Mayor Dahlman followed with a kindly speech.
President Patton then delivered his annual address. If I may select any key note of his remarks, it would be to the effect that all of our prison officials should be selected, not only for the ability to govern and restrain, but more especially for the ability to influence and to build up the characters of those who are under them.
“The enactment of such wise legislation as is best calculated to properly protect society and to provide, under humane discipline and restraint, an adequate punishment for the offender; the securing of the proper and regular employment of the prisoner in prison under wise state law; the obtaining of a rightful portion of the prisoner’s earnings for the use of his dependent family; the systematic investigation of their real needs and the furnishing of prompt relief to the worthy and possible effort for their rehabilitation or removal to more favorable surroundings; the invoking of the probation law where such will be conducive to the best results; the comprehensive study of the prison population as far as possible to secure proper statistics on which to base accurate results; the well organized effort now at work in a number of our larger centers of population, in the study and betterment of the slum districts and the more general effort in many localities in the interest of the betterment of the environment of the children and youth, are all encouraging signs of the far-reaching interest at work for the uplift and saving of humanity, and to this end we say, Godspeed to the organizations which in carrying forward their work, have gone back to the childhood days, and which, striving to break the bondage, not only of heredity and environment, are, through sympathy, love and interest thus securing a foothold in districts, communities and individual homes as well, and in which their organized effort is bearing a fruitage most encouraging, indeed and bids fair in due course of time to prove a strong bulwark in the reduction of crime, as well as of the criminal class.”
He referred with feeling to the deaths of Gen. Brinkerhoff and John J. Lytle, referring to the latter as an Apostle of Peace and Good Cheer. He then introduced Dr. Charles Richmond Henderson, of Chicago, who spoke with his usual energy and earnestness. He would do away with municipal and county jails, except as they may be necessary as places of temporary detention. They are run on such a small scale, he said, that the men in charge cannot have the training nor facilities that should be present in the reformation of criminals. He would have the criminals turned over to the state for punishment and reformation as soon as they are convicted by the county or municipal courts. Dr. Henderson emphasized the desirability of classifying wrongdoers and declared that the stamp of criminality should not be placed upon men who are not in spirit criminals. He pleaded especially for more humane treatment of habitual drunkards. “Can you cure a drunkard by giving him ten days in jail, in an atmosphere of degradation and crime, when the habit is to him a thing of generations?”