After Prison—What?
Maud Ballington Booth
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
(September)
Chicago: 63 Washington Street
Toronto: 27 Richmond Street, W
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 30 St. Mary Street
DEDICATION
Lovingly dedicated to our boys in prison by
their Little Mother
who
believes in them and looks with confidence
to a bright, victorious future
when they shall have lived down
the old, sad record, stormed the walls
of prejudice,
wrested just recognition from the skeptical
and
answered convincingly the question,
"can a convict be reformed?"
Preface
This message from my pen is not a work oncriminology or penology. No gathering of statistics,nor comparative study of the works ortheories of learned authorities on these subjectswill be found within its pages. It is just a pleafrom the heart of one who knows them, for thosewho cannot voice to the world their own thoughtsand feelings. We ask no sentimental sympathyor pity, no patronage or charity, but only understanding,justice, and fair play.
My point of view is that of the cell. All Iknow of this great sad problem that casts itsshadow so much further than the high walls ofprison I have learned from those for whom Iwork, and my great joy in every labor is theknowledge that "the boys" are with me. Inspeaking of them thus I do so in prison parlance;for just as Masons on the floor call each other"Brothers"; soldiers in camp "Comrades";men in college "Fellows"; so we of the prisonuse the term "The Boys," and leave unspokenthat hated word "Convict," which seems tovibrate with the sound of clanging chains andshuffling lock-step.
If I do not write of others, who, during thepast century, have worked in prison reform, it isnot that I have disregarded their efforts, but asthis is a record of what I have personally seenand learned, space and time will not permit therecording of experiences which can doubtless beread elsewhere.
In sending forth these pages of personal experienceI pray that they may stir the hearts ofthe free, the happy, and the fortunate throughoutour dear country, that they, in their turn, may