Picking up an English book on the prisons of the old world I read the following sentence, "The governor of Portland Convict Prison said to me one day, I have only known two cases of real reformation in thirty-five years." What a ghastly confession of unfitness for duty! What are our prisons for, if not for reform? Is this vast expenditure by the country for its police and detectives, its courts of justice, its prisons and prison officials, to be thrown away so far as the vast army of prisoners is concerned? Most assuredly not in this age of civilization, and I am confident no warden in this country would ever give voice to so self-accusing a statement. If he did, however, he would have his fellow-wardens to reckon with, and after them the great public would cry shame on him, and I venture to say that the resignation of such a man would be demanded at very short notice. There is a pitiable side to this for the man himself. What has he to show for thirty-five years of service? A prison well guarded, men kept in their hideous bondage without dangerous mutiny, going like machines through the given routine of hard labor, bodies clothed and fed with only the average death rate, but no poor soul bettered or made more fit to live in freedom or face death happily. That statement can be taken as the representation of the old idea which was created with the old system, from which sprang the abuses that were only to brand, intimidate and degrade the man, who being beyond reform was to be kept in check by breaking his spirit, and keeping him as far as possible in a position in which he could do the least possible harm to the community. Not so long ago many of the branding and degrading ideas were in existence even in this country. I can remember the time when men were hung up by their wrists for hours in torture for some infringement of prison discipline. The lock-step was at one time to be found in all our prisons, the short hair cut and the hideous stripes were universal. In prison after prison now the lock-step is being abolished, and a manly military march takes its place. Within the next few years it will in all probability pass out forever. In many prisons the stripes have been replaced by a neat gray or blue uniform, and they are worn only by men who have been refractory or attempted to escape. While we have the right to punish the wrong-doer, and it is only justice to himself as well as to the community to do so, we have no right to brand him. Anything that tends to mark a man or that will send him out into the world incapacitated to take his place among the free again, is a cruel wrong and should be abolished.