“In our Massachusetts prisons the population falls as prosperity increases in the great centers of industry, but immediately there is a shut-down in the mills of the State we are then forced to note a pitiable increase in the number of women who fall into evil ways.” The sensation of the annual meeting (from the newspaper standpoint) was the scoring of conditions at the Deer Island (Boston) House of Correction by President MacChesney. “The buildings are so far behind the times that they must have been built before my State was established. The sanitary conditions are very bad. There is no attempt at classification or segregation. Youths of tender years convicted of minor offenses are thrown among adult prisoners who have been guilty of serious offenses. Prisoners of all types are thrown together and this should not be so.” Referring to the women’s prison, Mr. MacChesney said, “I saw one case there that is most deplorable. It is that of a little girl but 17 years of age. She was sent to the institution after being convicted on a charge of vagrancy. She is there thrown among pickpockets and others who have committed serious crimes. Two of your own judges, who were with me, agreed that she should not have been sent there and that girls of that age should be segregated from older and hardened women.” The men’s dormitories at the institution were also the object of severe criticism. The men’s cells, constructed before the civil war, with no sanitary arrangements at all, were termed barbaric, and, as one member said, “ought to be dynamited.” While many Massachusetts newspapers expressed satisfaction that the conference had raised the Deer Island issue again, the self-satisfaction or complacency or resentfulness of some of the editorials showed that not all of the “cocksureness” of Puritan times regarding the high character of home habits and institutions has departed from the Bay State. * * * * * _Jail Poetry._--Upton Sinclair recently “did” eighteen hours imprisonment in the New Castle (Del.) workhouse for violating a Sunday blue law. Seven hours of the time were spent on the stone-pile. The inside cells and the “doubling up” practices led to the following verse: THE MENAGERIE. Oh, come ye lords and ladies of the realm, Come from your couches soft, your perfumed halls, Come watch with me throughout the weary hours. Here are there sounds to fill your jaded nerves, Such as the cave men, you forefathers, heard Crouching in forests of primeval night. Here tier on tier in steel-barred cages pent, The breasts ye breed and hunt throughout the world. Hark to that snore, some beast that slumbers deep, Hark to that roar, some beast that dreams of blood, Hark to that moan, some beast that wakes and weeps, And there in sudden stillness mark the sound Some beast that rasps his vermin hide.