The Spirit
of the Word
"The words that
I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life."-- Jesus
"The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life."-- Paul
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"LOVE VERSUS PRISON DOOR OF IGNORANCE"
CHAPTER IV
from the book
titled Love Can Open Prison Doors (1)
by Starr
Daily
A boy is better unborn than untaught.
-Gascoigne.
There
is one curse to which nearly all prisoners are subject, incomplete education
or no education at all.
It seems almost inconceivable that only a few years ago a great institution
such as the one in which I was incarcerated could have been without educational
facilities for its wards. But such was the condition. Not only was it a
condition, but it was a condition enforced by prison law. You were allowed
to read such books as the library afforded; but to be discovered with a
pencil or writing paper in your possession was equivalent to many days
in solitary on bread and water.
One of the reasons institutional education was discouraged in this prison
was because of an inferiority complex on the part of its officials. Under
the prevailing wage scale for officials at that time, only a brutal and
ignorant type of man could be induced to take these jobs; and these men
found a mutual interest in ignorant prisoners ; but in prisoners superior
to them in education, they found a deep and abiding resentment. They were
bitterly opposed to all forms of learning for prisoners that, by contrast,
would tend to emphasize their own lack of learning. If a prisoner had been
fortunate enough to have had the advantages of an education, he soon discovered
after entering the prison that he was in for hell, unless he was shrewd
enough at the outset to conceal his educational assets by assuming a pose
of ignorance. This was very often resorted to by educated prisoners.
Today this same prison has one of the finest educational systems in operation
that has ever been established in any prison. (or it did have when I left
there a few years ago). This school was functioning in conjunction with
many big correspondence schools throughout the country. After the grades
had been passed, the prison scholar could then avail himself of correspondence
school training, which embraced everything in the way of vocation, and
profession, from the arts and languages to business and the trades. Training
was made compulsory up to the fourth grade; beyond that it was optional
with the prisoner. It was a sight for earnest eyes to go into the big school
room and see old men sitting side by side with youngsters mastering their
A B Cs. And in another section of the room, to see eager hands trying to
gain speed and efficiency on the typewriter; and in still other sections,
to see competent inmate teachers patiently but effectively instructing
their classes in all manner of specialities.
I do not say that this school is the finished result of any of my own efforts;
but I can and do say proudly that because I had learned about the power
of love to contact creative principle I was privileged to furnish the incentive
or the nucleus around which the idea speedily grew.
Imagine if you can, an institution that for almost a hundred years had
been managed on a system that exalted ignorance and low-rated knowledge.
You would say that such a habit of management, ingrained by a century of
unrelieved custom could hardly be uprooted in the course of a few months.
That nevertheless, is exactly what occurred.
Moreover, a college professor, a man of tremendous ability, was appointed
to organize and superintend the difficult undertaking. He not only established
the school, but he convinced those in power that a new school library was
a necessary adjunct to a school of this kind, and thus for the first time
in the prison's history the inmates could secure books of real educational
value.
Of course, the idea first met with strong opposition both political and
non-political. It required considerable money to promote and realize an
educational institution so broad in scope as this one. There were those
who argued that education, instead of tending to correct criminals, would
tend only to make of them a greater menace to society. A slow-witted criminal
had little chance against the well organized forces of the law; but a criminal
whose brain had been stimulated and developed through the process of education
would be vastly more competent in the commission of crime. His imaginative
faculties would become broader and more original; where he had once been
dull, he would become clever; his ability to look ahead would be greatly
enhanced, and thus he would be able to plan his crimes more efficaciously,
eliminating the weak spots in his programme of attack; where he had once
blundered into his crimes blindly, without considering the most important
feature in crime commission, the get-away, he would now be able to reason
backward from a well-planned get-away to the crime's commission, a process
of thought beyond the capacity of an ignorant criminal, but wholly within
the powers of one whose mind had been trained in the difficult art of coherent,
analytical thinking.
