The ordinary prison has proved its uselessness for the treatment of the vagrant and loafer, for not only has it failed as a reformative agency, but its life has no terrors for him. By the testimony of prison governors and magistrates, the tramp, on the whole, prefers the prison to the present workhouse; an institution that would exercise a deterrent influence must, therefore, offer a severer discipline than either. Complaint was made by the Standing Joint Committee of the Lincolnshire magistrates some time ago that mendicancy had increased 100 per cent. on account of the superiority of the prison dietary. "The professional tramp," said one magistrate, "was no fool, and he very much preferred in many instances to go to prison than to enter the casual wards of the workhouse." The Lindsey Quarter Sessions Committee appointed in 1903 to consider the question of vagrancy reported :-- "Frequent cases have come to the knowledge of the Committee in which tramps in the casual wards, when threatened with prosecution before the magistrates as a consequence of a refusal to work, have openly avowed their preference for prison life, and cases are also noted where, after sentence, the prisoners have made a similar statement as to their having no dislike for prison. This failure, they believe, is also partly due to the changes in the form of the 'hard labour' enforced, due to the abolition of tread wheel, crank, etc. Owing to the difficulty of arranging suitable work, and to requirements of the prison for chapel, meal hours, marching to and from work, etc., the hours of actual labour, as well as the severity of the work available, bear no comparison with those of many kinds of free labour outside. Prison conditions, indeed, to many persons with so low a standard of physical comfort as the average vagrant, must be extremely comfortable and even attractive." Evidence to the same effect might be cited in abundance from other quarters. The point is one to which the Departmental Committee on Vagrancy gave special attention. Asked by the Committee "Do you not find that the seven days' sentence given to these tramps induces many of them to commit some small offence to get imprisonment, with a view to being helped along by rail to their destination?" Lieut.-Col. J. Curtis Hayward, Chairman of the Gloucestershire Vagrancy Committee, replied:-- "I do not think the prison has any terror. For instance, in one union they have had a great number of cases of refractory tramps, and they have always stated, when they have been had up, that they would rather do the hard work in prison than break stones in the workhouse, because it is easier work. I have been told by the governor of a gaol that some of the prisoners said that they liked the fare better than they did that of the workhouse." Another witness, before the same Committee (Mr. A. C. Mitchell), speaking for Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, said:--