For ages men have erected scaffolds, instruments of torture, built jails, prisons and penal institutions without end, and through all the ages a long line of suffering humanity, bound and fettered, has been marching to slaughter and condemned to living tombs; and yet human governments charged with the responsibility of the condition and lives of these weak brothers, have never yet been able to agree even upon the purpose for which these pens are built. All punishment and violence is largely mixed with the feeling of revenge,—from the brutal father who strikes his helpless child, to the hangman who obeys the orders of the judge; with every man who lays violent unkind hands upon his fellow the prime feeling is that of hatred and revenge. Some human being has shed his neighbor’s blood; the state must take his life. In no other way can the crime be wiped away. In some inconceivable manner it is believed that when this punishment follows, justice has been done. But by no method of reasoning can it be shown that the injustice of killing one man is retrieved by the execution of another, or that the forcible taking of property is made right by confining some human being in a pen. If the law knew some method to restore a life or make good a loss to the real victim, it might be urged that justice had been done. But if taking life, or blaspheming, or destroying the property of another be an injustice, as in our short vision it seems to be, then punishing him who is supposed to be guilty of the act, in no way makes just the act already done. To punish a human being simply because he has committed a wrongful act, without any thought of good to follow, is vengeance pure and simple, and more detestable and harmful than any casual isolated crime. Apologists who have seen the horror in the thought of vengeance and still believe in violence and force when exercised by the state, contend that punishment is largely for the purpose of reforming the victim. This, of course, cannot be held in those instances where death is the punishment inflicted. These victims at least have no chance to be reformed. Neither can it be seriously contended that a penal institution is a reformatory, whatever its name. A prisoner is an outlaw, an outcast man, placed beyond the pale of society and branded as unfit for the association of his fellow man; his sentence is to live in silence, to toil without recompense, to wear the badge of infamy, and if ever permitted to see the light to be pointed at and shunned by all who know his life. CHAPTER VI REMEDIAL EFFECTS OF PUNISHMENT