In connection with the transit squad I would advocate complete segregation from the rest of the prison—providing a dormitory ward properly furnished, and connected with its own dining room, where a special dietary should be served. I should advocate even going further than this and permit the wearing of the citizen’s clothing furnished by the state. In this direction the ice has already been broken, for it is a general custom to allow prisoners to draw their outgoing shoes and wear them several weeks before being discharged. During this period I believe it would be wise to permit the men to purchase such personal effects as they will need later—additions to their wardrobe and toilet articles—and in selecting them I should be in favor of taking the men on shopping expeditions—not in prison garb. We are all familiar with the temptations besetting men going out—and their attraction would be greatly lessened by a less precipitous exit from prison and entrance into society than that now in vogue. Too often the last thing a man gets on leaving prison is the “ice-eye” of a turnkey, immune to any sentiment other than that arising from the expectation that his coming back is only a question of time. I have often wondered whether we fully realize that in the experience of every man there is always the “middle man.” By the “middle man” I mean the character taken after its evolution from the innocent years of early life and out of which the last state of the man will evolve. The man when received at a penal institution is invariably the “middle man.” If we realize this, and in connection therewith that character remains plastic, despite the old adage that “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” and we conscientiously endeavor to secure the adoption of regulations designed with the idea in view that we are dealing with human beings, the “man going out” is an entirely new fellow from the man we received—while our prisons will become vast catacombs, the eternal resting place for the shade of the “middle man.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ MAKING ROADS THROUGH PRISON LABOR =Dr. E. Stagg Whitin, General Secretary, National Committee on Prison Labor.= (By Dr. E. Stagg Whitin, General Secretary, National Committee on Prison Labor). “Open up your jails, penitentiaries and prisons!” cry the good roads associations throughout the country—“a solution is at hand for your most difficult problem. Bad men on bad roads make good roads, while good roads make good men.” “Good roads and good men” has become a slogan and no topic of prison news today is more widely discussed in the press from coast to coast than this—the employment of convicts in public road building.