CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 
ON 
THE ELMIRA SYSTEM [American Social Science Association. September, 1894.] 
PAPERS OF THE JURISPRUDENCE DEPARTMENT. 
THE ELMIRA SYSTEM. 
BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 
[Read Thursday, September 6, 1894.] 
There are certain influences and conditions which go to make 
what we call progress in this world - that is, a better state of the 
human race - which are of universal application. They apply to 
men in the mass; and under them society moves forward, creating 
from age to age an improved social state. Inventions and the 
discovery of new applications of the laws and forces of nature con- 
tribute largely to this result. But, of all the forces that have been 
slowly transforming the world since the beginning of our era,- a 
brief era in comparison with civilizations before it,- the most im- 
portant incomparably is Christianity. Its insistence upon the 
brotherhood of man, its recognition of the value, the duties, and 
the responsibility of the human soul, its clear statement of the 
relations between man and his Creator, are the principles upon 
which the whole of modern life rests, wherever modern life has 
improved its social, moral, and material conditions. Those States 
have most prospered in well-being where the spirit of Christianity 
has had the freest and most intelligent recognition. There we 
look for, and there we find, without any exception, the finest 
fruits of what we call civilization. This spirit is the underlying 
motive of modern life. 
And yet neither the prevalence of this spirit, nor the forces 
which we reckon as causes and signs of our progress, can be said 
to have extinguished the evils which existed before they came into 
play. We see their effect in a general transformation ; but in our 
progress there are details of misery which are alarmingly out of 
keeping with our boasted advance. Poverty assumes a more 
hideous aspect, perhaps in contrast with our materialistic achieve- 
ments ; and crime increases, or seems to increase, perhaps in con- 
trast with our general enlightenment. Is the fault with Christian- 
ity or with science ? or is it in our failure to apply the principles of AMERICAN SOCIAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION 
2 
either to men as individual beings, in the problems that perplex 
and discourage us ? 
One of these problems is the treatment of criminals. In this 
paper I propose to consider it alone, with little reference to the 
causes that produce criminals. I am perfectly well aware that in 
our social evolution this subject is not isolated. The problem of 
crime is complicated with the quality of education, with labor and 
wages, with wealth and production, with hygiene, with poverty, 
with economic legislation. To some emphasis is laid upon the 
study of heredity and psycho-physical pre-possession, and with 
them it is mainly a question of the management of children. With 
others poverty and intemperance are the chief factors of crime. 
Inquisition in all these directions throws light upon the best 
methods of lessening crime and of dealing with the criminal. It 
does not need to be insisted on that all forms of social evolution 
are interdependent, and that in moving forward society cannot 
afford to have any weak places in its line. But, for the moment, 
I wish to direct your attention solely to the criminal as a more or 
less finished product, when his own conduct authorizes society to 
lay its hands on him for its own protection. We need not en- 
tangle ourselves with any theories as to the right of society to 
compel an individual into any certain line of conduct, as, for in- 
stance, to coerce him to be good. We deduce the right of society 
to coerce him to be law-abiding from its indisputed right to protect 
itself. I shall consider this problem wholly as an educational 
one, meaning, by education, discipline, development, training. 
And, in asking you to examine the Elmira system, I am asking you 
to consider a system under which, for the first time in history, the 
criminal shall be subjected to strictly scientific treatment, and 
where science does not come into conflict with humanitarianism 
or religion. 
There would be no breaking the law, which is called crime, if 
men were in a normal condition ; that is, if the body were sound, 
the intellect clear enough to discriminate between what is legal 
and what is illegal, and the moral sense and the will-power strong 
enough to enforce this discrimination. Men commit sin easily, 
and some will say naturally; but, in civilization, society is so ar- 
ranged, so powerful are the checks of tradition, example, and pub- 
lic opinion, that the commission of crime, at first, requires an ef- 
fort. In such a community as ours the general habit is to keep 
the law, as it is to tell the truth. The criminal and the liar are THE ELMIRA SYSTEM CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 
3 
exceptions. A man who is starving is not in a normal condition ; 
and, if he breaks the law by stealing a loaf of bread, we do not, 
in reason, reckon him as guilty as the idle vagabond who never 
works and habitually steals his food. We. make distinctions. 
