Notes of an Itinerant Policeman Part 2

For the benefit of those who have to travel much, and we are all on the cars a little, it seems worth while to describe the "raise" and "change"

tricks. When a victim is to be raised, one stratagem is for a stall to go to him and ask whether a valise in the seat behind him is his,--it always is,--and if so will he kindly shift it. If pa.s.sengers are getting into the car, and there is considerable crowding going on, the man will be relieved of his pocketbook while he is reaching down for his valise.

To "change" a man is to shift him from one car to another on the plea that the one he is in is to be taken off at a junction. While he is changing and going down the aisle, his "roll" or wallet disappears, and the pickpockets take another train at a junction. It is all done in a flash, and is as simple as can be to those who are in the business, but a great many "leathers" would be saved if people would only be careful and not crowd together like sheep. At circuses I have seen them push and shove like mad, and all the while the pickpockets were at work among them.

An interesting story is told of an Illinois town where a mob of pickpockets had been led to believe that they had "squared" things sufficiently with the authorities to be able to run "sure thing" games at the show grounds with impunity,--pickpockets dabble occasionally in games,--but they swindled people so outrageously that the authorities got scared and prohibited the games. The men had paid so heavily for what they had considered were privileges, that they were going to be losers unless they got in their "graft" somehow, so they turned pickpockets again, and, as one man put it, "simply tore the crowd open."

When it dispersed, the ground was literally covered with emptied pocketbooks.

The easiest way for the police officer to deal with the pickpocket is to know him whenever he appears, and to let him understand that he is "spotted" and would better keep away. Some officers are born thief-catchers, and can seemingly scent crime where it cannot even be seen, and, whether they know a man or not, can pick out the real culprit. The average officer, however, must recognise his man before he can touch him, unless he catches him red-handed, and it is he who knows a great many offenders and can call the "turn" on them, give their names and records, that is the great detective of modern times. The sleuth of fiction, who catches criminals by magic, as it were, is a snare and a delusion.

During my police experience I carried with me a pocket "rogue's gallery"

of the most notorious pickpockets of the section of the country in which I had to travel. For a time I saw so many of these gentry in the flesh, and was shown so many pictures, that a bewildering composite picture of all formed in my mind. It seemed to me, sometimes, as if everybody I saw in the streets resembled a pickpocket that I had to be on the lookout for. I finally determined to commit to memory a picture a day, or every two or three days as was necessary, and learn to differentiate, and the method proved successful. To-day there are about fifty pickpockets that I shall know wherever I see them. The majority of them I have met personally, but a number are known to me by photograph only.

To ill.u.s.trate the usefulness of photographs in the police business, and incidentally my method, I must tell about a pickpocket whom I identified, one morning, in a town where a circus was exhibiting. He had tried to take a watch from a fellow pa.s.senger on a trolley-car, and had nearly succeeded in uns.c.r.e.w.i.n.g it from the chain when he was discovered.

He was a desperate character, and drew a razor, with which he frightened everybody off the car, including the motorman. He attempted to escape by running the car himself, but on seeing that it was going to take him back to the town, he deserted it, appropriated a horse and buggy, and made another dash for liberty. He was eventually driven into a fence corner by some of the young men of the town, and kept at bay until the police arrived, when he was taken to the lock-up, where, in company with my two companions, I saw him. He was brought out of his cell for our inspection, and, as luck would have it, it was his photograph in my book that I had elected to commit to memory a few days before. I knew him the minute I saw him, and he was identified beyond a possible doubt. In return he gave me the worst scolding I have ever had in my life, and threatened to put out "my light" when he is free again, but this is a _facon de parler_ of men of his cla.s.s; after he has served his five or ten years he will have forgotten me and his threat.

