ex-convict, who eighteen years ago completed a seven months' term. He
tells in a simple and pathetic fashion of his efforts to escape from his
prison record, but time and time again, just as he had won the
confidence of his employer, some one happened along who "gave him away,"
and then he was obliged to move and try it again. Never, during all this
time, has he dared to attempt to vote, or take any part in public or
social affairs. Surely a fearful penance for one violation of the law,
especially when we know that thousands of wealthy and influential
lawbreakers are never punished!

If an ex-convict has a family, he returns from prison to find them
impoverished, shunned by their neighbors, his children scorned and
sneered at by their schoolmates--everything worse, more helpless, than
when he left them. All of this, and much more, is escaped by the man
under a suspended sentence; his capital is unimpaired, and by "making
good" his record will be cleared.

That many, perhaps a majority, of criminals can be wholly reformed
without imprisonment, through the means of a suspended maximum sentence,
with little or no expense to the State, I am satisfied beyond a doubt;
and this will be done when we can eliminate from the treatment of
criminals the desire for revenge and look only to the good of the
individual and of society.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3,
July 1908., by Various

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE, JULY 1908 ***

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