deepened into a determination to make their cause mine when the opportunity should offer."
Clear and unmistakable the call had come to Mrs. Booth to enter this field of endeavor and when the warden of Sing Sing wrote urging her to visit the prison she determined to take up the cause of the prisoner as her life work.
On May 24, 1896, the initial meeting was held at Sing Sing and from the thousand or more men in her audience the first members of the Volunteer Prison League were enrolled. So much a part of her life is this work that we may well note, in part, the concise account of the league given in Tighe Hopkins's splendid book entitled. Wards of the State:
"Let us seek to know what is the spirit of this crusade which has stirred so profoundly and affected so powerfully the whole under-world of America. 'From the very first,' says Mrs. Booth, 'I realized that to make the work effectual there must be the establishment of personal friendship, and that it was only as we recognized and helped the individual, that we could by degrees affect the whole population.' Her idea was, to meet the prisoners on the level, to get to know them man by man, to win their confidence, to put them gradually on their mettle, and then, in the end, to engage them to stand up in prison with her badge upon their breasts. There was to be no coddling, no going behind the prison rules. With the definite promise of help on release, the men were to be compelled to work out their own salvation.
"A beginning was made with the chapel services. Mrs. Booth's talk caused a sudden stir in the hearts of her listeners. She said she would correspond with those who had no friends to write to them. Letters poured in upon her. 'The many letters which reached me soon gave us an insight into the thoughts and feelings of the men, and we were then able to become familiar with the names and histories of many of them.' After the letters came interviews in the cells. As men began to take the decisive step, it became evident that organization would be needed to bind them together. The V. P. L., or Volunteer Prison League, was formed; and, to test him to the uttermost, every man who joined it must show his button boldly
