nveterate. We know also that there is a habit, physical
and moral, of doing right as well as doing wrong. The criminal has the
habit of doing wrong. We propose to submit him to influences that will
change that habit. We also know that this is not accomplished by
suppressing that habit, but by putting a good one in its place.

It is true in this case that nature does not like a vacuum. The thoughts
of men are not changed by leaving them to themselves, they are changed by
substituting other thoughts.

The whole theory of the Elmira system is to keep men long enough under a
strict discipline to change their habits. This discipline is administered
in three ways. They are put to school; they are put at work; they are
prescribed minute and severe rules of conduct, and in the latter training
is included military drill.

The school and the workshop are both primarily for discipline and the
formation of new habits. Only incidentally are the school and the
workshop intended to fit a man for an occupation outside of the prison.
The whole discipline is to put a man in possession of his faculties, to
give him self-respect, to get him in the way of leading a normal and
natural life. But it is true that what he acquires by the discipline of
study and the discipline of work will be available in his earning an
honest living. Keep a man long enough in this three-ply discipline, and
he will form permanent habits of well-doing. If he cannot and will not
form such habits, his place is in confinement, where he cannot prey upon
society.

There is not space here to give the details of the practices at Elmira.
They are easily attainable. But I will notice one or two objections that
have been made. One is that in the congregate system men necessarily
learn evil from each other. This is, of course, an evil. It is here,
however, partially overcome by the fact that the inmates are kept so busy
in the variety of discipline applied to them that they have little or no
time for anything else. They study hard, and are under constant
supervision as to conduct. And then their prospect of parole depends
entirely upon the daily record they make, and upon their radical change
of intention. At night they are separated in their cells. During the day
they are associated in class, in the workshop, and in drill, and this
association is absolutely necessary to their training. In separation from
their fellows, they could not be trained. Fear is expressed that me