If I had stolen Graney’s, the Emporium’s, or the *Bulletin’s* money, they could have said that Older made it possible, and had I been tempted to steal that thought would have stopped me. I cannot say I quit stealing because I knew it was wrong. I quit because there was no other way for me to discharge the obligations I had accepted. Whatever measure of reformation I have won is directly due to Fremont Older and Judge Dunne of the Superior Court. They took a chance on me, a long chance, and it will be a long time before they regret it. Fremont Older has been a rock in a weary land to me, and Judge Dunne has been a shelter in the time of storm. It has been easy for me. The noble woman who found me rotting in jail physically and mentally is still my friend, I am proud to say. The kindly Christian couple who gave me a home with them in San Francisco and treated me as a son are still my friends. Friends everywhere, to help and advise and encourage. Even friends from the road and the jungles drop into my office and shake hands and say: “More power to you, old-timer. You’re sure makin’ good. I’m goin’ to try it myself some day.” My feuds with the police are dead and buried. No copper has bothered me or obstructed me. Many of them have offered in good faith to help me. And so I say it has been easy for me to go on the square. I speak only of my own experience; others may not have been so fortunate in finding friends. I wish I could sift out a few grains of wisdom from my life that would help people to help prisoners, and help prisoners to help themselves, but I can’t find them. I don’t know. All I can say with certainty is that kindness begets kindness, and cruelty begets cruelty. You can make your choice and reap as you sow. I am not worrying about prisons. If they improve as much in the coming twenty years as they have in the last twenty, they will have to be called something else. While the number of convicts is increasing, the percentage of second and third timers, habitual criminals, is decreasing. That’s hopeful, and it’s because of more humane treatment, more liberal parole laws, and the extension of road building and other work, that fits a prisoner for the outside, gives him the work habit. Highway building by convicts is the sanest and most constructive step I have seen. Instead of appropriating money to build a third prison in California, the same money might be expended in road-building materials, and one of our two prisons emptied into the road camps, where the prisoner could be self-supporting and not a dead weight on the taxpayer while in prison, and worse after he gets out.