"I know what the average man thinks--that a real crook never turns straight. But it isn't so. Thousands of crooks--and I don't mean one-time offenders, but men in the class we call hardened criminals--have become honest men to my knowledge. It is not true, as some recent writer said, that as many crooks turn honest as there are honest men turn crooked, but I believe that one of the reasons is that so few men are willing to lend a helping hand. I don't mean that every crook is ready to reform if he is encouraged, but I do mean that society makes it hard for any man who has once been a criminal to lead an honest life. "And I'll tell you another thing," continued Mr. Pinkerton: "I'm prouder of the fact that I have helped a few criminals to become honest men than of all the work I have done in putting criminals behind the bars. I'm proud of the fact that every crook knows that Pinkerton will deal squarely with him if he will deal squarely with Pinkerton--that I believe it is as important to keep faith with a bank thief as with a bank president. "I know a score of business men in Chicago--not saloonkeepers, but reputable merchants--who have criminal records. These men have done time and have paid their debt to society for their crimes. I cannot tell you their names, for it would be unfair to them and to their wives and families, many of whom have no suspicion that there is anything wrong in the pasts of their husbands and fathers. Besides, when society discovers that a man is a former criminal it is not content to cancel the debt no matter how much imprisonment at hard labor the former crook may have given in expiation of his sin. "I know men in trusted positions in New York who were convicts. In many cases only the man himself and his employer know the secret and sometimes the employer does not know it. I know men scattered all over the West--business men, professional men, many of them wealthy and prominent citizens--who have seen the inside of Joliet, Moyomensing, Sing Sing or Leavenworth. They have sons and daughters who never have suspected and never will suspect the truth. "These are good men--as good men as any living. They have turned away from their old ways, in many cases have changed their names, and who shall say they are not as much to be respected as the honest man who never was tempted, never was forced into crime? I'll tell you about some of them.