Going further, we recognize the fact that men commit crimes 
under peculiar temptations, and only occasionally, that they have 
not got into the fixed habit of breaking the law. These are the 
occasional criminals. There are others who live only by break- 
ing the law, who have a fixed habit of criminal and dishonorable 
life. These are habitual and professional criminals. Some have 
the fixed criminal habit before their first arrest for violation of the 
law. They have fixed their own status, before we can apply our 
very loose and unsatisfactory definition of the professional crimi- 
nal as one who had been twice or three times convicted. Thus 
there are plenty of first offenders who imperatively need the disci- 
pline of recidivists. 
Treating men in the mass, the law does not much discriminate. 
It deals with crime, and not with individuals, under our present un- 
enlightened view of criminal law. It is what the politicians would 
call a sort of horizontal tariff on crime. The judge has some dis- 
cretion as to the length of sentence, but little or none as to the 
psychological, physiological, or moral condition of the individual 
criminal. Everybody knows that, of two men convicted of the 
same crime, one should have a very different treatment from the 
other. But this is practically impossible under our unscientific 
and barbarian notion that the criminal law is for the punishment 
of the law-breaker, and not simply for his reformation and for the 
protection of society. 
Take the protection of society first. What is protection for it? 
Nothing is real protection except permanent relief from the at- 
tacks on its lives and its property. If a man is in the habit of 
burning houses, is there any protection from him except locking 
him up where he cannot apply the torch ? If a man's business is 
to enter your house in the night and steal the silver, and to pro- 
tect himself from discovery by murdering its occupants; or if his 
occupation is to steal your horses, to forge your checks, to coun- 
terfeit your coin, to swindle tradespeople and hotels, - in a word, 
to live by breaking every moral and statute law, and incidentally 
to create dens of thieving and lechery in every city and town,- can 
society protect itself against such a marauder except by locking 
him up where he will be harmless? I do not mean locking him 4 
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up for a brief time, and then letting him loose, unchanged in habit 
and intention, to prosecute his warfare on society. There never 
was such folly as this. It is our recognized process of creating 
and solidifying our criminal class, and one may say of licensing 
crime by putting a sort of tax on it. The criminal pays his pen- 
alty of imprisonment, and then goes on with his business. And 
his business is incorporated into our general system of living. 
There is nothing else so astonishing in our civilization, nothing 
that fifty years from now will seem so absurd, as our present 
treatment of criminals. We separate from general society the per- 
son with small-pox and the lunatic until they are cured. We do 
this for the protection of society, and for their own benefit. Our 
treatment of the criminal is as unjust to him as it is to society, for 
it gives him almost no chance of being reformed. Our method is 
not only immoral and unchristian: it is - and this consideration 
will appeal to the voting majority when they understand it - 
the most expensive we could adopt. A large proportion of our 
taxes for the support of police, detectives, sheriffs' offices, lock- 
ups, and jails of detention and criminal courts, which incur the 
enormous expense of trying over and over again and sentencing 
the same people, are required simply on account of the criminal 
class, who are a constant terror to us, who are known to have de- 
clared war against society, and for watching whom we pay enor- 
mous sums. The actual damage these law-breakers do is only a 
small part of their cost to society. How little, for instance, is the 
plunder got by a gang of bank robbers compared to the sum paid 
for watching them when they are off duty, for their apprehension, 
trials, and periodic imprisonments I And we do this on the unten- 
able theory that we cannot interfere with a man's personal liberty. 
Society is constituted on its right to interfere with a man's liberty 
to do wrong to his neighbor. There is no liberty to commit crime. 
The habitual criminal has forfeited all right to liberty, he has 
■certainly forfeited the right to protection in his criminal life, and 
every law-breaker has for the time forfeited his right to liberty. 
The statement of these propositions seems to me to need no 
further argument. Remember, I am speaking of the convicted 
criminal. What shall be done with him ? I say without hesita- 
tion, and I say it quite as much for his benefit as for the security 
of society, that he should be shut up for an indefinite time, until 
the day comes when the criminal habit is weaker in him than the 
law-abiding habit. Would not this be a hardship,- a hardship, THE ELMIRA SYSTEM - CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 
5 
say, in the first conviction for a felony ? I think not. It is the 
most merciful thing that can be done with him. It takes him out of 
the line of the established process by which we manufacture hard- 
ened criminals. It gives him a chance to become a decent, law- 
abiding citizen. There is a stigma put upon him by the convic- 
tion. That is true and pitiful. But it is no worse, if he is sen- 
tenced indefinitely, and put under reformatory conditions, than if 
he is shoved into the criminal class on a short term. If he is an 
accidental criminal, and not yet in the criminal habit, he will work 
his way back to liberty in a comparatively short time. If he is 
confirmed in the criminal habit, it will take him longer to do so. 
