Dear Madam: Your letter of recent date addressed to Gov. ---- was referred to me. I regret exceedingly that you did not call at my office on the occasion of your visit. While there is a great deal of truth in your letter there is much that indicates that you were innocently misled by statements of convicts. I know that you must be a good woman, that your heart is in your work, and from your wide experience, amply capable of advising and instructing one like me. In undertaking the task of uniting to bring our prison systems in this state to a humane basis, we have done more than you can understand. Had you been familiar with the conditions during the past thirty years under the lease system you would realize that much has been accomplished even in the short time we have been at work. I realize that more is yet to be done. But "Rome was not built in a day." The public has got to be educated as well as individuals in immediate charge. I hope therefore you will be patient, and will be only too glad to see and confer with you should you again visit us here. In the meantime I beseech your earnest sympathy and prayers for proper guidance in our work, for I assure you that it is one that requires such moral support as only such as you can fully understand and appreciate. With great respect, I am, Yours, etc., ----. PLEA FOR WOMEN CONVICTS. In some instances women are made to do the farm work, work in brick yards, and to do other kinds of hard work. At one place in the south the women cultivated a thousand acres of cotton, doing other farming and caring for the stockade, horses, mules, cows and hogs and having only men to guard them. They were not allowed a woman matron to care for them when they were sick or dying. I found them in rags and tatters and looking almost like wild beasts. I went to the governor of that state and pleaded with him for my own sex. I begged him to protect the poor women from such cruel treatment and brutal punishment. I asked him to have them taken in from the farm, where they were clearing up the land and compelled to carry logs, to the state prison at the Capitol which was nearly empty, and given proper work and humane treatment. [Illustration: WOMAN CONVICT AT WORK.] Once upon my knees before a governor I begged him to take the women from the stockades to the prison walls at the capital, and place them under the care of a good matron and give them such work as women should do. Also that they be properly clothed and fed and taught morals and religion. I said, "For the sake of young men which you now employ to control and guard these women, won't you do this?" (I had found several young babes, born in this place.) He promised that he would see that this was done.