Students of penology watched the prison school system with much interest
and speculation. Most of them were in accord with the movement. Most of
them believed that the surest way to convince a man that crime was a losing
game in the long run was to educate him to the point where he could see
and understand this maxim for himself; and that the best way to create
a potential good citizen out of a potential bad one, was first to arouse
within him an intelligent self interest, and then place before him the
means to cultivate that interest along constructive lines that entailed
a knowledge of good citizenship and a desire to become a good citizen if
for no other reason than the one based upon self preservation, that it
paid to conform to existing social standards, even though to do so might
often prove tedious and unprofitable.
Whether or not this controversy was ever settled I do not know. But this
I do know, in my experience I observed more than a hundred confirmed criminals
who, because of this prison educational system, left prison to fill honest
occupations that had before been beyond their reach. Nor did I observe
one among them who returned to prison for committing another crime.
*******
It is my honest belief that if it is possible to reform a person of anti-social
tendencies, there is no surer method to that end in existence than to turn
constructively such a person, through education, away from the old tendencies
by giving him new and more appealing ones to follow. There is a sense of
ought in the most hardened criminal. Ought I to pull this job, or oughtn't
I ? These are the preliminary questions to every crime committed. And constructive
education gives the constructive answer to them more influence over the
individual by making that answer more reasonable and consequently more
appealing. I believe penology's strongest weapon is education.
In this prison I was the first man ever to be permitted the unheard-of
privilege of taking a correspondence course of study. At the time I had
no idea how far-reaching the results of this privilege would be. And the
warden, who granted me the privilege, of course established a precedent
in doing so, and thus unwittingly let the bars down for an avalanche of
similar requests, which he could not refuse, and which absolutely snowed
him under.
He was bewildered when he called me into his office. "I've made a mistake
in letting you have that course," he said. And then he pointed to a ten-inch
stack of requests. "They're all the same. Fellows wanting to order courses.
We have no mailing facilities here for handling so much of this type of
stuff. I'm afraid I've got my foot in it. I didn't know there was such
a craze in the world for education. God only knows how I'll ever get out
of it."
I knew, of course, that one of his ideas for getting out was
to backtrack on the original privilege granted me. I had to think fast
in order to forestall this action. So I said:
"Warden, here's your chance to contribute a real service to society. It'll
never pass your way again. If you seize the opportunity now, your name
will go down as one of the outstanding prison executives of the world;
but if you let the opportunity slip you'll pass out with the next change
of administration, just another prison warden who served his time and drew
his pay as wardens have done before him. Why don't you put in a school
? Get a good man in charge of it and let him handle it in his own way.
In that manner the problem will solve itself so far as you're concerned."
"By Jove!" he exclaimed. "That's an idea. I anticipate a fight. But I'm
ready to go to the bat."
And with that vigorous statement a hastily formulated dream of mine had
its first push forward toward fruition.
When I first thought of asking the warden for the privilege of taking a
course of study, I was fully aware that such a request, under ordinary
circumstances, would he briefly received and flatly rejected. Dad Trueblood
and I talked the matter over, and as always, Dad had only one method
for attacking all problems -- the method of contacting creative principle
through the intermediary of love.
"But how am I going to reach the warden ? How am I going to make my love
known to him?"
"Love," he said, "needs no advance agent. When it's purely conceived
and powerfully felt, it will find its objective. It does not follow you:
you follow it. First you love, and then you act."
"You mean I can prepare the warden in advance so that he will receive my
request with favor?"
"Not you. But love expressing through you will prepare him."
"Without any effort on my part?"
"None but love. In fact, you need not go about him at all. Say, that's
an inspiration. Instead of you making the request of the warden, let your
friend on the outside do it, by mail."
Contrary to general opinion, it isn't so difficult to evoke a feeling of
love even for one's jailer. You can reason yourself into this emotion.
That is what I did in this case. And it worked out perfectly.
After all, I said to myself, prisons were a necessary evil in a civilization
that harbored the type of preying animal I had been. And if prisons were
necessary, so were wardens to manage them. This warden was merely filling
an inevitable duty, and if it wasn't him then it would be someone else.
Despite the disagreeable position he held, he was a man for all that, with
the same God-given spark that I possessed, the same potentialities for
good and evil. We were brothers under the skin. We were both headed in
the same direction, although our paths had not always run parallel. He
had his troubles the same as I. His faults were no worse than mine. In
a word, he, as every mortal born to struggle up through trial and error,
was more entitled to love and understanding than to censure. Who was I
to sit in judgment? Had not the Master of men said, "Woman where are thine
accusers?" And refused to judge her Himself when He noted all had slunk
away.
