A year ago now, we started our farm. It is fifty miles out of the city;
it contains 530 acres. I commenced by taking up a little detachment
of 14 men; and I rapidly increased that until I had 180 men, housed
in temporary quarters on this farm. The average term of the man on
the farm was about five or six months, though I had several men there
who had to do from one to two years. So far we have taken out to this
farm 500 men, and out of that 500, four have escaped successfully, and
three or four have attempted to escape--unsuccessfully. The other day
a minister in our city was calling, and I gave him these statistics,
and he looked very sad; he said it was a pity. I said it was; “but,” I
said, “can you take 500 of your church membership and have 495 of them
make good?” And he changed the subject.
I had a grand jury visit me the other day; it is a custom, over in
our country, for the grand juries to come over a few times a year and
tell us how to run the place (they sometimes stay an hour); and the
foreman, before he went away, said to me, “Warden, I suppose you select
the men whom you take out to the farm.” I said, “No, sir. I don’t.” He
said, “How do you manage?” I said, “I select a very few whom I _don’t_
take;” for I can take 90 per cent. About three weeks ago I was going
into the farm one day; it was a cold, snowy, blowing, blustering day;
the thermometer was about zero. When I came near to our building it was
quarter to twelve o’clock; and I saw men coming from this direction,
and that direction, and from every direction pass alone; no officers
with them at all; and it impressed me, perhaps, much more than it
would another one not engaged in this work; for I asked myself the
question--“How is it? These are the very men that I have had in Toronto
behind bolts and bars, watched over by guns and guards; and here they
are out here, as free as this air that blows, and they are all coming
in to sit down with each other at dinner.” I have asked our men on the
farm--many of them, different types, at different places, at different
times, and I have asked them all the same question:--“What do you find
the greatest difference as between the prison in the city and the
prison out here on the farm?” And without a single exception, in one
form or another those men have invariably given me the same reply. We
give good board at the prison, but it was not that; it was not this
liberty, comparative liberty. They have said to me: “Warden, to get
away from that cell! To get away from that cell!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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