The only possible test as to which class he belongs to is not a 
first or a second or a third conviction, but a trial of him in con- 
ditions favorable to his reform. Society meantime is protected 
from him in his abnormal state. And there is another considera- 
tion which is a strong argument for the indefinite sentence of 
every person convicted of a felony. Our prisons now are too 
little deterrent to the criminally inclined. Such persons look upon 
prisons as incidents possibly to be endured in their career. Noth- 
ing would more certainly deter a person from beginning a life of 
crime than the knowledge that to begin it was likely to end his 
proposed career, that he was not entering an avenue of adventure, 
but that he was marching straight into a confinement limited only 
by his reformation. The corollary of this, of course, is that every 
penitentiary must be a reformatory. 
The distinction of the Elmira system is in the discovery and 
application of the value of the law of habit in the reforma- 
tion of criminals. It is the law recognized in every educa- 
tional process,-in physical training, in the development of 
the minds of idiots, in the drill of soldiers, in the education of the 
deaf and dumb and the blind, in every school from the kinder- 
garten to the university. Physiology gives this account of it. 
The phenomena of habit in living beings, says Mr. William 
James, are due to the plasticity - weak enough to yield to an 
influence, but strong enough not to yield all at once - of the organic 
materials of which their bodies are composed. 
The brain matter is plastic. It is affected by the blood or 
through the sensory nerve roots. The nervous currents leave their 
traces in the paths they take. Any subsequent currents move in 
the line of the least resistance ; that is, in the paths made by the 
former currents. 6 
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Naturally, a more permanent impression is made on the growing 
organism than on the adult. 
Any sequence of mental habit or repetition tends to perpetuate 
itself. We are automatically prompted to think, feel, and do what 
we have been accustomed to think, feel, and do under like circum- 
stances, without any consciously formed purpose or anticipation 
of results. 
Every state of ideational consciousness which is either very 
strong or habitually repeated leaves an organic impression on the 
cerebrum, in virtue of which that same state may be repeated at a 
future time, in respondence to a suggestion fitted to excite it. 
Our nervous system grows to the modes in which it has been 
exercised. We all know how much our life is simplified by the 
automatization of our members. A spinal cord without memory 
would simply be an idiotic spinal cord, says Dr. Maudsley. 
The ethical implications of this law of habit are evident. 
Habit is second nature. It is two times nature, the Duke of 
Wellington said. 
If we can apply this law to the treatment of criminals, it is evi- 
dent that reform is not simply a cessation of criminal conduct: 
it involves a structural change. Nature will not have a vacuum. 
It is not enough to stop a bad habit: you must put a good one in 
its place. The solitary system was foredoomed to failure. It 
was never reasonable to suppose that the criminal simply in com- 
munion with himself could become better. His vicious mind 
works upon itself, in want of any other object. He is, in his de- 
pravity and ignorance, an exceedingly bad companion for himself. 
In nine cases out of ten - the exceptions are very rare in which a 
vicious mind, unassisted by external influences, can by reflection 
better itself - the man sinks into a sort of mental paralysis, or 
thinks and contrives himself into further depths of depravity. 
The congregate system, generally substituted for the solitary, is 
more humane and has more elements of vitality; but it made the 
mistake of supposing that putting a crowd of vicious persons in 
touch with each other, overlooked by keepers whose sole object 
was to keep them in decent order, would work any beneficial 
change in them. The congregate system, without classification 
and without the application of discipline to individuals for their 
educational development and the creation of new habits of life, 
was also bound to be the failure we see it is. 
The Elmira system rests upon two simple propositions. The THE ELMIRA SYSTEM CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 
7 
first is that the object of imprisonment is not punishment, but the 
protection of society and the change of the criminal into a law- 
abiding citizen. 
The second is that it is possible to change and create habits by 
coercive measures long enough applied to produce what physiolo- 
gists call structural changes, physical and mental. 
For the protection of society the imprisonment must be co- 
extensive with the criminal intention of the imprisoned. The 
term must necessarily vary with each individual case. 
The formation of good habits in men whose systems are wholly 
warped into bad habits, and obstinately reluctant to change, can 
only be accomplished by coercion, which means simply behind all 
other means a physical force competent to compel obedience and 
enforce discipline. All law rests ultimately upon this force. Its 
use in the penitentiary should be not for punishment, not in ven- 
geance, but for discipline, as it is or should be in the enforcement 
of parental authority in the family. 
