The time is coming when the District of Columbia Workhouse will be self-supporting, if not more. When it is, I believe an appropriation should be provided whereby the dependent families of the inmates, whether they be sent to us because of non-support or for other violation of the statutes, should be paid a sum of money sufficient to provide in a comfortable manner for their support during the confinement of the offenders. If such a system were inaugurated, the financial benefit received by the family would only be a secondary consideration. The greatest benefit would be the lasting impression made on the individual while at the institution, developing in him industrial habits and self-confidence, which would help him to become a self-supporting citizen, capable of caring for his family after he is released. This certainly would be true in 60 per cent. of the cases we have, if there could be brought about a change in the penal code of the District of Columbia through having the inmates committed on an indeterminate sentence rather than on a fixed sentence such as is now being given. [1] Read by W. H. Whittaker, Superintendent of the (Occoquan) District of Columbia Workhouse, at National Conference of Charities and Correction, Memphis, May, 1914. A PRISON OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY By O. F. Lewis General Secretary of the Prison Association of New York [Reprinted from The Independent of May 18, 1914.] The three-car train came out of the Canadian woods from the south and stopped by the stationless road. Twenty-five young fellows jumped down, formed in twos, and, led by an older man, and followed by two older men, walked up the road over the concrete bridge to the prison buildings. They were prisoners, convicted of crimes and serving time. That morning they had left the Central Prison of Toronto--left the forbidding old building, with its bolts, its gloom, its cells and corridors; and now, but a few hours later, they were hastening without shackles, without armed guards, without prison garb, toward the latest Canadian prison, the Central Prison Farm of Guelph. This means a new era, this method of treating prisoners--an overturning of the old traditions of prison government, a serious break with the past, an almost scornful disregard of the cherished traditions of bars and cells, tortures and punishments. It means an amazing change in the attitude of society toward the prisoner, and a startling change in the feeling of the prisoner toward society.