The fifth stage in the development of the League came suddenly and through necessity. Early in June an epidemic of scarlatina struck the prison. Ultimately, about a thousand prisoners were infected. Few were in the hospital, but shop work slackened up to a considerable degree. Were the prisoners in consequence to be locked day after day in their cells? Was it longer necessary? The answer came one afternoon when Warden Rattigan took a long chance. He turned all the prisoners belonging to the League out to exercise or play according to their hearts’ content in the big yard, principally under the supervision of the delegates, who until now had been used to move the prisoners to chapel and to entertainments. It was a crucial test. It worked perfectly. Order was maintained, and no efforts to escape were made. “The boys would tear a fellow to pieces that tried it,” one of the prisoners explained to me. “We’ve pledged ourselves to behave. Besides, do you think we want to lose the privileges we’ve gained?” By the Fourth of July the daily recreation period, from four o’clock on, had been going for about a month. What have been the results? “Everything,” answered one of the delegates. “Take my own case. Now I can sleep nights in that small hole in the wall called a cell. I have been here for years, and hardly ever had I had a decent night’s sleep. Now I get tired in the recreation hour. And then, too, we have something to look forward to. It’s a fearful mistake to make prison life so hopeless. You can’t get the best out of a man, in work or anything else, if you don’t give him something to work for. Now, if we behave ourselves and are decent members of the League, we have a decent amount of freedom and privileges. We have competitive games in baseball, bowling, and the like. We feel we amount to something. The boys march now with their heads up. We eat better. The food tastes better. A lot of the sullen resentment and hatred of the prison administration is gone. The work in the shops is better. There’s better discipline.” “What about dope?” we asked. “They say it’s a curse at Sing Sing.” “Very little here now,” said several delegates at once. “It isn’t needed now, and it’s frowned upon.” Then up spoke one of the huskiest and best proportioned of the Executive Committee of the League. “I’ll be frank,” he said, emphatically. “I’ve taken pretty nearly every kind of dope that’s known. I took it deliberately. Now I don’t need it, and I’ve cut it out.”