It does not refer alone to the agency of the dark cell, the strap, the taking of good time, the bath, the ball and chain, and similar devices; and in a properly conducted, well-ordered, and painstaking institution, these agencies are far and away the smallest, least used and least effective of all those which make and promote this thing called “discipline.” In a rightfully planned and properly manned prison, the officers maintain much the same attitude toward the heterogeneous population there gathered--most of whom are children in mental attainments, children in moral culture, children in industrial bent--that a parent occupies toward his child. The motive, the hope, the desire, the object, the plans, and the efforts should be much the same, changed and modified only as the conditions necessarily demand a modification of plans. The thoughtful and intelligent parent ponders and studies about the future of his child. He knows that he must fit and prepare him for the solemn duties of life, and upon the preparation or lack of preparation he gives him, the discipline or the lack of discipline the child undergoes, will depend that child’s future welfare or misery. If the parent is wise he carefully arranges for the child’s physical well-being, he plans for his mental cultivation and discipline, and provides systematically for proper environments and training for his moral and spiritual growth and strength. Nothing is left to chance, little to precept, much to example, and the use of the rod or other correctional methods or devices, is an obvious confession of a failure on the part of the parent to take all the necessary care and precaution in training or drilling the child. No child ever needed physical correction at the hand of its parent, that the parent was not also some to blame in neglecting precautions that would have obviated this necessity. Rev. Samuel J. Barrows, to whom prison people are under so many lasting obligations for his invaluable contributions to prison literature, said no truer thing than when in his admirable address at Kansas City, in 1901, on “Jesus as a Penologist,” he said: “The ideal discipline is that which educates and strengthens the will without breaking it, and which develops a man without crushing him.” LABOR AS DISCIPLINE The first and prime requisite to discipline is a proper labor system that calls for a reasonable amount of satisfactory, productive, remunerative labor from every convict fit to labor. It is altogether the greatest problem that confronts any prison, and is most vital. Idleness in prison is grossly wasteful, utterly uneconomical, terribly demoralizing, and prevents almost entirely all plans for a regimen that looks to discipline. For those in health there should be no wasted hours at any time or any place in prison.