The amount of money which pickpockets take in annually is probably greater than that of any of the other specialists in crime. It would be idle to say how large it is, but it is a well-known fact that thousands of dollars are stolen by them at big public gatherings to which they have access. It was reported, for instance, that at the recent Confederate Soldiers' Reunion in the South $30,000 were stolen by pickpockets, and almost every day in the year one reads in the newspapers of a big "touch" reaching into the thousands. I think it is a conservative statement to say that in a lifetime the expert pickpocket steals $20,000. Multiply this figure by 1,500, which I have given as the number of the first-cla.s.s tools in the country, and the result reaches high up into the millions. Like other professional thieves, the pickpocket throws away his money like water, and very seldom thinks of saving for old age, but practically all successful mobs have "fall money" (an expense fund for paying lawyers, etc., when they get arrested) of from $3,000 to $5,000 each, carefully banked, and I know of one pickpocket who is the owner of some very valuable real estate. A good ill.u.s.tration of the rapidity with which they recoup themselves financially after a period of rest, or a term in prison, is the story told about one of them who returned to this country penniless after a pleasure trip in Europe. The man related the incident to a friend of mine. "Didn't have a red," he said. "I tackled a saloon keeper I knew for a couple of thousand. How long do you think I was paying him back?

Three weeks!"

If the pickpocket knew how to save his money, and could invest it well, his children might some day be but millionaires.

CHAPTER IV.

HOW SOME TOWNS ARE "PROTECTED."

Speaking generally, there are two methods in vogue in American police circles for dealing with crime, and they may be called the compromising and the uncompromising. The latter is the more honest. In a town where it is followed, the chief of police is known to be a man who will not allow a professional thief within the city limits, if he can help it, and he is continually on watch for transient offenders. He will make no "deal" with criminals in any particular, and he takes pride in securing the conviction and punishment of all whom his men apprehend. He is naturally not liked by offenders, although they respect his consistency, and there is a local element of rowdies who consider him "an old fogey,"

but he is the kind of officer that makes Germany, for instance, and England, too, in a measure, so free of the cla.s.s of criminals that in this country are so bold. There are some chiefs of police in the United States of this character, and they become known throughout the criminal world, but there ought to be more of them.

The compromising policeman is a man of another stripe. He knows about the uncompromising "copper," has read about him and thought about him, but he excuses his disinclination to accept him as a model on the ground that, if he did, the thieves would "tear his town open."

"Why, if I should antagonise this cla.s.s, as you suggest," he will say to the protesting citizens, "they would come here some night and steal right and left, just out of revenge. I haven't enough men to protect the city in that way. The Town Council only give me so much to run the entire force, and I have to manage the best way I can. If you'll give me more men, I'll try to drive all the thieves out of the city."

In certain instances his argument has truth in it; it sometimes happens that he has not enough men to take care of the city from the uncompromising policeman's point of view. The trouble is, however, that because he is thus handicapped he thinks that he can go a step farther, and is justified in reasoning thus: "Well, I had to pay to get this position, and if the people don't want the town protected as it ought to be, it isn't my fault, and I'm going to get out of the job all that's in it," and then begins a miserable conniving with crime.

To ill.u.s.trate what a professional thief can accomplish with such a police officer, let it be supposed that the thief is happily married, as is sometimes the case, has a family, and wants to live in a certain town. The chief of police knows him, however, and can disgrace his family, if he is so inclined. The thief wants his family left alone, he takes a pride in it, so he visits the chief at "Headquarters," and they have a talk. "See here, chief," he says, "I'll promise you not to do any work in your town, if you'll promise to leave me and mine alone. Now, what's it going to cost me?"