In this manner of reasoning one unavoidably comes to the place where censorship
ends, and where censorship ends true love begins. [Judgement centered
in Love is for correction (probation) not damnation - God's fire is the
purging process of bring forth perfection].
It took me only a very short while to arouse within me a deep responsive
feeling of love for the warden, and it grew and grew as I continued
to search his inner being for the Christ-like traits that were the heritage
of every human being.
Finally I began to visualize him in all manner of constructive, humanitarian
activities. I saw him courageously doing the right thing, although he well
knew that the right thing was not the popular thing for him to do. I saw
him with my request in his hand; I sympathized with him when he passed
through a wavering period of indecision; I bowed in inward gratitude when
his eyes took on the light of victory over self and indecision fell away
from him as he determined to do the constructive thing and allow me to
have my course of study.
In the meantime I had written to my friend explaining my desire and asking
her to inform me of the exact hour and date her letter to the warden was
to go forward. In this manner I was able to arrive at the date and hour
the letter would reach the warden's desk. Through another source I found
out the exact time the warden sat down to examine his mail. And thus at
this time I visualized him with my friend's letter in his hand. As I watched
him reading it, I let my love close in around him until he seemed to be
completely enveloped in it to the exclusion of every other vibratory influence.
[Daily evokes a scripture, not from the reading, but from the Spirit;
calleth those which be not as though they were - Romans 4:17].
I would not say this was scientific procedure. Some of you may even laugh
it off as being the antics of a simpleton. I wouldn't presume to state
that such an effort on my part had anything to do with the warden's decision.
But I do say that his decision was made precisely as I wanted him to make
it.
*******
Through this course of study I was able to prepare myself for an honest,
constructive future. I left prison at a time when the depression had just
reached its peak, when competition in the labor market was as great as
it ever has become. It might be that without this preparatory work I could
have gone out in the world and competed successfully with skilled and unskilled
millions. It might be that my prison and criminal record, all that I possessed
in the way of reference, would have offered no handicap to me in my effort
to secure a place in the world of honest endeavor.
But in the event the situation had not panned out in this manner, which
would have been at least quite possible -- what then?
Maud Ballington Booth once wrote a book under the title After Prison, What
? A man may go out of prison with the very best of intentions, but if he
is unprepared, if he is worse off than when he entered prison, his intentions
are likely to meet with opposition too strong to be endured. Nothing will
so take the starch from an ex-prisoner's stiff resolutions like rebuff
and indifference. As soon as he becomes thoroughly convinced that he is
not wanted, the step between that point and his old life becomes a mighty
easy one to take.
I remember a resolution I once made of the kind as I was leaving prison
after serving my first term. I had been given a parole. The town I went
to on parole had a shoe factory in it, and by telling a few skillful lies
I managed to get a job in this factory. It was a good job, too. It paid
excellent wages on a piece work basis. And the novelty of earning an honest
living had a certain appeal about it, which I responded to with considerable
satisfaction.
In the evening after a good bath and hearty supper I would stretch out
an my bed and declare to myself, "By golly, this is not so bad." There
was a definite lift to this business of achieving a laudable day's work;
a
decided sense of security about it that was wholly new and tremendously
gratifying. If the thing hadn't happened that did happen shortly afterwards,
I might have, then and there, reconditioned myself to honest habits of
a lasting nature.
But one noon-day, as I hurried up the street from the factor on my way
to a restaurant, someone hailed me from across the street, using a name
of mine that sent a tremor of fear through me. No one in this town
knew me by that name, or so I thought. Turning I saw a detective coming
across the street to greet me. It had been he who had arrested me for the
crime I had just finished a prison term to expiate. His face was aglow
with a broad smile. His hand was extended in friendship.
"Glad to see you out," he exclaimed. "When did it happen? What are you
doing?"
I explained I had been out several weeks; that I w as on probation, that
I was working down at the shoe factory.
"Fine," he said. "I for one am with you one hundred percent. I want to
see you make good. Listen, just lay off the pool halls and other joints
around here, and you'll pull the grade. I'm here now. I'm with the railroad.
