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CHAPTER SEVEN
PROSTITUTION IN THE PEN

"Who keeps the mastery of himself!
If one Ponders on objects of the sense, there springs
Attraction: from attraction grows desire;
Desire flames to fierce passion, passion breeds
Recklessness: then the memory -- all betrayed --
Lets noble purpose go, and saps the mind,
Till purpose, mind, and man are all undone."

Those of my readers who are so good, so modest, had better skip this chapter, for it speaks about prostitution. "What do you mean," asks my reader, "are not the two sexes segregated at the prison?" Yes, they are, the men being in one building and the women in another, and the two do never mingle. The prostitution that exists is that which is practised (sic) by men among men or by men to boys. To make it any plainer would perhaps land me in the federal prison for many years, for it is unfit to print and transmit through the mails. That my reader shall understand the situation, I will say "Get your Bible and read the first chapter

 

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of St. Pauls' letter to the Romans, especially the 26th and 27th verses, which read as follows: 26. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections; for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature. 27. And likewise also the men leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.

Never did I imagine that a human being could thus lower himself, and if those old steel cells at Lancaster or in any other prison for that matter, could speak, they would reveal crimes like those Saint Paul writes about, crimes almost unbelievable, practised (sic) by old offenders, serving long sentences and being shut off from the opposite sex forever, upon the young inmates, crimes so black that they would make the "hangers on" of an oriental seraglio blush with shame.

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A young man thus ravished is ruined forever. "How can it be prevented?" you ask. There are two ways: first, you parents, guide and look after your boys and keep them out of the penitentiary; second, segregate those unfortunate boys who have to go there, from the old sodomists by erecting reformatories for these young men, where each individual boy can be watched and each individual case receive that particular treatment which is most necessary. Warden Melick speaks of this in his report, and Governor Aldrich in his message asked the legislators to appropriate funds for such a reformatory, which they did, and soon our state is to have such an institution.

 

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CHAPTER EIGHT
WORK AT THE PRISON

Idleness, the root of all evil, is unknown at the big prison; everybody works except the sick in the hospital. Of the three hundred and fifty men, fifty work in the chair factory, one hundred and fifty in the broom and brush factories and the others work around the institution and as trusties on the farm and for outsiders. The chair and broom factories are run by corporations, in no way connected with the state. They buy the labor of the inmates and pay at the rate of fifty-five cents per day for each man, and an additional five cents for each man per day, which pays for rent, heat, light and power. Much has been said against contract labor, and while it has its defects, in interfering with outside labor yet it also has its good points. Many industries have been tried and found wanting, such as the manufacture of harness, pearl buttons, agricultural