Sometimes it costs money, not necessarily handed over the desk, and not always to the chief personally, but in a manner that is satisfactory to all concerned. In other cases the matter is arranged without money, and the thief may possibly promise to "tip off" to the chief some well-known "professional" when he comes to town, so that the chief can get the benefit of an advertis.e.m.e.nt in the newspapers; they will say that such and such a man has been captured, "after a long and exciting chase ably conducted by our brilliant chief." The chase generally amounts to a quiet walk to the hotel or saloon where the visiting thief is quietly reading a newspaper or drinking a gla.s.s of beer, and the capture dwindles down to a request on the part of the chief or his officer that the man shall go to the "front office," which he does, wondering all the while who it was that "beefed" on him (told the chief who he was). A number of the "fly catches," as they are called in police parlance, which create so much comment in the press, can be explained in some such way as this. Meanwhile, however, what has become of the protected thief?

He may keep his word, a number of thieves do, and commit no theft in the town where he is allowed to live; it depends on how much money he needs to meet his various expenses, how dear his family is to him, and what temptations he encounters. If he does break his word, however, and there are no hall-marks on his theft, by which it can be definitely traced to him, all he has to say, when asked by his protector as to who did it, is: "It must have been outside talent." In other words, he can "work"

with almost absolute safety in the town, and the innocent public is paying taxes all the while for a police force that ought to be able to apprehend him.

To prove that this case is not hypothetical but actual, I would say that I have recently been in at least two cities where I know that professional thieves live with impunity, for I saw as many as ten in each, and they were not afraid to do criminal work in either. The police of both places claimed that in giving the thieves a domicile they were protecting their towns, but any one who knows either city well is aware that professional crime is prevalent.

One of the worst features of the policy under consideration is its selfishness. A chief who says to a professional thief, "I will leave you alone if you will leave me alone," practically says to him: "Go to another town when you want to steal." An amusing story is told in this connection about two chiefs who aired their different notions in regard to the matter, at one of the annual conferences of the chiefs of police.

One of them had said tentatively, so the story goes, that he had heard that in some cities criminals were protected, and that he considered the practice a bad one. Another chief, who was thought to favour such a policy, got up and said that he did not know much about the question in hand, but he did know that his town was particularly free of crime.

"That may be, Bill," retorted the first speaker, "but I'll tell you what your thieves do--they come down to my town to steal and go back to yours, where they are left alone, to live." I give the anecdote merely as gossip, but it ill.u.s.trates splendidly one of the worst results of compromise with crime.

It sometimes happens that an entire munic.i.p.al administration, or, at any rate, the most powerful officials in it, favour the policy of compromise, and then it is utterly impossible to punish the criminal adequately. I have been in such communities. Not long ago I was in a town of about ten thousand inhabitants where a "mob" of New York pickpockets were caught in the act of attempting to pick a pocket. On being charged with the crime by the officers who had discovered them, they admitted their guilt and profession, and said: "But what are you going to do about it?" If the town authorities had been trustworthy the pickpockets could have been sent to the penitentiary; because there was practically no hope of securing their conviction in the local courts on account of their ability to bribe, or to give a purely nominal bail and then run away, they were let go.

One of the best ill.u.s.trations of how a town's officials sell themselves is embodied in the vile character known as "the fixer." I know this man best as a circus follower. Connected with nearly all shows, sometimes officially and sometimes not, are men who have games of chance with which they swindle the public. In late years it has become necessary for these men, in order to run their games, to pay for what are called "privileges," and the man who secures these is called "the fixer." He goes to the mayor or the chief of police of a town, as necessity requires,--sometimes to both,--a.s.sures them that the games are harmless (which they know is a lie), and hands them $25, $50, or $100, as circ.u.mstances may require. In a.s.sociation with the men who have the games are pickpockets and other professional thieves,--indeed the gamesters themselves can frequently change clothes with the pickpockets and let the thieves attend to the games while they pick pockets. It is not necessarily understood that the "crooks" are to be protected by the authorities to the extent that the gamesters are, but "the fixer," who stands in with the thieves also, is supposed to be able to get them out of any serious trouble, or, at least, to warn them if he knows that trouble is brewing.

