In Tamal Land

IN TAMAL LAND

crowded lodging houses of Mulberry Bend, which Jacob Riis's perseverance eradicated.
In other buildings are cells, each of which is thirty by twenty-seven feet, which contain twenty-six men, and one cell, of thirty-six by twenty-one feet, lodges forty-eight convicts.

POINT SAN QUENTIN, AS SEEN FROM MT. TAMALPAIS.

Though the system of ventilation is by means of flues attached to the ceiling and door, still these rooms, in which are herded individuals of all ages and classes, must become exceedingly foul and unhealthful; while the opportunity which this congregate system affords the prisoners for concocting plots and outbreaks is undeniably assured.
Of the prison industries the jute mill is of sole importance to the outer world; all other products being consumed there. Some eight hundred convicts labor at the mill, and five million sacks are annually sent from the prison.

IN TAMAL LAND

   There are paint and tin shops which supply all the tin-cups, hand basins, pails, etc., used in the institution; tailor shops in which are made all the clothes; carpenter shops for repairing and furniture, while sixty pairs of shoes are turned out each week from the boot shop. In the machine shops where are manufactured all the needles used in sewing the jute bags half a dozen excellent sewing machines were recently made.
   The extensive laundry where numerous Chinese convicts are employed, is only one of the many evidences of cleanliness witnessed in this institution, where order and system are apparent to even the casual observer. But however orderly, systematic and cleanly a prison may be kept, that is only one means toward eliminating crime; for so long as we continue in our congregate system of indiscriminate herding together of all classes of offenders so long will our penitentiaries be hothouses for fostering crime. Instead of eliminating, we confirm; instead of inciting decency and self-respect, we incite indecency and rebellion.
   At the time of our visit there were in San Quentin about

LAGUNITAS, SAN RAFAEL'S WATER SUPPLY.

IN TAMAL LAND

TROLLING ON THE LAKE.

a dozen. lads, the youngest but fourteen years of age, imprisoned on charges of murder, who, had it not been for the supervision of Warden Tompkins, would have been placed with the confirmed, hardened criminals.
   The State makes no provision for these offenders, and, unless as in this instance they are separated by the individual action of the Warden, they would ere now be proficient in the lore of crime.
   Crime is contagious, because thought is contagious.
   By this it is not meant that you and I, if we mix with criminals, will become criminally inclined; because our ego--or soul--not having any prenatal defect or susceptibility to crime will be unresponsive to its influence.
   But to a criminal, whether he be a first offender or not, the pernicious, indiscriminate companionship of fellow convicts who suggest crime in its various distorted shapes to his abnormal, defective mind, will plant seed-thoughts which thus sown thrive and grow until we have the confirmed criminal.
   If a criminal is so receptive to suggestions of evil, and his criminal capacity is so strengthened and fixed by the ideas and emotions that he entertains, would not counter-suggestions have just as potent an effect on the individual?