“We might hope to see the last of iron cages, and foreigners could no longer satirize our prisons under the generic term of menageries. The state would avail itself of the services of competent architects, and traveling salesmen would not be able to sell to unsuspecting and simple-minded commissioners and supervisors their illusory spectacles in shagreen cases. “In a word, we should have an opportunity to replace irresponsible by responsible prison management, and competency would in time take the place of incompetency. “This proposal implies, of course, the complete and final disseverance of the prison for men convicted of crime from the house of detention for those awaiting trial, whose guilt is yet unproven, and who may be innocent. From the days of Plato to the present moment, that has been a cardinal maxim of prison reform. The jail system has prevented the realization of this ideal. “It is not the house of correction, but the house of detention, which constitutes the most refractory element in this complex problem. Let us lay that portion of it aside, for the moment, and consider the other, which is easier. There is no practical obstacle to the establishment of one or more state houses of correction in any state, except the indifference of the legislature; and that can be overcome by a campaign of education.... “The point is to insist that the condemned misdemeanant, like the condemned felon, shall be committed to the custody of the state, which alone shall have the power to execute upon him, the sentence of the court. This simple measure may be relied upon to do away with one-half of our present grounds of complaint. “I have no fear that, this first step taken, the state will not, sooner or later, see its way clear to take a second, and a third, and as many other steps as may from time to time appear to be expedient and practicable. ‘I do not ask to see the distant scene; one step enough for me.’