It was once my duty to run a race with a "fixer," and try to get the ear of a mayor of a town before he did. Two other officers and myself had a.s.sured ourselves that a "mob" of pickpockets was following up a circus which was being transported over the railroad we were protecting, and we knew that in one town, at least, "the fixer" had "squared" things with the authorities. The circus was on its way to another town on our lines, the mayor and police of which we believed we could swing our way if we got to them before "the fixer" did, and we travelled there ahead of him.

We were particularly anxious to have the pickpockets arrested if they put in an appearance, and we told the mayor who they were, what protection they were getting, and explained to him how he would be approached by "the fixer." The mayor listened to us, nodded his head from time to time, and then said: "Well, there'll be no fixing done in this town, and if you will point out the pickpockets, when they come in, you may rest a.s.sured that they will be arrested. I can't understand what the citizens of a town can be thinking of when they elect to office men such as you describe." The pickpockets as well as "the fixer" must have got wind of what we had done, for the former did not appear, and the latter made no call on the mayor. We learned, however, that he arranged things satisfactorily to all concerned in the town where the circus exhibited on the following day.

How many towns in this country can be "fixed" in this manner is a question I would not attempt to answer, but I do know that in the district where I was on duty as a police officer a great deal of tact exercise was necessary to beat "the fixer" in a town where it was to his interests to buy up the local authorities; and I ask in wonderment, as did the mayor whom I have quoted: What are the citizens of a town thinking of, when they allow such corrupt officials to manage things? Is it because they are ignorant of what goes on, or merely because they are indifferent? A friend in the police business, but a man who has understood how to remain honest in spite of it, answers the question by saying: "The world is a graft; flash enough boodle under nine noses out of ten, and you can do as you like with them. Take New York, for instance. I could clean up that city in a week if the people would stand by me. They wouldn't do it. Enough would tumble down in front of some fixer to queer everything that I might do. You can't do anything worth while in the police business unless you've got the people behind you, and they are as fickle as a cat. Why, if I were chief of police in New York, and I should clean up the city thoroughly, there is a cla.s.s of business men who would come to me and say that I was taking away some of the main attractions of the city, and that they were going to make a kick about it. Heaven knows that the police are corrupt, but I tell you that the public is corrupt, too. See how things are up in Canada! I have just come back from there, and I can a.s.sure you that there is no such sneak work going on up there as there is with us. Their police courts are as dignified almost as is our Supreme Court, and if a crook gets into one of them they settle him. How many crooks get what they ought to in this country? About one in ten, and he could get off with a light sentence, if he had money enough to square things."

Perhaps this is true, and we are indifferent to corruption as a people.

Certainly the police business makes one think so, but I have not been in it long enough to hold to this pessimistic notion. It is my opinion that the majority of the people in this country do not realise what goes on about them, and I can take my own experience as an example. I have seen more of criminal life, perhaps, than the average person, and it would seem that I ought to have been able to learn considerable about the corruption in the country, but I must admit that, until this experience in a police force, I had no idea that it was as widespread as it is. It is not unreasonable to suppose that people who have never had occasion to look into such matters at all must be even more ignorant of the situation than I was. There is a great deal of wrong-doing that is apparent to any one who takes an active part in munic.i.p.al politics, and the newspapers are continually reporting things which can but make it obvious to all who read that there is a strong criminal cla.s.s in the United States; but one seldom takes such matters seriously until he is brought in close contact with them, and the general public is not thus influenced.

Take the Mazet Committee, which recently investigated New York. So far as the police are concerned, I cannot see that the committee brought to light much that was new, and it was difficult for me to take an interest in this part of the investigation. If they had subpoenaed a few successful professional thieves located in New York, however, and persuaded them to tell what they know, the situation would have been much clearer to me and to the general public. More interest and indignation would also have been aroused if New York is "protected" in the way that I have indicated in the case of other towns. The police are not going to help investigate themselves, and the public is not likely to be permanently affected by what they say. A very definite effect would be made upon me, however, if a thief would get up and tell on what basis he is allowed to live in New York, what it costs him, if anything, to "square" things when he is arrested, what his annual winnings are, and what, in general, he thinks of the criminal situation in the city.

