Reformatory Work for Women and Girl Prisoners

By E. I. Farrington

N 1825, one of the female inmates of a

IN

New York state prison was flogged to death. At the present time, a visitor to the reformatory at Bedford in the same state finds the girls and women playing croquet, tending little gardens, doing fancywork and studying in the schoolrooms, apparently under little restraint and living pleasant, wholesome lives.

The progress made in the science of penology since the days when flogging was considered an appropriate punishment for erring women has been most marked. The fact is generally recognized now that reformation is possible in the cases of a large percentage of the women and girls committed to state penal institutions and this fact has brought about a complete change in the manner of dealing with these unfortunate creatures, many of them the victims of heredity, environment and evil associates.

The parole system is a modern device for putting the women on their honor either without punishment or after a term of imprisonment, which has proved very satisfactory. At Bedford the women are given more and more liberty as they show themselves capable of using it without abusing it, until they are given their freedom on condition that they report at regular intervals for a year. If they relapse into evil ways while on parole, they are promptly sent back to the reformatory.

Reformatory work at the women's prison at Sherborn, Massachusetts, is similar in many ways, but the women there have rather less liberty as a general thing, perhaps, than those at the New York institution. As a rule the women at Sherborn are older, the Bedford institution being

designed primarily for girls, but the prison features are done away with as far as possible. This prison may be studied as a good type of the modern penal institution. Small but neat rooms with plastered walls and finished in hardwood are provided for the better class of pris oners, although there are a number of ordinary cells for those women who require greater restraint.

Not a few of the women who are sent to Sherborn are mothers with young children in their arms, and the nursery is one of the most important apartments at the institution. It is a large, pleasant room with cots and rocking-chairs arranged about the sides. Nurses are selected from among the inmates, and the youngsters who are old enough to leave their cribs are allowed to tumble about the floor and romp and play to their hearts' content. The little ones seem happy and contented, but the sight is always a pathetic one when the surroundings are considered. What can be more pitiful than a baby in a prison?

The purpose of the management of the Sherborn prison is to reach the hearts of the women if possible, and inspire them to a better life, and then to teach them some means of making an honest living after they go out into the world with its temptations and pitfalls. The religious work at the institution is exceedingly interesting. Many people seem to believe that a fallen woman is beyond redemption. The facts do not warrant any such assumption. Most degraded and wretched women respond quickly to the touch of kindness and the word of encouragement.

Many of the women who come to the prison are lamentably ignorant, so both day and night schools are conducted for their benefit. They are given books and

magazines, and at intervals they are called upon to listen to simply worded talks on current events, for the purpose of arousing an interest in what is going on in the world. A chaplain labors constantly among the women, trying to mold their characters along moral and religious lines. Regular services are held in the chapel, and the chaplain, who, by the way, is a woman, as are all the officials within the prison building, preaches helpful and uplifting sermons, couched in simple and tender language. During the summer months, evening services are held out-ofdoors and are greatly enjoyed by the women. A little organ furnishes music for the singing of gospel hymns, and the influence of these peaceful meetings on the hearts of the women can hardly be overestimated.

Two half-hours each week are devoted to talks on nursing, domestic duties, the care of children, diet, health and similar matters. The various branches of housework are carefully taught, and there is a cooking school for the inmates, so that the women are fitted to undertake domestic service. There are many families in which paroled or discharged convicts are doing the household work and gaining excellent reputations. The work of training girls for domestic service also receives particular attention at the Bedford reforma

tory, and girls from that institution are to be found in many New York homes. There is a sewing-machine room at Sherborn where some of the women are taught the making of shirts, a trade at which they can earn a good living after leaving the institution. Plain sewing, repairing and knitting are also taught and there are a number of handlooms in use.

The prison farm occupies over three hundred acres, and during the summer months many of the women are permitted to work in the garden, a form of labor which appeals to those who have an inherent love of nature and brings out the best that is in them.

A dairy is one of the interesting features of the reformatory and here some of the women are fitted for life in the country, where they will be away from their old haunts and companions. Buttermaking according to the most approved ideas is taught and some of the women become very expert. It is interesting to note the zest with which the unfortunate women take up these unaccustomed lines of work, and to follow the development of their characters as new thoughts are aroused and new aspirations brought into their lives. The indeterminate sentence system for women prevails in Massachusetts. After from eight to ten months of perfect conduct, any prisoner may be released at

Authority has been granted by Congress, the act being approved by the President on February 9, 1905, for the erection of the dam, the only conditions imposed being that the company shall build a lock and dry dock with their appurtenances in lieu of the three locks and dry dock with their appurtenances now owned and operated by the United States. Inasmuch as the proposed dam will improve. navigation in the worst stretch of the river from St. Paul to St. Louis, neither the government authorities nor steamboat men have offered any objections to the work.

