a matter of expediency, the restoration of the contract system was out of the question, and the continued prohibition of that system in the new law was not considered a sacrifice of principle.

The law provides that the system of productive labor in each prison shall be either the public account or the piece-price system; and whenever the amount appropriated by the State shall be insufficient to conduct or continue the labor under the public account system, the labor shall be conducted under the piece-price system. As nearly as possible, full market rates shall be obtained for all products of prison labor. The former statutory provision, that proceeds of sales should be paid into the State treasury, was modified by allowing such proceeds to be deposited in bank, and used for the purchase of new materials for manufacture, so that, under either system, the continuance of prison industries will not be dependent upon legislative appropriation.

Thus the prison labor problem has been solved in New York, temporarily at least. The solution of this problem, upon the true theory of prison treatment, incidentally included the adoption of four leading principles of prison reform: (1) Labor for industrial education primarily, and for profit secondarily; (2) The classification and grading of prisoners for industrial education primarily, and for disciplinary purposes secondarily;` (3) An opportunity for the prisoner to earn wages for extra work, coupled with good behavior; (4) The employment of prisoners in diversified lines of industry, with a limited number in each line.

The labor organizations appear to have accepted the solution. So far as the writer has been able to discover, no labor organization has counted the passage of the prison law among its grievances against the Legislature of 1889.

Scarcely second in importance to the right solution of the prison labor problem is the introduction of the indeterminate sentence and release on parole. This second great principle of prison reform was in no way involved in the immediate emergency, but advantage was taken of the emergency to allow the indeterminate sentence to be applied, for the first time, to prisoners sentenced to the state prisons. The system of indeterminate sentence and release on parole was first permanently established in the Elmira Reformatory. Previous experiments of the system had been sporadic and not continuous. At the Elmira Reformatory, this system has passed beyond the experimental stage, and has been successfully adopted in the state prisons of several other States. Nevertheless, it was thought best merely to introduce the principle

into the bill experimentally, leaving its application optional with the courts, rather than to adopt it to its full extent, or to make it compulsory. To the surprise of those who prepared the bill, the introduction of the indeterminate sentence, instead of arousing opposition, increased the favor with which the bill was received by the Legislature.

The law provides, on this point, that whenever a man over sixteen years of age is convicted of a felony, punishable by imprisonment for a term to be fixed by the court, within certain minimum and maximum limits specified by law, the court may either sentence the convict to a fixed term as heretofore, or may sentence him generally to imprisonment in a state prison. In the latter case the prisoner may be released upon the expiration of the minimum term, or he may be detained the full maximum term for which he might have been sentenced, as may be determined by the board of commissioners of paroled prisoners, consisting of the Superintendent of State Prisons, and the warden, principal keeper, physician, and chaplain of each prison. If any member of this board shall have reasonable cause to believe that a prisoner on parole has violated his parole, and has lapsed, or is probably about to lapse, into criminal ways or company, the prisoner may at once be arrested and returned to prison, to be detained until the expiration of his maximum term, unless sooner released on parole for a second time. Any prisoner on parole may be absolutely discharged, before the expiration of his maximum term, if it shall appear to the board of commissioners of paroled prisoners that there is reasonable probability that he will live at liberty without violating the law, and that his absolute discharge is not incompatible with the welfare of society.

The third great principle of prison reform, intellectual education, appears in the law substantially as follows: Instruction shall be given in the useful branches of an English education to such prisoners as in the judgment of the warden or chaplain may require it, or as may be benefited thereby. The time devoted to such instruction shall not be less than an average of one and a half hours daily, between six and nine in the evening. Provision is also made for the employment of suitable teachers.

The value of the intellectual education of criminals has been greatly misapprehended by those not acquainted with the criminal character. The ordinary criminal is such because of mental defect, rather than from superior courage or ability. If he is acute, it is with a narrow, intense cunning, which is the reverse of wis

dom. His thoughts are bad. His mind dwells on demoralizing topics. A high gait of physical activity at hard labor is not alone sufficient to change his habits of thought. An equally high gait of intellectual activity upon a new line of topics must be compelled. The school studies pursued must be such as cause the prisoner to struggle. The examinations must be frequent and severe. For loss of school-marks the prisoner must be disciplined by loss of grade, or of extra privileges, or of early release on parole.

The convict, who has probably been more or less a loafer, with loose, irregular habits, with no trade, or with a trade but half learned, enters the prison, and, after examinations, is assigned his task in the shops, and his lessons at the school. If he succeeds in each, his prison life will be more comfortable and his imprisonment shortened; he may even 'in the mean time earn something for himself and his family. He starts in with high hopes and overweening confidence, for the criminal is almost invariably an egotist. His tasks in shop and school soon seem impossible, and he quickly weakens his efforts. Sharp discipline follows. Under the new stimulus he starts again, and after various trials and failures, and renewed stimulus, he finds what appeared impossible, to be easy. His mind is strained to its highest activity on his school lessons, and he has no time for day-dreaming or evil-plotting. A new field opens to his intellectual vision. A broader view of life comes with the consciousness of newly developed powers. Hope and ambition are stirred in new and better lines. Cleaner physical habits have encouraged cleaner thoughts. Ambition and confidence have been chastened by disappointment and failure. If the prisoner is tempted to relapse into inactivity, he falls back upon the sharp pricks of prison discipline.