He is a specialist ent.i.tled to speak with authority, and I would accept his statements as trustworthy.

It is, of course, to be replied to all this that it is very difficult to persuade a thief to talk, but the point I would make is that the public seldom gets the truth in regard to such matters as are under consideration. It hears in an indefinite way that corruption is rampant, and then there is an investigation, but the average citizen rarely realises what is going on until some personal business brings him in contact with the suspected officials. Let a man have his pocket picked, or his home robbed, and go to the police about it, and he will begin to see how things are managed. If everybody could have this experience, meet both detective and thief, and all could have a talk together, there would be an awakening in public sentiment that would be very beneficial.

Meanwhile all that I can recommend is to hunt down the unknown thief, and punish him hard. There are different methods by which he can be apprehended, but I know of none better than to catch the known thief and through him find out the other. The police and court proceedings, if carefully followed, are bound to develop the facts, and, these once secured, the public is to blame if the unknown thief is not punished.

CHAPTER V.

A PENOLOGICAL PILGRIMAGE.

One of the advantages that the itinerant policeman has over the stationary officer is that he can inspect a large number of penal inst.i.tutions, and find out who, among the people he has to keep track of, are shut up. The munic.i.p.al officer may know that a certain "professional" is out of his bailiwick, but unless he can place him elsewhere he is never sure when or where he may turn up again. The itinerant officer, on the other hand, can follow a man, and if he gets into prison the officer knows it immediately. This is a very definite gain in the police business, and it would be well if police forces generally were given the benefit of it. There is a National Bureau of Identification to which officers who are members may apply for information in regard to any offender of whom there is a record, and the inst.i.tution is to be recommended to those who are connected with police life, but voluntary information in regard to convicts sent to police chiefs by prison wardens would also be helpful.

My interest in the lock-ups, jails, workhouses, and penitentiaries that I visited on my travels was, in a measure, professional, but I was mainly concerned in getting information in regard to their condition and management, and in finding out to what extent they have a deterrent effect on crime. All told, I inspected about thirty-five places of detention and penal inst.i.tutions, and they represent the best and worst of their kind in the country. In criticising them I would not have it understood that I hold the officials in charge necessarily responsible for their condition--the taxpayers decide whether a community shall have a truly modern prison or not; my purpose is merely to report what I saw, and to comment objectively on my finding.

I visited more lock-ups than anything else. On reaching a town, I went as soon as possible to the "calaboose" to see who were held there.

Sometimes the little prison was empty, and then again every cell would be occupied, but in a week I generally saw from thirty to fifty inmates.

Mature men predominated, but women and boys were also to be found. The women were invariably separated from the men by at least a cell wall, but the boys, and I saw some not over ten years old, were thrown in with the most hardened criminals. They were allowed to pa.s.s about among the men in the lock-up corridor, and at night were shut up with them in the cells. This is the worst feature of the lock-up system in the United States. Very little effort is made in the smaller towns to separate the young from the old, the hardened from the unhardened, and even in the lock-ups of large cities a much more careful cla.s.sification of the inmates is necessary. The officials in charge of these places excuse the policy now in vogue on the ground that there is not room enough to give the boys better attention, and the taxpayers say that there is not money enough in the community to build larger lock-ups. There is always a reason of some sort for every blunder that is made, but as long as we make our lock-ups "kindergartens of crime," as I once heard a criminal call them, there is no excuse whatever to wonder why there are so many offenders. It is a fashion, nowadays, to run to "the positive school" of Italy and France for an explanation concerning the origin of the criminal, to ask Signor Lombroso to diagnose the situation, but in this country we need but make a round of our lock-ups to discover where the fresh crop of offenders comes from. They generally get to the lock-up from the "slum," where they may or may not have shown criminal proclivities, but once in the lock-up and allowed to a.s.sociate with the old offenders, very few of them, indeed, escape the contaminating influences brought to bear upon them.