The dam will be between five thousand' and seven thousand feet in length and will extend across the Mississippi between the

road to the twenty towns is twenty-four miles. Their population, in 1900, was 112,122. Included in the same 6,293 square miles of territory are also forty villages with a population of 17,661 and a rural population of 112,378. Of these villages twenty-four are in Illinois, nine in Iowa and seven in Missouri. The city of Hannibal, Missouri, is fifty-five miles away. St. Louis is one hundred and fifty miles distant, with East St. Louis and its manufacturing environs to the east. Between the central power-house and St. Louis, and outside the forty-mile limit, are the cities of Hannibal, Missouri, Alton, Illinois, Louisiana and Clarksville, Missouri,

sand horse-power. The cost of supplying power, including all fixed charges, maintenance, operation and all expenses, is closely estimated at $8 per horse-poweryear, the cost of steam power in the territory within two hundred miles now being from $40 to $65 per horse-power-year, with $55 as a conservative average. Several hundred acres of lowlands will be inundated by reason of the dam, but this land is now unimproved, and the constructing company having the right of eminent domain, it will be bought or condemned by due process of law.

Within a radius of forty miles of the central power-house lie twenty towns with a population of one thousand or over, the population in this area aggregating 242,161. The average distance by rail

the population of the cities between Keokuk and St. Louis, inclusive, in 1900, being 728,780 and materially greater now. Within a radius of one hundred miles there was a population in 1900 of 1,146,946, including hundreds of towns and cities. Within a radius of one hundred and fifty miles there was in 1900 a population of 3,917,046.

It is difficult to determine the radius of economical transmission of electrical power to-morrow. Leaving that an open question, it remains a fact that capital today is getting returns upon transmission for over two hundred miles, and the project of electrical development in central Africa, which is on its feet, involves transmission of power over wires for three hundred miles. A similar radius from the

ASUBJECT that has been of much in

terest and conjecture during the past year is the rise of the Salton Sea in southern California. Many reports have been circulated in newspapers and other periodicals which, to say the least, are misleading. These reports assert, among other things, that the Colorado River has overflowed its banks, filled up the Salton Sink, and inundated the farms of the Imperial Valley. Another report, which seems to have been built on tradition, is that a subterranean passage caused by earthquake shocks connects the Salton Sea with the ocean. There are no subterranean fissures connecting the Salton Sea with the ocean, nor are such possible in this desert of loose sand, nor have there been any earthquakes to make such fissures in this region.

The Salton Sink or Sea is in the northwestern part of the great Colorado Desert lying west of the Colorado River in Southern California. That part of the desert north of the Mexican boundary is known as the Imperial Valley. From the boundary, which is at sea level, to the Salton Sink, about fifty miles to the northwest, the surface gradually slopes downward. The lowest point in the sink is 285 feet below the sea level.

The flood of the Colorado reaches its high mark in June or July during the period of melting snows in the Rocky

Mountains. During this period the surplus water overflows the banks of the river below the Mexican boundary and enters the old channels known as the Alamo and the New rivers and flows in a northwesterly direction toward the Salton Sink. Ordinarily, very very little water reaches the sink, but in 1891 an extraordinary flood caused the sink to fill up. The water, however, gradually evaporated, leaving a dry basin.

As early as 1859 a movement was started to reclaim the Colorado Desert through irrigation with the waters of the Colorado River, but the event of the Civil War stopped proceedings and nothing more was done until 1896, when a company was organized for the purpose of turning the water out of the Colorado River near Yuma and carrying it in an immense canal for a distance of about fifty miles through Mexico to the California boundary, thus furnishing water for the irrigation of the valley. The main canal was built with many lateral ditches and after completion the water was turned in. Settlers began to flock into the valley in 1901, 1902 and 1903, until ten thousand people occupied the land. Towns were built and property created to the value of $25,000,000.

The Alamo River is a channel that starts below the Mexican line and takes a wandering course northwest, depositing its surplus waters in the Salton Sink one hundred miles distant. Some twelve miles below where the Alamo channel begins, the Colorado branches, in high water, and the Rio Paradones flows southwest into Volcano Lake. When the lake becomes full it overflows and a part goes southwest through the Hardy Colorado, and the other portion finds its way northwest in the New River to the Salton Sink, where the surplus water is deposited.

In 1900 a canal was cut from the Colorado River to the Alamo channel at a distance of about twelve miles from the Colorado channel. This canal takes the water from a point above the boundary line in California and carries it south into Mexican territory. The canal nearly paralelled the Colorado River for a short distance or until it was turned into the old channel. As the supply of water in the Imperial Canal was insufficient, a second opening from the canal into the river was