Dammit, if the sledding gets tough, come out to my house. We'll make you
acquainted with the right sort of people. There's no need for you to get
lonesome."
I was amazed at the man's attitude. I wondered if I had previously misjudged
him. I returned to the factor feeling a little relieved but shaky in the
region of my solar plexus. I had been at work about an hour when I was
notified the superintendent wished to see me in his office. I felt the
old sardonic sneer welling up in me. I remember saying to the floor boss
who conveyed the message to me, "Well, I guess this is the end of a perfect
day. A minute later, I was asked if I had ever served time in prison.
Of course, I well knew who had informed on me. The detective had gone straight
from his Judas kiss to the superintendent and advised him that an ex-convict
was in his employ.
I admitted the fact with a sarcastic barb at the whole world. The superintendent
was sorry that the rules of the company forbade, and so forth.
"You needn't be, " I told him. "I'm out of place here anyway. I'm glad
I got by long enough to buy a good gun. That's my racket. It's all I know.
Give me my check and I'll be out on my way in a jiffy."
I walked away from that job with a poisoned heart and a bitter resolution
eating into my brain like a cancer. It took some time to dull the edge
of that mood. In the meantime I did some reckless things against the social
order before I finally stopped with another prison sentence.
*******
I have said elsewhere that reformation to be effective and permanent must
be accomplished by transcending old habits; by reconditioning one's self
to new habits of thought and behavior.
To this end the average prisoner will neither respond to reason nor
persuasion, harsh treatment nor kind. But, quite to the contrary, he will
readily respond to an educational program with an inspirational tone to
it, the quality that arouses self interest, and offers a positive means
to a broader mode of living for him. When such a program fails, the man
is hopeless so far as human influence is concerned. Nothing save an act
of Providence can swerve him from his downward path.
As an illustration of what education can accomplish where all other methods
have failed, I wish to recount, briefly, the cases of two men, not because
I was privileged to play a minor part in their salvation, but more to show
that even the worst of human timber can be salvaged from the gulf of destruction
and rendered useful to society when the educational method has been made
available to them.
Spider Ross was young in years, but old in experience. He was one of those
borderline cases the criminologists like to study. That he was criminally
insane the doctors had no doubt. But always convictions for crime and sentences
in Spider's many mishaps sent him to prison instead of the criminal insane
asylum.
Spider was one of those shifty-eyed, loose-lipped, pasty-faced crooks of
the petty variety. A kleptomaniac, I believe they call them in professional
terminology. He could neither read nor write his own name. He walked with
the swaggering defiance of ignorance, and so far as any one could judge
from mere observation, he possessed nothing but a surface, and a shallow
surface at that. Apparently his only ambition was to live his own life
and be allowed to brag about it as he liked.
When the prison school was established, Spider of course became what they
called a "list man," that is, his name was on the list of those to whom
training was made compulsory. I worked beside Spider, and when he heard
they were going to force him to attend school, he promptly revolted. "I'll
go," he told me, "but they can't make me learn anything."
It didn't take me long to realize that the school could be of little service
to Spider so long as he held this attitude. I took his problem to the school
superintendent and asked him to allow me to handle Spider's case. He agreed
to my request, and I thereupon removed Spider's name from the list. When
the list-bearers made the round to notify the others the day school was
to start, Spider was passed up. Though he said nothing, it was plain he
had taken the event as a slight and was very much disappointed. He wanted
to tell the list-bearer a mouthful, as he put it.
The school was a roaring success from the start. In the shop there was
no other topic of conversation. Enthusiasm ran riot. Spelling matches were
begun; arithmetic problems were pondered over and solved. Every one had
a stack of school-books he carried back and forth. The more literate prisoners
turned from topics of crime to topics of history, government, economics,
and so on. World's Almanacs were borrowed from the new library with which
to settle disputes. Spider found himself completely disassociated from
his fellows. Everywhere he went the conversation had to do with school
subjects. After the tasks were all in, the prisoners would form groups,
each on its own intellectual level, and get off in a private place to discuss
their next day's assignments. If Spider approached one of these groups
he would remain only a moment, because he had no mutual interest there.
It was practically a case of unintentional ostracism.