The county jail may be described as the public school of crime. There are some county jails in which a thorough cla.s.sification of the inmates is secured, but there is a very small number of these jails compared with the hundreds in which young and old, first offenders and habitual criminals, are all jumbled together. I can write from a full experience in regard to our county jails, because I have not only had to visit them as a police officer, but I have also had to "serve time" in them as a tramp, and I know whereof I speak. Practically any boy, no matter what his training has been, can be made a criminal if handed over to skilled jail instructors, and every day in the year some lad, who, after all is said, is really only mischievous, is committed by a magistrate or justice of the peace to a county prison. There is no other place for the magistrate to send the boy, if his parents demand his incarceration, and the sheriff is not prepared to take him to the reform school immediately, and so he is tossed into the general rag-bag of offenders to take his chances. He is eventually sent to the reform school or house of correction, where it is theoretically supposed that he is going to be reformed; but it is a fact that the majority of professional offenders in this country have generally spent a part of their youth in just such inst.i.tutions, where they were no more reformed than is a confirmed jailbird on his release from a penitentiary. It is an extremely difficult task to change any boy who goes to a reform school after a long sitting in a county jail, and the wonder to me is that our reformatories accomplish what they do. The superintendent of a reformatory school in Colorado took me to task some years ago for making the statement in public, in regard to tramps, that I have just made about professional criminals,--that the majority of them have experienced reform-school discipline,--and he said that it was a thoroughly established fact that tramps keep out of such places. Of course they keep out of them as full-grown men, as do also grown-up thieves, but they are sent to them as youngsters, if apprehended for some offence, whether they like it or not, and any one who is acquainted with tramps and criminal life knows this to be true.

I make so much mention of boys in this paper because they are to be the next generation of offenders, unless we succeed in rescuing them from a criminal life while they are still susceptible to good influences; and we are not doing this, or even seriously thinking about it, when we give them professional thieves and convicted murderers as a.s.sociates in jails.

Various suggestions have been made by which the county jail system can be improved, and I favour the one which recommends that the county inst.i.tution be abolished entirely, and that two or three well-equipped houses of detention be made to suffice for an entire State. Such an arrangement would not only be a great deal cheaper than the present practice, but it would permit of a careful division of all the inmates.

Some of our workhouses are already run on this basis, several counties contributing toward the support and maintenance of each. It would, of course, be necessary to make a county's contributions toward the support of a jail proportionate to its population, but there ought not to be any great difficulty in arranging a satisfactory contract; and it is time, anyhow, that we throw over some of our commercial notions about making corrective and penal inst.i.tutions pay their way. The thing to do is to make them effective in checking crime, and if they are successful in this very important particular, we can well afford to put a little money in them without worrying about the financial returns.

I visited but one reformatory during my pilgrimage, but it was representative of the latest of these inst.i.tutions. I refer to the Elmira, N. Y. type. The old and hardened "professional" calls these places the high schools of crime, the next grade after the county jail, but I do not agree with him in this cla.s.sification. It is true, as he says, that a number of offenders are committed to these inst.i.tutions, who ought to have been sent to the penitentiary, and it is particularly disgusting to him to see educated men, with "pull" and friends, who have been convicted of crimes for which less favoured offenders would receive sentences to the State prison, relieved of the disgrace of going to prison by being sent to the "kids' pen," as the reformatory is also sometimes called; but, admitting all this, I believe that the modern reformatory, when well managed, represents the best penological notions.

