and him who is forced to work, clad in the habiliments of disgrace! He
who penned these lines has had to toil as a convict in the coal mines
of the Kansas penitentiary, eight hundred feet below the surface, lying
stretched out on his side, and he knows what he is talking about when
he says, he would rather die and be laid away in his grave than to spend
five years as a convict.

Young man, think of these things when you are tempted to do those things
that will send you to a felon's cell. Of course, it is no intention
of yours ever to become an inmate of a prison. Permit one who has had
experience, to tell you that it is one of the easiest things in the
world to get into a prison, and that when once in, it is difficult to
secure your liberty, until Time turns the bolt and lets you out, or in
other words, until you serve out your term. May you never yield to a
temptation that will make you a prisoner.

CHAPTER XVI. THE MISSOURI PRISONERS

The Missouri penitentiary contains 1,894 convicts. This is the most
populous penal institution in the United States. Crime is on the
increase. The number of prisoners is gradually becoming larger.
Reformation is not the success that it should be. A great many of the
prisoners return a second, third and many the fourth time. There is one
old convict now an inmate who has served nine different terms in this
prison. The highest number that was ever at any prior time in this
penitentiary, was reached on Thanksgiving Day of 1889. In 1836,
fifty-four years ago, when this prison was founded, there were eighteen
prisoners received the first day. During the year one received a pardon,
leaving at the close seventeen prisoners. At the close of 1889 there
were nineteen hundred inmates. As the population of Missouri increases,
she is generous enough to contribute her quota to the felon cells within
her borders. The increase of from seventeen at the close of the first
year to that of nineteen hundred at the close of the last year, speaks
volumes. What can be done to lessen this fearful increase of crime? It
is true that the population of the State has increased amazingly since
1836, but crime has increased too rapidly in proportion to the increase
of population.

When a man, accused of crime, is convicted and sentenced in any of the
courts of the State, a commitment is furnished the sheriff, by the
clerk of the court. This document is a writing, giving the name of the
prisoner, the crime of w