The Elmira system, therefore, contemplates a penitentiary of 
compulsory education. It differs from other institutions not in its 
educational theories, but in its feature of compulsion, rendered 
necessary by the material it has to deal with. Its pupils are all 
in an abnormal condition. Some of them yield obedience more 
readily than others; but there are a few - just as there are a few 
children - whose natures cannot be aroused to any effort for bet- 
ter habits except by the infliction of corporal pain. This is a 
brutal fact about a great many brutal people in this world, and 
some of them are found in the penitentiaries. 
The discipline in the Elmira system necessarily divides itself 
into three branches, because its subjects are physically, intellectu- 
ally, and morally warped. 
The first is physical development. This involves good sanitary 
arrangements, wholesome food, the training of the body by gym- 
nastic or military drill, by massage and Turkish baths in the case 
of the weak and diseased, and regular labor in the workshop,- 
labor fitted to the constitution of the subject. The workshop has, 
however, other uses than mere physical training. It is an intel- 
lectual stimulus, by arousing and fixing the attention, and by occu- 
pying the mind with other thoughts than its own vicious circle of 
reflection. It has the moral virtue of teaching application and pa- 
tience. Incidentally also, in the varied occupations that must be 
engaged in in order to the best development of the individual 8 
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pupils, it teaches a trade or a profession, by which the criminal 
after discharge can gain an honest living. The penitentiary is, 
therefore, an industrial school. 
The second is intellectual development. This is accomplished 
in the school-room by studies and lessons according to the capacity 
of the pupil. The disciplinary use of this is the invigoration of 
the mind and the consequent strengthening of the will-power, and 
the driving out from the mind of low and sordid ideas, and replac- 
ing them with others of a totally different stamp. In the case of 
criminals who are already well educated the school-room is still a 
necessary part of the discipline for all, and of the test of fitness 
for liberty. The notion that further to educate a criminal is only 
to increase his power of villany is not worth serious consideration. 
We might as well abandon our whole theory of intellectual educa- 
tion, for we may now be training rascals in our universities. 
The third is moral development. This is attempted by the en- 
forcement of certain minute rules of conduct and behavior, em- 
bracing particulars of dress, neatness, and bearing, exceedingly 
irksome to those who have never in their lives submitted them- 
selves to any sort of obedience or order. This discipline has a 
distinct moral value, and tends to create a standard of conduct 
and an esprit de corps of manliness in the institution. It must of 
course be accompanied by a spirit of guidance and helpfulness, by 
insistence upon the preference of a moral to an immoral life, by 
nursing the power of discriminating between right and wrong, and 
by such religious help as can be given without sectarian bias. 
There is an analogy in this threefold discipline, which affects 
the entire man, to that of West Point. The difference here, again, 
is in the material to work on, and in the fact that the inept cannot 
be "dropped" in the penitentiary as they are at West Point. 
When we turn from the Elmira System - which, I think, we all 
agree is a convenient name for the method I have been outlining, 
and which the world will very likely call the Brockway system - 
to the Reformatory at Elmira, we find the most interesting, the 
most scientific, and the most hopeful treatment of the convicted 
criminals that has ever anywhere been tried. It conforms to sound 
theories, and its results have been good beyond all expectations. 
It was not, however, built upon a theory. Its inception was due 
to the genius and experience of Mr. Z. R. Brockway, who had had 
a long practical training in prison management in Albany and 
Detroit, and was profoundly acquainted with the nature of the THE ELMIRA SYSTEM CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 
9 
law-breaking class. I used the word "genius " advisedly, because 
it requires sane genius to apply known physical and moral laws to 
practical affairs. It is true that it was begun as an experiment, in 
the face of scepticism that always attends a new departure, and 
in opposition to prejudices that still cling to the old traditions of 
prison life and the radically false ideas about punishment and 
reformation. It has had a gradual and healthy growth for eighteen 
years, a development step by step, always on the original lines of 
what we now call the Elmira system, until it has attained its pres- 
ent magnificent proportions, and is to-day the most interesting 
educational institution in the world. There are being worked out 
many of the profoundest problems of sociology which claim the at- 
tention of scientific investigators. If I were asked by a foreigner 
to say what has been the most important contribution of the United 
States in this century to dealing with the abnormal excrescences 
of our civilization, I should point to the Elmira Reformatory. I 
fear that we scarcely begin to realize the value of this pioneer in- 
stitution. 
