“‘But don’t you see, Tom, that they couldn’t do that without putting the whole thing on the bum, and depriving the rest of us of our privileges? You needn’t be afraid we couldn’t handle those fellows all right! Or why not let out only those men who have a good conduct bar! That’s it!’ He continues, enthusiastically warming up to the subject, ‘That’s it, Tom, a good conduct league, and give the privilege of Sunday afternoons to the members of the league.’” This suggestion of Jack Murphy bore practical fruit. Soon after his “discharge,” Mr. Osborne, with the co-operation of the Superintendent of Prisons and the Warden of Auburn Prison, succeeded in establishing a Good Conduct League composed of prisoners, with officers elected by their fellow prisoners. The prisoners are given the liberty of the yard on Sunday afternoons, with a greatly reduced force of guards. They march to and from their cells and their work under the direction of prisoners. They prepare entertainments with the permission and approval of their officers. This plan has now been in operation for several months without the slightest disorder or accident and with marked improvement in the spirit and behaviour of the men. This inspiring demonstration represents no new discovery by Jack Murphy or by Mr. Osborne. It is only a re-discovery of what was practiced by Captain Alexander Machonochie at Norfolk Island with transported British convicts seventy years ago. The writer saw Colonel Gardner Tufts doing similar things with convicts at Concord, Massachusetts, nearly thirty years ago, where prisoners were carrying on evening literary societies in perfect order without the presence of an officer. He saw similar things done by Captain Hickox at the Michigan State Prison more than twenty years ago, where the old chaplain gathered 200 men in a single room for an evening assembly with no officer present but himself. This same principal is being worked out in the State prisons of Oregon and Colorado, in the Ohio State Reformatory at Mansfield and in Doctor Gilmour’s splendid work at Guelph, Ontario. In all of these places it has been found that when you build a wall around a man he immediately wants to climb over it and that when you turn him loose and say, “I trust you and I know that you will not betray me,” there is almost always an instant response. Mr. Osborne believes that this is the first instance of the application of the democratic principle to the management of convicts in a large convict prison, and that the Auburn experiment differs from others in that the prisoners there themselves originated the movement. He says that “the good conduct of the prisoners is in reality an outward expression of an outward spiritual impulse.” “Hence the name, ‘Mutual Welfare League,’; hence the motto, ‘Do good, make good.’ By doing good to others the man makes good for himself.”