Spider was in the position where "a feller needs a friend." And his extremity
proved my opportunity. When he could talk to no one else, I talked to him
as we worked. I talked to him about the thrill one got from trying to learn
things. Slowly but surely, his interest rose. Then one day he asked me
why they had left his name off the school list. I replied by suggesting
that he must have requested it. He was vigorous in his denial of this.
"Well, I guess they figured you weren't interested in school," I countered.
"I don't see why," he said, "I didn't say so."
"But maybe they figured you thought so. Actions speak louder than words
sometimes, you know."
He wondered if it was too late to get in. I thought I could arrange it
for him. But he would have to study hard in order to catch up with the
rest.
And so Spider Ross the next day found himself for the first time in his
life on the inside of a class room. No doubt he was an exception, but once
he was started and had mastered the first difficult steps, after he had
learned to read a little, his thirst for more knowledge became an exaggerated
mania, the talk of the prison. In two school terms he absorbed what was
equivalent to an eighth grade education. Every one was amazed at his capacity
to assimilate complicated subjects. He was never without a book within
his reach. As he operated his machine the book stood propped open before
him.
At the beginning of this third school term, he took up business, shorthand
and typing in conjunction with a correspondence course in salesmanship.
At the close of the term he was placed in one of the most difficult steno
graphical positions in the prison where question and answer dictation had
to be taken with the speed of a court reporter. While holding down this
job, he found time to continue his studies, to invent a dozen or so different
kinds of gadgets, which he planned to copyright later, and to write two
excellent books on salesmanship, one under the title The Psychology
of Depression and the other, Depression Salesmanship.
Spider left prison in the midst of the depression. His methods for making
personal capital out of national hard times were all set forth practicality
and convincingly in his books. That he demonstrated his theories, I haven't
the slightest doubt in the world, although I heard nothing more of him
after he had taken his departure.
I reiterate, his was doubtless an exceptional case. When a man can start
from the lowest level of ignorance and criminal insanity, and in three
years' time win a place of position of trust within his prison, and
prepare himself as he did for a position of trust outside his prison, such
an achievement is not only exceptional, it is phenomenal.
The important thing is, however, that he did it. The important thing to
society. Institutional education had taken an obvious social menace in
Spider Ross and transformed him into a social servant. Thus I have found
it: education lifts the consciousness of the prisoner it touches, instead
of contributing to the furtherance of his criminal tendencies.
And again we see in Spider's case, how first there was developed an
intense thirst or love for knowledge, which set the creative principle
to building in an opposite direction. Before his love medium had been for
destructive things and such things had been created through him. With the
love medium reversed, the creative principle could do nothing else but
create in the new direction. As the love medium tends the creative law
inclines.
*****
The case of Harry Simmons was quite different from that of Spider Ross
in one way, but the result was similar in that through the prison school
both had been able to find themselves and their particular niches in life.
Harry had attended college, was an excellent scholar and possessed a high
standard of taste toward the cultural things. He could discuss academics
with a glib and perfect accent. He was typically a young intellectual,
a trifle egotistical, somewhat snobbish, and vastly intolerant toward those
whose frontal bones failed to measure up to the lofty dimensions of his
own.
At some point in his educational career he had come under the influence
of a certain German philosopher. This philosopher propounded a super-man
doctrine which, in the hands of a person more impressionable than stable,
held a dangerous interpretation, an interpretation altogether ruthless
and inhuman. Indeed, it was Harry Simmons' misinterpretation of a brainy
man's philosophical doctrines that paved the way for his pride to prison.
"Live hard and dangerously," was the credo this philosopher laid down for
the guidance of the super-man. Meaning, of course, that it was the duty
of the super-man to dare the faggots of ignorance by living and teaching
in advance of his time. Poor Harry thought the philosopher meant that the
super-man, being so brilliant as to appreciate the shortness of mortal
life, should crowd into it as much vice and merry-making as he possibly
could.
So he became a hard and dangerous liver. He naturally found such living
expensive. At first he gambled for the wherewithal; and later he tried
forgery. After his parents had bankrupted themselves trying to keep him
out of prison over a period of several years, they were finally obliged
to stand aside and see their prodigal take it on the chin for a five years'
stretch.
