honest
life. Such are not undesirable citizens; but there is another class,
that of the professional criminal; with these the prisons swarm, and,
worse yet, the slums and saloons of the great cities are breeding
thousands more that will take the places of those now on the stage.

The conditions of society in England are such that the procession of
criminals is an unending one. The society that creates the criminal also
has established a system of police repression that makes the life
history of society's victim one of misery, until such time when the
criminal, growing wise by experience, shakes the dust of English soil
off from his feet and transfers himself, a moral ruin, to our country,
here to become a curse and a burden.

This flow of moral sewage to our shores is constant and unceasing. Our
Government has frequently protested against it, but with no success, for
the officials in England indignantly deny that the State either
encourages or assists the exodus of her criminal classes; but from my
personal knowledge I know this to be false. The officials over there
have found out an effectual way to rid themselves of their discharged
prisoners as fast as their sentences expire, and cast them on our
shores, and this is so ingenious a way that the wrong can never be
brought home to them.

During my twenty years' residence in Chatham I suppose nearly half as
many thousands asked me for information about America, and at least 95
per cent. assured me that when released they would "join the society"
and depart at once for that happy hunting ground--that Promised Land
which charms the imagination no less of the criminal than of the honest
poor of the Old World. In every English prison the walls are decorated
with placards, gorgeous in hue, of rival firms appealing to the readers
for patronage. "Join us," they all say; and every prisoner knows the
appeal "join us" means if you do we will ferry you over the Jordan that
rolls between this desert land and the plains flowing with milk and
honey on the other side. The "firms" I mention are those arch humbugs,
the Prisoners' Aid Societies of England.

Elizabeth Fry, who made "aid to prisoners" fashionable and a society fad
in England, has much to answer for. Prisoners' Aid Societies have sprung
up in every quarter of England, and having a rich soil, and under the
fostering care of the Government, have flourished with a rank and
luxuriant growth. These societies draw their nouris