in a large degree they are engendered by public tastes, habits, and demoralizations. It is in our prisons we can best learn the corrupting influences about us which lead the weak as well as the wicked astray, ay, and sometimes make the strong man fall into disgrace and misery. In these moral hospitals the thoughtful man, the philanthropist, and the statesman, will look for the causes of social danger and demoralization. When we begin at the prison and work up, we find opening before us all the sources of crime, all the problems of social order and disorder, all the great questions with which statesmanship, in dealing with the interests and welfare of a people, must cope when it seeks to lift up high standards of virtue and patriotism. In the most highly-civilized countries the subjects of pauperism and crime secure the most attention and thought. They turn men's minds from selfish to unselfish fields of labor. Those who enter those fields will find in them marks of toil and care by the best human intellects. The grandest minds have worked at their intricate problems. The ambition of the first Napoleon sought to gain immortality in his code of laws as well as in victories on the fields of battle. Much has been done in many of our States to improve prison discipline. Something has been done toward reforming prisoners, but the largest view of the subject, which looks to the moral health of society, and the baleful influences at work in its organization, have not received the attention they deserve. When prisons are visited by men of mind, when prisoners are looked upon with kindly eyes by those who can study their characters and learn from them the virtues, vice, and wickedness which mark our race; when, tracing back the courses of their lives, they shall find the secret sources of their errors and their crimes—then we shall have not only our laws justly enforced and reformed, wrong-doers punished, but, more and better than these, we shall gain a public virtue and intelligence which will secure the safety and happiness of our homes and the glory and stability of the republic. Then wealth gained by unworthy means will no longer be respected. No one can recall the events of the past few years, particularly those of the great commercial centres, without feeling there is an ebb-tide in American morals. Not a little of the glitter of our social and business life is a shining putrescence. Fungus men have shot up into financial prominence to whom a pervading deadening moral malaria is the very breath of life. They could not exist without this any more than certain poisonous plants can flourish without decaying vegetation. While I have tried to present in clear terms the claims of this Association upon the public sympathy and support, it must be understood that we claim for it only the merit of being a useful auxiliary to moral and religious teachings. If those who take part in its work should fall short of its broader and higher objects of a national character, they will at least get this great gain: they will learn to think more humbly of themselves, more kindly of their fellow-men, and to see more clearly the beauties of Christian charity.