It is not possible within the limits of this paper to describe 
in any detail this Reformatory. Nor is it necessary. Its whole 
organization and management have been repeatedly set forth by 
experts and in popular publications. Its history and internal 
economy have been always open to the world. There has never 
been any concealment about it, nor anything covered up in it. 
Officials, whose duty it is to examine it, and students of penology 
and visitors interested in the subject, have had free access to 
study all the workings of the system there administered. There 
has been no concealment from any proper person of all the means 
and methods of enforcing discipline. Every act of this sort has 
been carefully recorded, and duly reported to the State. Every 
year the managers have issued a full and elaborate report, so that 
the internal history of the reformatory is better known, to all who 
care to read, than that of any other penal establishment in the 
country. 
I will give a brief outline of the Reformatory for the benefit of 
those whose attention has never been called to it. Those sent 
there must be between the ages of sixteen and thirty, and on the 
first conviction of a felony. They may be detained there for the 
full term for which they could have been sentenced to a State 
prison. They may be released in one year. The inmates are di- 
vided into three grades, each having distinctions of lodgings, 10 
AMERICAN SOCIAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION 
dress, food, and privileges. The new comer is put into the sec- 
ond grade. He is carefully examined as to his qualities, physical, 
intellectual, and moral, and is then assigned to the labor for which 
he is best adapted, and to the school fitted to his acquirements, 
and is instructed in the rules of conduct. At that moment his 
threefold training, physical, mental, and moral, begins. He is 
strictly marked for performance in the school, in the shop, and in 
conduct; and, if he falls below the standard, he is degraded to the 
third rank. If he maintains the standard six months, he is pro- 
moted to the first grade; and, if he maintains it there for six 
months, he is a candidate for liberty on parole. This is granted 
by the board of trustees on an examination of him and his record, 
and only when a proper situation is found for him. There must 
be a satisfactory report monthly of his conduct for six months, 
upon which he is given unconditional liberty. If his conduct is 
not satisfactory at any time in the six months' probation, he can 
be recalled to the reformatory. This hope of liberty presents the 
strongest possible inducement to personal improvement. It would 
be in most cases sufficient if the sentence were strictly indetermi- 
nate. But, besides this, the whole atmosphere of the reformatory 
is hopeful, calculated to eradicate bad habits and form good 
habits, and stimulating to self-respect and manliness. To the 
most casual visitor the physical alertness and the hopeful mental 
attitude of the inmates are in strong contrast to conditions found 
in other prisons. Mind and body are kept wholesomely occupied, 
and little by little the new life has its effect upon the most intract- 
able material. If an inmate is wholly obdurate and will not sub- 
mit to the discipline, there is the physical force in reserve ; and in 
nine cases out of ten a judicious application of the strap, the in- 
fliction of physical pain, has a most quickening effect upon the 
mental and moral processes. I regard this reserve of physical 
pain as an essential part of the Elmira system. If an inmate 
proves finally incorrigible, he can be transferred to a State prison. 
There has lately been added to the discipline of the Reformatory 
a complete system of military drill. This has not only the most 
salutary effect, but proves an invaluable intellectual stimulus and 
a great aid to order and correct deportment. If any discipline of 
this sort is useful in an institution where the inmates are normal, 
it is still more useful where they are abnormal. The Reformatory, 
besides assuring to every inmate an elementary school education, 
instructs in thirty-two trades. The graduate, therefore, has an THE ELMIRA SYSTEM CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 
11 
occupation by which he can earn his living, a modicum of intelli- 
gence to distinguish right from wrong, and fixed habits of conduct 
likely to make him law-abiding. 
The result of the comprehensive and philosophical treatment 
in this institution is that over eighty per cent, of the inmates be- 
come law-abiding citizens; that is, over eighty per cent, have 
behaved well after leaving the Reformatory, while under observa- 
tion, which is usually for a year, and when they have passed out 
of sight have not come into notice again as criminals. This 
astonishing proportion of men whose life has been changed would 
doubtless be increased under indeterminate sentences. 
This has been the uniform record of the Reformatory ever since 
it was got into good working order. It has been annually indorsed 
and commended by the New York State Board of Charities, whose 
duty it was to make a searching examination of its methods and 
administration. It has been approved by scientific penologists 
and by all the intelligent students of the principle upon which it is 
conducted. I cannot say that it has been approved by the crimi- 
nals whom it has failed to reform, nor by all the sentimentalists 
who have set up as reformers. 
