May I repeat what seems to me the all-important fact about this development at Auburn? The prisoners, in their hours of recreation, in their attendance at chapel, in their attendance at Sunday afternoon concerts or entertainments, _run themselves in large measure_. They have not only given their promise to be good, but they have chosen their own inmate officers to see that they keep their promise. There is all the difference in the world between being run by a group of prison guards, even under the best of benevolent prison despotisms, and being run by prisoner guards of one’s own election. If, then, the most sacred prerogative of the traditional prison official can thus be usurped by the prisoners themselves, and if, in their own expressive language, they can “get away with it,” in the sense of securing better order, more work in the shops, a marked reduction in the number of offences committed or reported, and a radical betterment in the always limited joy of life in a penal institution, what is the inference? The organization and development of the Mutual Welfare League were simple enough. Last fall, when Mr. Osborne, as chairman of a prison reform commission that had been appointed by the Governor, sent himself to prison for a week, aided thereto by a friendly warden, he informed the prisoners at a previous chapel service that he was coming into prison to try to understand the prison life from the standpoint of the prisoner. He asked the inmates to regard him, “Tom Brown,” not as a stool-pigeon, nor as simply a foolish amateur, but as thoroughly in earnest in his desire to better prison conditions by experiencing them, even if only briefly and partially for a week. That was point Number One in the development of what has happened at Auburn. Those who make light of Mr. Osborne’s brief career in prison may have a certain justification, in so far as the real prison life can be learned only slowly; but, after all, the results of that October week of Mr. Osborne’s, measured by general results both upon himself and upon the prison, have been perhaps the greatest in the history of the century-old prison. Point Number Two in the development of the new freedom occurred in the basket shop, where Mr. Osborne was given as a teacher and side-partner for the week Jack Murphy, whom Mr. Osborne describes as a very fine and sincere man. From Murphy’s character came unconsciously to Mr. Osborne the suggestion that prisoners could be trusted far more than had been the case at Auburn. “Why couldn’t there be started here,” asked Mr. Osborne, “a kind of mutual improvement or mutual welfare league among the prisoners, whereby, in return for pledges of obedience and loyalty to the prison administration, greater freedom and more privileges might be obtained?”