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have no one to sign their parole and put them to work. I have found employment for a score or more of these boys, and they have promised me upon leaving to go out and do, right. With one exception they all made good and are today respected citizens, an ornament to their community. Does not this system appeal to my reader? Is it not far better to send these men out into society when they are fit to enter society, than to have a judge give them a certain fixed sentence? Nearly all of the paroled men make good, and from observation I have learned that the indeterminate sentence law and the parole law are of immeasurable benefit not only to the men themselves in returning them to manhood, but to the state as well in safeguarding and protecting its citizens.

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN
NEBRASKA'S DISGRACE

In this chapter I tell my reader of a great injustice, of a disgrace to our state. If a man has served a sentence in prison, no matter how long, he is upon his discharge, given a six-dollar suit of clothes, a fifty-cent shirt, a cheap suit of underwear, a two-dollar pair of shoes, a dollar hat, and five dollars in money. It matters not how cold it is, he gets no overcoat; nor does it matter were he was sentenced from, five dollars is all he gets, and if that will not buy his ticket home he will have to walk or fly, or get there in some other way. From the minute he boards the car at Lancaster he is known by his clothes as a discharged convict. Police officers keep their eyes upon him. When in prison everything was furnished, but now he has to look out for something to eat and a place to sleep. Before long his five dollars are gone. What will he do then? Is he much

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to blame if he, unable to get work, commits another crime? Is not the state, in an indirect way, a party to the crime? Two years ago the legislature passed a law to give the outgoing prisoner ten dollars, but unfortunately they overlooked to appropriate funds for that purpose, thus the law was of no value.' It reminds me of a friend of mine, who was quite a hunter. He invited me up to his house to take dinner with him. He had shot a young, wild goose' and his good wife was preparing it for us. Long before we came to the house we smelled the goose cooking. While his wife was not looking, his neighbor's dog got the goose, much to our disappointment. Well, we managed to get along anyhow. It is the same way with the, boys of Lancaster. They had heard so much of the ten dollar bill they were to get and they saw the law enacted; but they never got the ten, they got only the smell of it, and they, too, had to get along somehow with the five only. And again at the 1913

 
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session of the legislature, it went the same way. I made several trips to the state house and conferred with several senators. Some of them were surprised over existing conditions. Only one knew all about it; that was Senator Dodge of Omaha. The senators promised that they would do all in their power in this matter and they kept their promise; but someway, somehow, the bill went astray in the house, and again no appropriation. One good thing, however, about those sterling patriots who serve in our legislatures-they never forget to appropriate funds for their own salaries. That is usually the first number on the program, and not only is it the first, but is passed with an emergency clause, that those good solons will not have to wait for their hard-earned money. I will ask my reader, "What is the best for the state, as well as the cheapest in the long run-to give the outgoing boys five dollars and the cheap clothes, and then have many of them come back again as a ward of