The Man Behind the Bars. Winifred Louise Taylor

Lest any one may charge me with extravagant optimism in regard to convicts, or may think that to me every goose is a swan, I wish to say that I have written only of the men—among hundreds of convicts—who have most interested me; men whom I have known thoroughly and who never attempted to deceive me. Every writer's vision of life and of humanity is inevitably colored by his own personality, and I have pictured these men as I saw them; but I have also endeavored, in using so much from their letters, to leave the reader free to form his own opinion. Doubtless the key to my own position is the fact that I always studied these prisoners as men; and I tried not to obscure my vision by looking at them through their crimes. In recalling conversations I have not depended upon memory alone, as much of what was said in our interviews was written out while still fresh in my mind.

I have no wish to see our prisons abolished; but thousands of individuals and millions of dollars have been sacrificed to wrong methods of punishment; and if we aim to reform our criminals we must first reform our methods of dealing with them, from the police court to the penitentiary.

Winifred Louise Taylor.

August 6, 1914.

THE MAN BEHIND THE BARS

CHAPTER I

Table of Contents

I have often been asked: "How did you come to be interested in prisoners in the first place?"

It all came about simply and naturally. I think it was W. F. Robertson who first made clear to me the truth that what we put into life is of far more importance than what we get out of it. Later I learned that life is very generous in its returns for what we put into it.

In a quiet hour one day it happened that I realized that my life was out of balance; that more than my share of things worth having were coming to me, and that I was not passing them on; nor did I see any channel for the passing on just at hand.

The one thing that occurred to me was to offer my services as teacher in a Sunday-school. Now, I chanced to be a member of an Episcopal church and their Sunday-school was held at an hour inconvenient for my attendance; however, in our neighborhood was a Methodist church, and as I had little regard for dividing lines among Christians I offered my services the next Sunday to this Methodist Sunday-school. My preference was for a class of young girls, but I was assigned as teacher to a class of ten young men, of ages ranging between eighteen and twenty years, and having the reputation of decided inclination toward the pomps and the vanities so alluring to youth.

It was the season of revival meetings, and within a month every member of my class was vibrating under the wave of religious excitement, and each one in turn announced his "conversion." I hardly knew how to handle the situation, for I was still in my twenties, and as an Episcopalian I had never experienced these storm periods of religious enthusiasm. So while the recent converts were rejoicing in the newly found grace, I was considering six months later when a reaction might set in.

Toward the close of the revival one of the class said to me: "I don't know what we're going to do with our evenings when the prayer-meetings are over, for there's no place open every evening to the men in this town except the saloons."

"We must make a place where you boys can go," was my reply.

What the class proceeded to do, then and there, was to form a club and attractively furnish a large, cheerful room, to which each member had a pass-key; and to start a small circulating library, at one stroke meeting their own need and beginning to work outward for the good of the community.

The first contribution toward this movement was from a Unitarian friend. Later, Doctor Robert Collyer—then preaching in Chicago—and Doctor E. E. Hale, of Boston, each gave a lecture for the benefit of our infant library. Thus from the start we were untrammelled by sectarianism, and in three months a library was founded destined to become the nucleus of a flourishing public library, now established in a beautiful Carnegie building, and extending its beneficent influence throughout the homes, the schools, and the workshops of the city.

Of course I was immensely interested in the class, and in the success of their library venture, and as we had no money to pay for the services of a regular librarian the boys volunteered their services for two evenings in the week, while I took charge on Saturday afternoons. This library was the doorway through which I entered the prison life.

One Saturday a little boy came into the library and handed me the charming Quaker love story, "Dorothy Fox," saying: "This book was taken out by a man who is in jail, and he wants you to send him another book."

Now, I had passed that county jail almost every day for years; its rough stone walls and narrow barred windows were so familiar that they no longer made any impression upon me; but it had not occurred to me that inside those walls were human beings whose thoughts were as my thoughts, and who might like a good story, even a refined story, as much as I did, and that a man should pay

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