As in all prisons, however, where the inmates work on the a.s.sociation basis, a great deal can be taught that is not in the curriculum of the inst.i.tution, and it is consequently no surprise to meet, in the open, criminals who have "served time" in reformatories. In the reformatory that I visited, it was a disappointment to me to find that men whose faces, manner, and bearing proved them to be, if not actual professionals, at least understudies of men who are, were mixed up in the workshops with young fellows whom any one would have picked out; for comparatively innocent offenders. I believe in the principle of a.s.sociation in certain corrective inst.i.tutions also, but I do not approve of indiscriminate companionship. A natural reply to my criticism is that it is hard to tell who are the old offenders, but a prison official who knows his business, and has learned how to read faces and to interpret actions, ought to be able to separate the "crook" from the beginner in crime. It is a false notion to think that the former is going to be helped by a.s.sociation with the latter. A prison is a prison, no matter what euphemistic name it is called, and the old offender is not going to allow any "mother's boy" fellow prisoner to set him an example. In the criminal world, as in the larger world on which it lives, the law of the survival of the fittest is operative, and the fittest, as a rule, are those who are the most hardened; in prison and out, it is they who really run things.

Another mistake made in the reformatory in question, according to my view, is the age limit by which admission into the inst.i.tution is regulated. When a young man has reached his twenty-first year, and commits a crime which calls for a prison sentence, I say let him have it, no matter whose son he may be, provided the penitentiary authorities observe the cla.s.sification referred to above. If it can be proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the young man is mentally deficient, and not accountable for his actions, it is obvious that the State prison is no place for him; but, otherwise, it is my observation that more good than harm is done, if he is made to suffer the punishment that the law demands. I realise that I am on debatable ground in taking this view of such cases, but they are debatable largely because the different opinions held in regard to them are the result of different observations. Mine have been made mainly in the outdoor criminal world, and I have not had a wide experience with the offender in confinement, but I have met the pampered young criminal so often, and it has been so plain that it was light punishment which trained him to stand the more severe, that I have come to believe that a quick checking-up at the start would have been more beneficial.

Of penitentiaries I saw two, each in a different State. One contained about two thousand five hundred inmates, and the other about one thousand eight hundred. It is not easy even for a police officer to explore these inst.i.tutions freely. I know of one warden who refuses to let the police have photographs of criminals in his charge; he says that "it is not nice to pa.s.s them around,"--but I managed to see a good deal that I could not possibly have seen as an ordinary visitor, hurried through by a guard.

As a general statement, it may be said that a penitentiary reflects the warden's personality. There are rules to be observed and work to be done, which have been arranged and planned for by the board of directors, but the warden is the man with whom the prisoners have to deal, and they look up to him as the princ.i.p.al authority in every-day matters. His main anxiety is to get good conduct out of his charges, and he has to experiment with various methods. Some wardens favour one method and some another. One, for instance, will think that leniency and kindness work best, while another will recommend whipping, the dungeon, electricity, hot water, etc., for recalcitrant inmates. The idea of each warden is that he wants things to go smoothly, and if they do not, he has to straighten them out as best he can. All this is very interesting from the warden's point of view, and it interested me also somewhat when visiting the two penitentiaries; but my main endeavour was to try to find out to what extent these inst.i.tutions were lessening the number of criminals in the communities which they served. A man may be as gentle as a lamb while in durance, and the warden may pride himself on the good conduct he is getting out of him, but how is he going to be when he has his liberty once more? The cleverest criminal is usually the most docile prisoner, and yet he takes up crime again as his profession after his time has expired, and the penitentiary has been in his case merely a house of detention. Excepting the death penalty, however, imprisonment in a penitentiary is the final form of punishment that we have in this country, and if it fails to check crime, either our criminals are increasing out of proportion to our means for taking care of them, or we do not administer the proper chastis.e.m.e.nt. From what I have been able to see of our penitentiaries as a visitor, and have heard about them as a fellow traveller with tramps, and incidentally with criminals, I am inclined to accept the second conclusion. Crime has increased in this country faster than the population, but in the older States there are enough penal inst.i.tutions to take care of the offenders, if they were made to have the discouraging effect on criminals that similar inst.i.tutions have in Europe.