To have seen the esprit de corps of a large body of prisoners changed from admiration of crime to an ambition to gain virtue, is a convincing experience of the power of such discipline as a force in the education of the prisoner.

Now becomes possible the introduction of the final element of complete prison treatment. The stirring of the religious emotions, in connection with such a course of prison discipline, may now kindle more than a mere flame, to be quickly smothered or extinguished by evil habits and associations not permanently interrupted.

It is a heathen theory that the criminal is like a wild beast, hostis humani generis, to be exterminated, or merely caged for a

while behind iron bars. It is a heathen theory still, in its most civilized form, that the sole end of prison treatment is the protection of society against the criminal. It is the Christian theory that the convicted criminal is still a man and a brother, a child of the Divine Father, weak, perverted, disordered, vicious, but in any view needing seclusion, permanently it may be, in a hospital for remedial treatment, possibly for surgical treatment, literally, even to the sterilization of the most unfit, but treatment always seeking to remedy rather than aggravate the disease of his soul.

But after the best of treatment within the prison, the critical period comes with the prisoner's discharge. "It is more difficult to keep an ex-convict right in action than it is to get a convict right in purpose. The criminal lacks moral storage capacity. His moral compartments are not built for heavy seas." The best of treatment will be liable to have but a temporary effect, if all restraint is suddenly and absolutely released upon his discharge from prison. With the indeterminate sentence and release on parole, to supplement the right prison treatment, the strongest possible pressure to secure lawful conduct is brought to bear upon the criminal, at this, his most critical period.

The chief merit of the new law is that it met the immediate emergency. It satisfied the politicians without sacrifice of principle. It remains to be seen whether the new direction opened for the solution of the prison labor problem will lead to the permanent settlement of the controversy, and the adoption of a stable policy by the State, or whether this law, also, is to be followed by still another reactionary relapse. But besides meeting the immediate emergency, the new law embodies nearly every idea of modern prison reform that has been seriously suggested by students of sociology or managers of prisons. The newer and more advanced ideas are adopted cautiously and conservatively, as first steps in experimentation. Some principles which ought now to be accepted as final, and to be radically carried out, have suffered by compromise. In many respects the law is crude and imperfect. No single idea is new. One or more at a time they have all appeared, sometimes more fully elaborated, in other States. But it is believed that the New York law presents the first complete combination into one system of all the modern ideas of prison reform, and therein consists its chief claim to the attention of all, without regard to locality, who are interested in the preservation of the health of the social body.

ITHACA, N. Y.

Charles A. Collin.

A PLEA FOR ENDOWED NEWSPAPERS.

ORIGINALLY regarded as inimical to the best interests of both State and Church, the public press has acquired a formative influence upon these older institutions in spite of their ill will. Even now autocratic despotism vainly tries to protect itself from a free press, its direst foe. Representative government depends upon the press as upon the lungs through which party life draws the vital breath.

Many of the former functions of the Church are now exercised in fullest freedom by the newspaper. It is the public censor. Its paragraphs are often more pungent and more intelligible than the sermon. It speaks to a large congregation as frequently as the minister speaks to his small one, and, here and there, it speaks several times as often. It is restrained by no hard and fast rule of doctrine. In the newspaper office there is nothing immutable but the wisdom of the editor and proprietor. To the mass of people the controllers of influential journals are the real managers of the great world's stage. They set the scene. They put the words into the players' mouths. They point out the moral which adorns the tale.

"There's nothing," said the rattle-headed city editor in that very bright story, "Seth's Brother's Wife," "there's nothing like original news to show the influence of journalism. One morning, after the cakes had been bad for a week, I said to my landlady that I believed the fault must be in the buckwheat. She said, No, she did n't think so, for the flour looked very nice indeed. I put a line in ‘Local Glimpses' that day, saying that, unfortunately, the buckwheat this year was of inferior quality, and the very next morning she apologized to me, said I was right, the buckwheat was bad, she had read so in The Chronicle.'"

The news columns of our journals are intended to fulfill a dual mission. They become at once mirrors of fact and preachers of opinion. Strictly speaking, a real newspaper would be a picture of the actual, without any attempt to present deductions and opinions. No such journal exists, or probably can exist, among us, with a possible exception in the case of some small commercial bulletins, which contain a very special class of facts. How to secure and preserve, in the representative public press, an honest and healthy relation between fact and opinion, between public and