rify. Communities grow accustomed to hangings; they get used
to life sentences and long imprisonments and the severity no longer
serves to awe. The cruelty serves only as a mark of the civilization of
the day. Some day, perhaps, a wiser and more humane world will marvel at
our cruelty and ignorance, as we now marvel at the barbarity of the
past.

XXI

THE EFFECT OF PUNISHMENT ON OTHERS

The ordinary man who hears of a crime hates the criminal and wants him
to suffer. He does not picture the malefactor as a man who, for some
all-sufficient reason, has committed a dreadful act. Still less does he
ask: "Has he a father or mother, a wife or children, brothers or
sisters, and how are these affected by his deed?" No one can
intelligently deal with the criminal without considering these.
Practically no inmate of a prison stands alone. He is a member of a
family or small social group, and inevitably the interests of these
others are more or less closely bound up with his. If punishment is
justified for its influence on society, these must be taken into account
with the other members of the social organization.

The criminal, it must be remembered, is almost always poor. He has a
mother, brothers and sisters, wife or children, dependent for support to
a large extent, upon his casual earnings. He is placed in jail or the
penitentiary and the family must make new adjustments to life. The
mother or wife may go to work at hard labor for a small return; the
children may be taken out of school and sent to stores or factories, be
condemned to lives of drudgery that will often lead to crime. The family
may be broken up and scattered through institutions and the poorest
shelters. A complete transformation for the worse almost always comes
over the home. It is safe to say that at least three or four are closely
touched by the misfortune of every one. These lives must be readjusted,
and the chances are that the new adjustments will not be equal to the
old, if for nothing else than because the conviction is a serious
handicap in their struggles. Let anyone go to a city jail on a visiting
day and see the old mothers, the stunned and weeping wives, the little
children, down to babes in arms, who crowd around the corridors to get a
look at the man behind the bars. To them at least he is a human being
with feelings and affections, with wants and needs. All of these can
recount his many good qualities which the world cannot see or kn