it is a work of growth from within the prison walls. When I first went into Sing Sing it was merely with the thought of being a friend to the prisoner, taking him the message which was deep down in my heart. The prisoners responded to the appeal and asked for some organization and I realized then, as I realize more fully today, that any work to be really a means of uplifting and blessing must be a work from within. The men in prison must realize that they have to work out their own salvation. Every effort of warden, chaplain and officer will fail unless we can get the men to the point where they are willing to say, "I am through with the past. Here is my heart and hand. With the little will and conscience I have left I will do the best I can for the future." It is a good thing that within our prison walls men have to a large extent come to their own extremity. They have found out the old life does not pay. They have drunk the cup and have tasted the bitter dregs. They have tested their own strength and have learned something of the results of these evil things that curse and blight men and drive them on that downward path which leads to prison. When the men themselves say "We will make the effort," then indeed all these material things that are being done for them, the schools that are being introduced, the new trades system, the grading, the parole system-all these things will prove a real, permanent blessing.

A little while ago the Parole Board of New York State handed over to my care and keeping a woman who had been some time in Auburn prison. For several years I have had a very happy work among the women in Auburn and one or two other state prisons. Quite a number of women have come to me and of all who have come only three have proven delinquent. This young girl had had a very bitter experience in the past. Taken away from a Home at sixteen years of age, she became bond slave to a brute who brought her from her own land through Canada into this country. She lived in constant terror. When she came in with her miserable earnings of shame it would be to be abused, to be threatened with death if she did not please her task-master. One day in a frenzy she choked him. There was a great deal of sympathy for her and, when tried and convicted, she received a comparatively short sentence, with the privilege of parole. I saw her at the prison and from her own lips I heard how much she had gained within those prison walls. I could see for myself that prison had meant a great deal to her after the experience through which she had passed. Some people look at it as a curse. I know a great many men who can say honestly that it was a blessing. When it became known that I was to parole this woman, I cannot tell you what a ringing of the telephone we were subjected to, both at my office and my home. The reporters wanted to see her and have her give a resumé of the past. I presume that would make capital, but we determined they should not know anything at all except that she was free and going to have a free woman's chance. Through a plot between the prison and our office I had the joy of meeting her without any witnesses. We got her away and I put her into a home where she was to take up life again without any one knowing where she was, although that night up to midnight I had reporters at my home trying to find out where I had been and what I had been doing. We have been able to draw a curtain entirely over the past. She has had no one to speak to concerning the past. As she filled out her parole papers, I said to her, "I want you never to talk or think of the past. It is a dark, horrible night