Harry had what they called a political job in our shop. He wore a white
shirt instead of the regulation hickory. He was a garment checker and shipping
clerk. He was not liked because of his highbrow attitude and he was difficult
to reach because of the thick veneer of know-it-all-ness he had drawn about
him.
At any rate, I decided that Harry had too good a start in life to let himself
drift down the purple tide and wind up in his old age a doddering prison
lag, sitting around in the idle house of his final prison home spinning
yarns about his many exploits, and comparing the conditions in this prison
to the conditions in that one. But while I made up my mind to attack him
with the weapon of love, I decided at the same time to use argument, since
he loved to argue above any other pastime.
I crossed verbal swords with him one day with an introductory remark that
set his blood boiling.
"Say," I said, most unexpectedly to him, "what do they teach guys like
you in college ?"
"To mind their own business for one thing," he shot back.
"Oh, I thought they taught them to write checks on the old folks' bank
account."
"Is that so! Well, get an earful of this. They also teach them how to use
their fists, if you happen to think you're lucky."
"I don't resort to violence," I said with a broad grin on my face. He promptly
thawed out, and we were soon talking about his favorite topic, the philosophy
of the super-man. We argued off and on for several days before he was willing
to accede to my constantly reiterated point that any philosophy was a failure,
unless the person embracing it could show that it had done him good instead
of harm.
After drawing this admission from him, I pointed out that the same thing
could be said of a college education; that although college men had a great
advantage over non-college men, the latter by making opportunity out of
the little they had, often succeeded in life, while the college man who
refused to see the opportunity in the much possessed, failed in the practical
business of life, that of growing and getting ahead.
These discussions, carried on at odd times daily, created a mutual bond
between us, a thing that I had been working for, because I wanted to touch
upon a most delicate subject later on, one that only friendship could take
without resentment. I wanted to show him and make him realize what he had
done to his parents, especially his mother, by dragging down the many excellent
opportunities they had made possible for him.
He told me later that I was the only person on earth who could have brought
these things home to him without giving offence. He was glad I had done
it. Also, for the first time, our discussions made him conscious of the
fact that, instead of copying his favorite philosopher's virtues, he had
been twisting those virtues into vices and copying them.
As you probably have already divined, Harry Simmons had scoffed at the
idea of a prison school for convicts. He had said that ninety per cent
of the guys in this prison were too dumb to learn anything if they were
kept in school a million years. He had evinced a great pity for the poor
boobs who would have to act as teachers. He had also said that was one
job he would not do under any inducement or pressure. He preferred the
dungeon to such a job.
But Harry Simmons did become a teacher in the prison school. He sought
the job, and he filled it in an exemplary manner. He had a Spanish and
English class that positively worshiped him. He became the professor's
most valuable assistant and he, more than any one else, was responsible
for some of the finest features that the school possessed. In a word, he
became a prison school enthusiast, and served the cause early and late
to make it an outstanding success, and in this way squelch the criticism
that still rumbled ominously here and there.
On commencement days, held in the big auditorium, with many noted educators
from various places present to study the effects of the system, it was
Harry's privilege to make the address which outlined the accomplishments
of that semester and voiced the hopes of the one immediately to follow,
for this school had only a very short holiday period.
How different was the philosophy this boy propounded in these addresses
to that which he had brought with him to prison! He was like a new creature.
As he would warm with enthusiasm, he was like a man who had caught a powerful
vision, and was eager to convey the inspiration of it to those who were
still floundering about in search of themselves, as he had been.
Harry was not a pupil in this prison school seeking an education, but he
got about as much out of it as any pupil there. It was not education he
obtained, but re-education.
Harry was still there when I pulled out. But he's gone by this time, and
I would be willing to wager a goodly fortune that he'll never go back to
that prison or any other.
One of the best debates the forum ever promoted was between Harry and an
equally brilliant fellow on the philosopher Nietzsche. As I sat and listened
I glowed inwardly with gratitude when the youngster revealed to me he had
at last gotten close to the real Nietzsche and had reasoned away the shadow
he had been following of that greatest of all original thinkers.
_________________________________________________
(1) Daily, Starr. Love Can Open Doors -
Paulton (Somerest) London, Purnell and Sons,LTD, England
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