Warden Brown of the West Virginia Penitentiary seems to be making a place for another appointee. The Wheeling, W. Va., Intelligencer, says that the prison is losing the best and ablest executive it ever had. He had in three and a half years renovated the sanitary system, improved discipline, abolished corporal punishment, elevated the standard of the prison school, turned over to the State (by contract labor) $120,000 above expenses, instituted a prison savings bank, with $35,000 in prisoners’ earnings for the overtime work, and has developed a prisoners’ aid society for helping the families of convicts. He has also developed two camps. Whether Chairman Randall of the Massachusetts Prison Commission is to leave Massachusetts is at the time of writing unsettled. Rumor has it that he has been seriously disappointed at the practically absolute failure of his extensive prison reform program to pass the Legislature, and also at the failure of the Legislature to appropriate an increase in salary which he was given to understand would occur this year, in view of the fact that he left Minnesota last year at considerable financial sacrifice. There is no question that Massachusetts will be a serious loser, if Mr. Randall goes. There seems also a certain amount of hostility toward an “imported” penologist. This is a sad attitude of mind, but not confined solely to Massachusetts. _Extension Courses of California University in Folsom Prison._--The report of the university extension director, in charge of the work at Folsom Prison, is interesting: “We began in January, and the official enrollment is now 324 students. As I soon found that many of the men had brains no better developed than those of a child of 8 years, classes were formed in elementary English, German and arithmetic. “The teaching is done by convicts who have proved themselves fitted for the positions, 15 being on the staff. Aside from financial reasons, this was done because the prisoners need teachers who are in sympathy with them. “All are not permitted to take the school work; some because of conduct, others because they are unable to keep up to the required standard; still others do not wish to take it. Any man who is unprepared twice in succession is dropped from the class. Many failed on this account when the work was first began as they were using it merely as an excuse to get out of their prison duties. “A man often wants to follow a profession or trade to which he is unsuited. Whenever one comes to me asking help in learning a trade, I find out what trade or profession he is best suited for.” When asked if the convicts appreciated the work, Mr. Jacobs’ face lighted up. “They do now,” he said. “My hand is still sore from the greetings they gave me when I returned from a trip East, but they tried all sorts of tricks to get men when the work was first started.”