Love, Life & Work Part 10

Judge Lindsey sends boys to the reform school without officer or guard.

The boys go of their own accord, carrying their own commitment papers.

They pound on the gate demanding admittance in the name of the law. The boy believes that Judge Lindsey is his friend, and that the reason he is sent to the reform school is that he may reap a betterment which his full freedom cannot possibly offer. When he takes his commitment papers he is no longer at war with society and the keepers of the law. He believes that what is being done for him is done for the best, and so he goes to prison, which is really not a prison at the last, for it is a school where the lad is taught to economize both time and money and to make himself useful.

Other people work for us, and we must work for them. This is the supreme lesson that the boy learns. You can only help yourself by helping others.

Now here is a proposition: If a boy or a man takes his commitment papers, goes to prison alone and unattended, is it necessary that he should be there locked up, enclosed in a corral and be looked after by guards armed with death-dealing implements?

Superintendent Whittaker, of the inst.i.tution at Jeffersonville, Indiana, says, "No." He believes that within ten years' time we will do away with the high wall, and will keep our loaded guns out of sight; to a great degree also we will take the bars from the windows of the prisons, just as we have taken them away from the windows of the hospitals for the insane.

At the reform school it may be necessary to have a guard-house for some years to come, but the high wall must go, just as we have sent the lock-step and the silent system and the striped suit of disgrace into the ragbag of time--lost in the memory of things that were.

Four men out of five in the reformatory at Jeffersonville need no coercion, they would not run away if the walls were razed and the doors left unlocked. One young man I saw there refused the offered parole--he wanted to stay until he learned his trade. He was not the only one with a like mental att.i.tude.

The quality of men in the average prison is about the same as that of the men who are in the United States Army. The man who enlists is a prisoner; for him to run away is a very serious offense, and yet he is not locked up at night, nor is he surrounded by a high wall.

The George Junior Republic is simply a farm, unfenced and unpatroled, excepting by the boys who are in the Republic, and yet it is a penal inst.i.tution. The prison of the future will not be unlike a young ladies'

boarding school, where even yet the practice prevails of taking the inmates out all together, with a guard, and allowing no one to leave without a written permit.

As society changes, so changes the so-called criminal. In any event, I know this--that Max Nordau did not make out his case.

There is no criminal cla.s.s.

Or for that matter we are all criminals. "I have in me the capacity for every crime," said Emerson.

The man or woman who goes wrong is a victim of unkind environment.

Booker Washington says that when the negro has something that we want, or can perform a task that we want done, we waive the color line, and the race problem then ceases to be a problem. So it is with the Ex.

Question. When the ex-convict is able to show that he is useful to the world, the world will cease to shun him. When Superintendent Whittaker graduates a man it is pretty good evidence that the man is able and willing to render a service to society.

The only places where the ex-convicts get the icy mitt are pink teas and prayer meetings. An ex-convict should work all day and then spend his evenings at the library, feeding his mind--then he is safe.

If I were an ex-convict I would fight shy of all "Refuges," "Sheltering Arms," "Saint Andrew's Societies" and the philanthropic "College Settlements." I would never go to those good professional people, or professional good people, who patronize the poor and spit upon the alleged wrongdoer, and who draw sharp lines of demarcation in distinguishing between the "good" and the "bad." If you can work and are willing to work, business men will not draw the line on you. Get a job, and then hold it down hard by making yourself necessary. Employers of labor and the ex-convicts themselves are fast settling this Ex.

Question, with the help of the advanced type of the Reform School where the inmates are being taught to be useful and are not punished nor patronized, but are simply given a chance. My heart goes out in sympathy to the man who gives a poor devil a chance. I myself am a poor devil!

The Sergeant

A colonel in the United States Army told me the other day something like this: The most valuable officer, the one who has the greatest responsibility, is the sergeant. The true sergeant is born, not made--he is the priceless gift of the G.o.ds. He is so highly prized that when found he is never promoted, nor is he allowed to resign. If he is dissatisfied with his pay, Captain, Lieutenant and Colonel chip in--they cannot afford to lose him. He is a rara avis--the apple of their eye.

His first requirement is that he must be able to lick any man in the company. A drunken private may d.a.m.n a captain upside down and wrong-side out, and the captain is not allowed to reply. He can neither strike with his fist, nor engage in a cussing match, but your able sergeant is an adept in both of these polite accomplishments. Even if a private strike an officer, the officer is not allowed to strike back. Perhaps the man who abuses him could easily beat him in a rough-and-tumble fight, and then it is quite a sufficient reason to keep one's clothes clean. We say the revolver equalizes all men, but it doesn't. It is disagreeable to shoot a man. It scatters brains and blood all over the sidewalk, attracts a crowd, requires a deal of explanation afterward, and may cost an officer his stripes. No good officer ever hears anything said about him by a private.

The sergeant hears everything, and his reply to backslack is a straight-arm jab in the jaw. The sergeant is responsible only to his captain, and no good captain will ever know anything about what a sergeant does, and he will not believe it when told. If a fight occurs between two privates, the sergeant jumps in, b.u.mps their heads together and licks them both. If a man feigns sick, or is drunk, the sergeant chucks him under the pump. The regulations do not call for any such treatment, but the sergeant does not know anything about the regulations--he gets the thing done. The sergeant may be twenty years old or sixty--age does not count. The sergeant is a father to his men--he regards them all as children--bad boys--and his business is to make them brave, honorable and dutiful soldiers.

