I said: 'I do not hear any noise.' 'Don't you hear that? Go out and see.' I then said: 'Oh, that is a kennel of bloodhounds in case the sergeant misses them.'

"He said: "These men work like fiends for you. Do you drive them?' I said: 'No, we have an indeterminate sentence here in this State, and they get out much quicker by doing what is right and proper. Nineteen were freed a short time ago,' I told him. 'That is the settled policy of the State I come from.'

Mr. Terrace, who represented the master of the National Grange at Rochester, said:

"There was a certain piece of road on the Columbia river which was in a mountainous country, and mostly in rock, and it was a hard country to build in. The best bid they could get from free labor was 9,500 a mile. Fifty convicts were taken out of the penitentiary and to this piece of road. Mr. Hill visited them on that road and said, 'Men, the eyes of the whole country are on you. I want you do good work. I will see that are well fed, have plenty of tobacco, and that every month you put in on this road will count for you.' They promised that they would do the best they could and the road was completed at a cost of $4,600 a mile instead of $9,500.. The price was cut nearly in two after having to take the men back and forth and feed them. That showed plainly the way the wind was blowing.

"We work convicts in the State of Washington in the mountains, which is hard work for them. I visited the convict camp because they were so sensitive in my grange that they wanted to know if the convicts were treated as they should be treated, and sent me to the camp for the purpose of finding out. I went among them and I saw what food they had. It was just as good food as any man wants to eat as good as any laborer gets in any part of this country.

"I asked them if they were satisfied or if they would prefer to be back in the penitentiary. They said they did not want to go back to the penitentiary. They were in the pure mountain air, and they saw the boats in the Columbia river, which afforded them some little entertainment, and moreover they learned

how to work. That was the trouble with most of them; they did not know how to work before. So now we are making them useful to us as well as to themselves."

In Lighter Vein.-Lafayette, Ind... Feb. 20.-James O'Connell, who says his home is in Chicago, stood tied to a post in the public square after he had refused to work with a street cleaning gang. He was under jail sentence for vagrancy.

O'Connell's predicament won sympathy from many persons, and when he was taken back to jail donations amounting to $2.20 were found in his pockets. The prisoner told the jail keeper that he was worth more "hitched to a post" than he would be with the street cleaning department.

A shiftless colored boy, after being caught in a number of petty delinquencies, was at last sentenced to a short term in the penitentiary, where he was set to learn a trade. On the day of his return home he met a friendly white acquaintance, who asked:

"Well, what did they put you at in the prison, 'Rastus?"

"Dey started in to make an honest boy out'ff me, sah."

"That's good, 'Rastus. I hope they A succeeded.'

"Dey did, sah.

"Dey put me in de shoe-shop, sah, naillin' pasteboard soles onto de shoes. sah."

Up to Date Legislation.-The Kansas City Star gives out the following as an illustration of some of the laws which have crept into existence in that state during the past few months:

"To fail to clean a hen house once every 24 hours, $25 fine. To sell a dime novel with an account of crime, $100 fine. To talk back to a policeman, $100 fine. To 'sic' one dog on another $100. To hitch a horse to a weight weighing less than 30 pounds, $25. To throw rice at newly wed couples, $100. To whittle on a fence, $25. To spit a wad of gum in a street car, $25. To have barbed wire fence around your premises, $25."

For instance, there were 1,115 men committed to the New Haven county jail in 1910 for the crime of drunkenness, 389 for the crime of breach of the peace, and 161 for the crime of vagrancy, or a total of 1,665 men whose crimes ranged from a too free imbibing of liquor to family rows and idleness occasioned by lack of suitable employment. For these offences they were compelled to don the degrading convict's suit and render a gratuitous issue of their labor to the chair trust, while the county received 40 cents a day for the same! After a period

en, is just as reliable and just as binding as that of his brother in feedom. It is simply a matter of adjusting conditions to meet the man, not the Quixotic idea of adjusting the man to meet conditions.

One hears so much of the "criminal classes." What a manifest injustice! It is the most shameful tag and humiliating epithet ever foisted upon the human race. and sweeps a people as a whole into the indictment room of the world's grand jury! It is not only unjust and illogical, but contrary to the American spirit of fair play. It labels the offending citizen

of from 60 days to six months, cooped up in a six by ten space at night, herded under inexorable taskmasters by day, it is no wonder that hatred of society and the land that permitted such a condition. finds a principal place in their minds.

