Love, Life & Work - Being a Book of Opinions Reasonably Good-Natured Concerning - How to Attain the Highest Happiness for One's Self with the - Least Possible Harm to Others by Elbert Hubbard
page 93 of 103 (90%)
page 93 of 103 (90%)
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years to come, but the high wall must go, just as we have sent the
lock-step and the silent system and the striped suit of disgrace into the ragbag of time--lost in the memory of things that were. Four men out of five in the reformatory at Jeffersonville need no coercion, they would not run away if the walls were razed and the doors left unlocked. One young man I saw there refused the offered parole--he wanted to stay until he learned his trade. He was not the only one with a like mental attitude. The quality of men in the average prison is about the same as that of the men who are in the United States Army. The man who enlists is a prisoner; for him to run away is a very serious offense, and yet he is not locked up at night, nor is he surrounded by a high wall. The George Junior Republic is simply a farm, unfenced and unpatroled, excepting by the boys who are in the Republic, and yet it is a penal institution. The prison of the future will not be unlike a young ladies' boarding school, where even yet the practice prevails of taking the inmates out all together, with a guard, and allowing no one to leave without a written permit. As society changes, so changes the so-called criminal. In any event, I know this--that Max Nordau did not make out his case. There is no criminal class. Or for that matter we are all criminals. "I have in me the capacity for every crime," said Emerson. |
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