The sergeant is always the first man up in the morning, the last man to go to bed at night. He knows where his men are every minute of the day or night. If they are actually sick, he is both nurse and physician, and dictates gently to the surgeon what should be done. He is also the undertaker, and the digging of ditches and laying out of latrines all fall to his lot. Unlike the higher officers, he does not have to dress "smart," and he is very apt to discard his uniform and go clothed like a civilian teamster, excepting on special occasions when necessity demands braid and b.u.t.tons.

He knows everything, and nothing. No wild escapade of a higher officer pa.s.ses by him, yet he never tells.

Now one might suppose that he is an absolute tyrant, but a good sergeant is a beneficent tyrant at the right time. To break the spirit of his men will not do--it would unfit them for service--so what he seeks to do is merely to bend their minds so as to match his own. Gradually they grow to both love and fear him. In time of actual fight he transforms cowards into heroes. He holds his men up to the scratch. In battle there are often certain officers marked for death--they are to be shot by their own men. It is a time of getting even--and in the hurly-burly and excitement there are no witnesses. The sergeant is ever on the lookout for such mutinies, and his revolver often sends to the dust the head revolutionary before the dastardly plot can be carried out. In war-time all executions are not judicial.

In actual truth, the sergeant is the only real, sure-enough fighting man in the army. He is as rare as birds' teeth, and every officer anxiously scans his recruits in search of good sergeant timber.

In business life, the man with the sergeant instincts is even more valuable than in the army. The business sergeant is the man not in evidence--who asks for no compliments or bouquets--who knows where things are--who has no outside ambitions, and no desire save to do his work. If he is too smart he will lay plots and plans for his own promotion, and thereby he is pretty sure to defeat himself.

As an individual the average soldier is a sneak, a shirk, a failure, a coward. He is only valuable as he is licked into shape. It is pretty much the same in business. It seems hard to say it, but the average employe in factory, shop or store, puts the face of the clock to shame looking at it; he is thinking of his pay envelope and his intent is to keep the boss located and to do as little work as possible. In many cases the tyranny of the employer is to blame for the condition, but more often it is the native outcrop of suspicion that prompts the seller to give no more than he can help.

And here the sergeant comes in, and with watchful eye and tireless nerves, holds the recreants to their tasks. If he is too severe, he will fix in the shirks more firmly the shirk microbe; but if he is of better fibre, he may supply a little more will to those who lack it, and gradually create an atmosphere of right intent, so that the only disgrace will consist in their wearing the face off the regulator and keeping one ear c.o.c.ked to catch the coming footsteps of the boss.

There is not the slightest danger that there will ever be an overplus of sergeants. Let the sergeant keep out of strikes, plots, feuds, hold his temper and show what's what, and he can name his own salary and keep his place for ninety-nine years without having a contract.

The Spirit of the Age

Four hundred and twenty-five years before the birth of the Nazarene, Socrates said, "The G.o.ds are on high Olympus, but you and I are here."

And for this--and a few other similar observations--be was compelled to drink a subst.i.tute for coffee--he was an infidel! Within the last thirty years the churches of Christendom have, in the main, adopted the Socratic proposition that you and I are here. That is, we have made progress by getting away from narrow theology and recognizing humanity.

We do not know anything about either Olympus or Elysium, but we do know something about Athens.

Athens is here.

Athens needs us--the Greeks are at the door. Let the G.o.ds run Elysium, and we'll devote ourselves to Athens.

This is the prevailing spirit in the churches of America to-day. Our religion is humanitarian, not theological.

A like evolution has come about in medicine. The materia medica of twenty-five years ago is now obsolete. No good doctor now treats symptoms--he neither gives you something to relieve your headache nor to settle your stomach. These are but timely ting-a-lings--Nature's warnings--look out! And the doctor tells you so, and charges you a fee sufficient to impress you with the fact that he is no fool, but that you are.

The lawyer who now gets the largest fees is never seen in a court-room.

Litigation is now largely given over to damage suits--carried on by clients who want something for nothing, and little lawyers, shark-like and hungry, who work on contingent fees. Three-fourths of the time of all superior and supreme courts is taken up by His Effluvia, who brings suit thru His Bacteria, with His Crabship as chief witness, for damages not due, either in justice or fact.

How to get rid of this burden, brought upon us by men who have nothing to lose, is a question too big for the average legislator. It can only be solved by heroic measures, carried out by lawyers who are out of politics and have a complete indifference for cheap popularity. Here is opportunity for men of courage and ability. But the point is this, wise business men keep out of court. They arbitrate their differences --compromise--they cannot afford to quit their work for the sake of getting even. As for making money, they know a better way.

In theology we are waiving distinctions and devoting ourselves to the divine spirit only as it manifests itself in humanity--we are talking less and less about another world and taking more notice of the one we inhabit. Of course we occasionally have heresy trials, and pictures of the offender and the Fat Bishop adorn the first page, but heresy trials not accompanied by the scaffold or the f.a.ggots are innocuous and exceedingly tame.

In medicine we have more faith in ourselves and less in prescriptions.

In pedagogy we are teaching more and more by the natural method--learning by doing--and less and less by means of injunction and precept.

In penology we seek to educate and reform, not to suppress, repress and punish.

That is to say, the G.o.ds are on high Olympus--let them stay there.

Athens is here.

The Grammarian

The best way to learn to write is to write.

Herbert Spencer never studied grammar until he had learned to write. He took his grammar at sixty, which is a good age for one to begin this most interesting study, as by the time you have reached that age you have largely lost your capacity to sin.