The New Haven county jail is but a replica of conditions existing mainly throughout the country in the jails and penitentiaries. Suggest to some of these warders or superintendents the theory of working these men "On Honor" away from the walls and to the benefit of the state, and you will be put down as some harmless crank with notions of impossible fulfillment!

The convict's word of honor, when giv

with an ink that can never be eradicated. and yet out of this "criminal class" I have taken over sixty per cent.. and placed them on their honor hundreds of miles away from the prison with manifest success. Roads of incalculable value to the community have been built by this "criminal class" and without the traditional armed guard and ball and chainwithout the thousand and one ancient stupidities that have characterized our old penal administration. Men have been saved to society, to their wives, to their families and to posterity; their physical beings have been restored to perfect strength, their minds purged of hatred and vengeance, and cleaner, purer and

nobler thoughts have been inoculated into their systems. The State has been vastly enriched and the man himself saved-and all through the magic "word of honor" that hitherto has been thought the acme of asininity in a convict.

Colorado has its share and perhaps more than its share of the dregs and jetsam of society. Society's sweepings in the state penitentiary here number some eight hundred-all classes, all kindsbut mostly unfortunate creatures of environment and products of our twentieth century civilization.

heart and had no intention to "rub it in" as they had been taught to expect by bitter experience. Repeated interviews had better results. The inan came out of his shell; he shed this so-called criminal exterior and I was facing the man himself with all the good instincts that the Almighty God gives to each of us. made him tell me his whole life story and planted the thought in his mind that I was not here to further abuse him, but to help him and try to lift him out of the mire into which he had fallen. Square treatment; the discarding of

I

The writer has never had any prison experience makes no claims for penological or sociological distinction, but had a kind thought for the world's unfortunates. When I took charge of the prison I was keenly alive to the immense possibilities suggested by a close personal study of the "criminal classes" and I determined to satisfy myself just what this term meant and how far it was to be literally taken.

I have interviewed over a thousand individual men at Sunday audiences. The first interviews were almost invariably conducted with the man hidden within his shell. Not discouraged. I impressed these men that I had their welfare at

abuses and punishments that do not benefit; more open air work; more sunshine, better clothing, cleaner and more wholesome food; and the application of the doctrines of fairness and justice, have demonstrated that more than eighty per cent. of what are known as the criminal classes are open to redemption and can be made into good and useful citizens, with every vestige of criminal inclinations eliminated from their systems, just as you eliminate the dread germs of a disease from the physical system of man.

I have talked with murderers, train and stage robbers, burglars, yeggmen, pickpockets, hoboes, and every class of

criminal known, yet I have never found one but could be convinced that a criminal career does not pay! Nearly every man so convinced can be reformed! And these are the men, the fathers, brothers and husbands, that society labels with a shameful tag, shuts in from the fresh air and sunshine of the world, and then vociferously calls for reformation!

I am often asked the question: "How can you trust these desperate men away from the prison without guards?"

The best and most convincing answer

WARDEN T. J. TYNAN

to that question is the citation of the fact that out of the thousand and more individual men I have placed on honor on the road camps and ranches, some 50, some 100, some 200, and even 300 miles away from the prison, less than

one per cent. have violated their pledges by successful escape!

By a system of correspondence with the prisoner's own relatives, with his dearest friends, we secure their guarantee to his good behavior and his loyalty; then comes the man's own pledge. his word of honor! There is something undefinable, something that cannot be explained, that causes 99 out of every 100 men to maintain their pledges when given under these conditions. The man is brought to realize for the first time in his life that he is trusted even in a penitentiary, and rarely will he betray the

trust.

These camps are hundreds of miles from the prison; they are in charge of trained and competent overseers; not a gun guard; no sign of prison life; well housed, well clothed and well fed. Now then, what is it that prevents these men from escaping? 'Tis not stone walls and gun guards, for there are none! What then? Nothing but the word of honor they pledged to the writer, and their own inmate sense of loyalty, which is in itself the greatest step toward genuine. reformation possible.

He

The convict's word of honor in Colorado has been proven and tested. has established a standard of loyalty that ranks high with any in the country, and he has started the country thinking of the convict, a train of thought that I trust will ultimately result in the enactment of these great penal reforms that this modern age cries for.

The convict has a "word of honor" and he has proven it!