REFORMATORY PRISONS. 605 



With regard to employment for prisoners, all outdoor work is 

 to be preferred; next come the works in straw, cord-making, 

 broom-binding, typography, tailoring, terra-cotta molding, then 

 last of all shoemaking and carpentering. To be absolutely 

 avoided, because they open the way to new crimes, are such 

 trades as blacksmiths, photographers, lithographers, and such 

 like, wherever iron implements or chemicals must be utilized. 

 Work must be proportioned to the strength of the prisoner ; 

 prison work should on no account be farmed out to contractors 

 et pour cause, because these would naturally always protect the 

 ablest men and not the most morally deserving. " Never impose 

 work," says Lombroso ; " let it be desired. The delinquent should 

 ask for it, and having obtained it, it should never become for him 

 a pretext for receiving greater privileges." The Elmira Reform- 

 atory, of which Lombroso speaks in the letter I have quoted, has, 

 we know, served as a pattern to all penitentiaries in the United 

 States, and has modified their methods. Mr. Brockway, its found- 

 er, who states that he imbibed all his ideas from Lombroso's 

 Uomo Delinquente, started from this premise that the introduc- 

 tion of indefinite and unlimited punishment is necessary as the 

 basis of a logical and efficacious moral system; that it is not 

 enough to separate the congenital criminal and the occasional, the 

 passionate, and instinctive, that to each one must be applied the 

 cure that best suits him, as in a hospital each patient is treated 

 in a particular manner. The physical treatment is directed to- 

 ward the development of muscle, by means of douches, massage, 

 gymnastics, and good diet. In the moral it aims at the strength- 

 ening of the will, teaching the prisoner self-control, and thus 

 enabling him to hasten on his own liberation, which is granted as 

 soon as he has proved himself to be worthy. Mr. Brockway 

 divides the prisoners into three classes — good, moderate, and per- 

 verse ; but from the last they can pass into the first through good 

 behavior, love of work, and respect for the guardians. The work 

 taught in Elmira is practical ; the prisoner, as soon as he is liber- 

 ated — and this, according to statistics, is very soon — will always 

 find lucrative occupations. Self-respect once born within him, will 

 go on increasing, unless he is a delinquent born, and here it is 

 that Lombroso departs from Mr. Brockway ; in that case he insists 

 that every remedy will be vain. The criminal will eventually 

 fall back, and only complete exile or death can save society from 

 his disastrous operations. But in spite of this objection Lombroso 

 holds that Mr. Brockway's system, subject to a few modifications, 

 which would take us too long to examine in detail, is useful as far 

 as it goes in the present incomplete and chaotic state of equity in 

 which scientific laws and legal justice do not correspond in their 

 actions. He holds that it is particularly to be commended for 



