great government department is generally an oldish man whose mind has got into a particular groove, and who dislikes the idea of change. It is from this official that a minister gets the details of his information. Such a man is usually able to make it appear that the proposed changes have been tried before and would not work, or, if they have not been tried before, that they are open to all sorts of objections and dare not be tried. Unless a minister has had a prolonged experience of his department, he is unable to meet the objections of his subordinates, and it is only when he is driven forward by the irresistible pressure of public opinion that he is in a position to obtain legitimate and indispensable reforms. Before the Prisons Committee presided over by Mr. Herbert Gladstone, official after official came up to say that no changes in prison administration were necessary. They asserted that the food was sufficient, that the conditions of prison labour could not be materially altered, that, in short, there was nothing the matter with the system as it stood. Had official opinion been accepted and acted upon, no change whatever would have taken place in the treatment of the prison population. Fortunately for the cause of prison reform, official opinion was overborne by public opinion. Both in Parliament and in the press the agitation for reform continued, and the Home Secretary was thus enabled to press forward with changes which officialdom had ridiculed and opposed.

First of all I will mention the reform of prison labour. One of the most futile and debasing forms of prison labour is the crank and the treadwheel. In no civilised community, except our own, are these instruments of punishment resorted to. Labour on the crank and the treadwheel produces no useful result in any shape or form. The picking of oakum is a low and humiliating type of industry; but even the oakum picker knows that his efforts will have some useful results; he knows that the oakum he has just

finished will ultimately be put to some useful purpose; he knows that the time he has spent in picking it is not altogether wasted. But the prisoner at the crank or on the treadwheel has no such consolation; he feels that the outcome of all his efforts is merely to make a wheel go round. It is difficult to describe the degrading and heartbreaking effect which a useless process such as this has upon a popu lation like ours, accustomed as it has been for generations to productive industry. It is possible that the idle and untutored savage might not feel the humiliation of the crank or the treadwheel; he has little idea either of the dignity or of the value of labour. It is otherwise with civilised men, even if they are prisoners, suffering for crime. All of them know something of the worth of labour; all of them have a feeling that effort should be directed towards some useful end; all of them look back with a sense of satisfaction to the results of a good day's work. It should be the business of the State to stimulate these feelings in the prisoner's breast; to make him realise that labour, wherever it may be performed, is never useless; that diligence. and industry, even in a prison, will always have their reward. It is impossible for the State to stimulate these wholesome sentiments under a régime of the crank and the treadwheel. These instruments in our penal machinery are designed for the very purpose of making the idea of effort and industry degrading. They are calculated to infuse a hatred of all kind of work into the mind of the man who is subjected to them; and it is very remarkable, in going through prisons, to note the difference in spirit and temper between the man who has been grinding at the crank and the man who has been engaged in productive industry. In the one case you meet the sullen, sour, embittered countenance, which bodes no good for the future when the days of imprisonment are over. In the other you find that the results of a day's useful industry have conferred a certain

atmosphere of cheerfulness and manhood upon the broken occupant of a prison cell.

It is a satisfaction to be able to say that the Home Secretary has ordered the crank and the treadwheel to be abolished. The Commissioners of Prisons, in their Report for 1900-1, tell us that "this form of penal labour may be said to be in its last stage." "Of the 39 treadwheels and 29 cranks in operation in 1895 (that is to say, at the time when the agitation for the abolition of these instruments began), only 13 and 5 respectively now remain. It is proposed in due course to abolish these, as soon as satisfactory substitutes. can be found for the hard labour prescribed by rule 39 for prisoners in the first stage. Experience goes to show, that in these prisons where the treadmill has been abolished, the necessary deterrence of first-stage hard labour is well maintained, by the strict separation of prisoners while employed in some onerous task, such as stone breaking or heavy coal sack making." Official testimony, which was either adverse or apathetic in the matter of the crank and the treadwheel, is now forced to admit that the deterrent effect of imprisonment is in no way diminished by the abolition of these barbarous methods of punishment. But it has taken officialdom seven long years to come round to this frame of mind. Only one question remains to be asked with regard to the crank and the treadwheel. Why is it that any of these things still remain in our prisons? The answer of the Prisons Commissioners is that satisfactory substitutes have not yet been found. It is very remarkable that the Prisons Commissioners should take such a very long time to find satisfactory substitutes. In all these affairs "where there's a will there's a way." If substitutes for the crank and treadwheel can be found in some prisons, substitutes can be found in all. If the central authorities would only exercise a little zeal in this matter, if they would only take the trouble to stir up and assist their subordinates

in the local prisons, the crank and the treadwheel would soon become relics of the past. But when will promptitude become anything more than a mere aspiration in the public service. It takes a government a generation to accomplish things that private enterprise would complete and have done within a month. It is only right to add that we owe much to Mr. Ernest Flower, the energetic Member for Bradford, for keeping this question, as well as many other matters connected with prison treatment, before the House of Commons and the country.

The movement for the abolition of the crank and the treadwheel was merely part of a larger movement for the substitution of industrial for merely punitive discipline in the treatment of the prison population. The prisons department had allowed prison industries to languish and decay. When one industry failed, little or no attempt was made to put another in its place. The result of this donothing attitude was that the opportunity of accustoming convicted prisoners to habits of industry was lost. The value of industry as an elevating and ameliorative agency was forgotten, although Howard a century before had said: "Teach men to be industrious and they will be honest." Until a few years ago our local prisons were rapidly sinking into the condition of punitive machines and nothing else. It was little or no use appointing chaplains and schoolmasters to serve in them. The whole routine and atmos. phere of the place were adverse to the success of their efforts. Many of these officials felt this to be the case. They knew that unless their efforts were seconded by the general drift of the prison system that they were practically labouring in vain. A prisoner who is being benumbed and demoralised for the greater part of the day by a vicious prison system is not a hopeful subject for the schoolmaster or the chaplain. When his term of detention expires, he is a worse man than he was before it began. He is more

demoralised and therefore more dangerous. The only sure way to deter an offender is to reform him, and the best way of reforming him is to begin by accustoming him to habits of useful reproductive industry. These are simple and obvious facts, but it required a long and bitter controversy to get them accepted by the English Prison Department.

Let us mark the result of the adoption of industrialism in prisons, as recorded in the report for 1901 of the Comptroller of Prison Industries. "The present report is not concerned with the story, interesting though it be, of the varying fortunes of prison labour during this long range of years (46 years). But it may be permitted to me, in quitting the sphere of actual participation in the solution of the many difficult problems which cluster round the labour question, to record my profound belief in the soundness of the progressive industrial policy inaugurated during recent years, and my most sanguine anticipations as regards the success of that policy in the future. Each successive year since 1896 has been marked by a steady increase in the value of the labour performed. The year just closed, 1900-1, outstrips all its predecessors in this respect. The value of the work on manufacturing industries alone shows an advance of II per cent. on the previous twelve months, and of no less than 41 per cent. on the figures for 1896-7." These results, the report continues, "speak for themselves." "Briefly, they have been attained, not so much by extending the scope of our industries in new directions--though a good deal has been done in that way-as by consolidating and developing some of the more recent of our improved industrial methods. Practical effect has been given to the fundamental principle that it is our duty to see that every prisoner committed to our charge should, wherever it is possible, be regularly employed in some useful and helpful occupation, and no opportunity has been lost of enlisting the interest of the prisoner in the work set before him."