A man is taken to the penitentiary. He is clad in the garments of a convict. He is degraded--he loses his name--he is designated by a number. He is no longer treated as a human being--he becomes the slave of the State. Nothing is done for his improvement--nothing for his reformation. He is driven like a beast of burden; robbed of his labor; leased, it may be, by the State to a contractor, who gets out of his hands, out of his muscles, out of his poor brain, all the toil that he can. He is not allowed to speak with a fellow-prisoner. At night he is alone in his cell. The relations that should exist between men are destroyed. He is a convict. He is no longer worthy to associate even with his keepers. The jailer is immensely his superior, and the man who turns the key upon him at night regards himself, in comparison, as a model of honesty, of virtue and manhood. The convict is pavement on which those who watch him walk. He remains for the time of his sentence, and when that expires he goes forth a branded man. He is given money enough to pay his fare back to the place from whence he came.
What is the condition of this man? Can he get employment? Not if he honestly states who he is and where he has been. The first thing he does is to deny his personality, to assume a name. He endeavors by telling falsehoods to lay the foundation for future good conduct. The average man does not wish to employ an ex-convict, because the average man has no confidence in the reforming power of the penitentiary. He believes that the convict who comes out is worse than the convict who went in. He knows that in the penitentiary the heart of this man has been hardened--that he has been subjected to the torture of perpetual humiliation--that he has been treated like a ferocious beast; and so he believes that this ex-convict has in his heart hatred for society, that he feels he has been degraded and robbed. Under these circumstances, what avenue is opened to the ex-convict? If he changes his name, there will be some detective, some officer of the law, some meddlesome wretch, who will betray his secret. He is then discharged. He seeks employment again, and he must seek it by again telling what is not true. He is again detected and again discharged. And finally he becomes convinced that he cannot live as an honest man. He naturally drifts back into the society of those who have had a like experience; and the result is that in a little while he again stands in the dock, charged with the commission of another crime. Again he is sent to the penitentiary--and this is the end. He feels that his day is done, that the future has only degradation for him.