As an experiment, it has been badly handicapped by the lack of 
the indeterminate sentence, which is an essential of the Elmira 
system. Also it has, owing to the failure of the New York legis- 
lature to provide the other reformatories authorized by law, been 
put to too severe a strain. It is overcrowded, having by several 
hundreds more inmates than one administration should be required 
to handle. It is possible also that the best administration of the 
Elmira system would be in a series of prison-schools, each of 
which should contain only one grade. This is only a suggestion. 
I can see strong practical objections against it, in the necessity of 
quick and frequent transfers from grade to grade, up and down, 
under one system of discipline, and the stimulus to the inmates of 
the sight of those who are favored, in consequence of good con- 
duct, and the warning in sight of those whose bad conduct puts 
them in disgrace. 
But when all allowances are made, and quite aside from any 
personal quality or consideration, it must be said that, if for any 
reason the work of the Elmira Reformatory were now to be 
defeated, enough has been done to demonstrate the unique and 
practical value of the Elmira system. 
The Elmira Reformatory, after running for many years as the 12 
AMERICAN SOCIAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION 
most interesting object-lesson in penology and with the increasing 
approval of experts and of the general public, has lately been 
attacked. This attack is due to three causes: - 
1. The hunger to make money and notoriety by exploiting a 
sensation. 
2. The determination to bring the Reformatory into the control 
of the political machine, that it may be used as the State peniten- 
tiaries are used,- to give places and profits to partisan workers. 
3. The sentimentalists, who are the most discouraging element 
in any robust, vital reformatory work. 
As to the first two no comment is necessary. The motives are 
naked, and do not need any elucidation. 
The sentimentalists generally are actuated by good motives. 
They desire to reform the wicked and make the world better. 
They are simply misled by excess of emotion and by ignorance of 
the fundamental bases of both religion and science. They fancy 
that there is a way of coaxing men to be good without discipline, 
of changing the habits of the bad without continual coercive press- 
ure. They have a disease which is common in this country, and 
which may be scientifically described as moral-mushiness,- speak- 
ing pathologically, a fatty degeneration of the heart. They are 
generally approved by the criminal class, who want to be well 
treated, but do not want to change their habits. They have no 
conception that the true and divine altruism lies only in the en- 
forcement of law and in the discipline of the human race. They 
are encouragers of lawlessness. They are the apologists and 
the intercessors for anarchists. For over thirty years in this 
country, from ten thousand pulpits and platforms, they have been 
preaching the gospel of moral-mush. They have incited discon- 
tent, they have stirred up hostile feelings between classes, they 
have talked always of rights, rights, rights, and very little of 
duties, they have taught that, whoever has a hardship, somebody 
else is responsible for it. Whether it is a crime or drunkenness 
or poverty or laziness, somebody is responsible, either society or 
some rich man,- a rich man who in nine cases out of ten in this 
country has worked his way by industry and thrift and ability up 
to a competence for himself and the many dependent on him. 
We see the results of this preaching and haranguing in this coun- 
try to-day in the chaos of thought on ethical questions, in the fre- 
quent failure of popular suffrage to select either honest or capable 
men for rulers, in the great following of demagogues, and in the THE ELMIRA SYSTEM - CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 
13 
frequent spasmodic efforts of the honest people to get control of 
their own affairs. Perhaps these sentimentalists thought all along 
they were preaching the gospel of love. They have been preach- 
ing the gospel of disorder. 
In the field of penology and of charities the work of the sen- 
timentalists has been as disastrous as elsewhere. They have 
doubtless initiated many noble charities, but they have rendered 
many of them ineffective by their sentimentalism. Nowhere have 
their efforts been more misdirected than in their dealings with con- 
victed criminals. Even the public has come into a habit of speak- 
ing ironically of the Model Prison. 
The point selected for the attack on the reformatory is alleged 
cruelty in the infliction of corporal punishment; but there is a 
wider attempt to discredit the institution with the public and to 
take its administration away from the general managers, on the 
ground that it is a place of arbitrary, tyrannical, and excessive dis- 
cipline. The use of corporal punishment, when all other means 
failed, has never been concealed. As to specific instances of 
cruelty, I have seen no testimony yet, worthy of credence, con- 
sidering its source, which would not probably have a different 
aspect under a full- statement of the facts. Much of it has been 
shown to be manufactured. It is not difficult to obtain this sort 
of testimony from the inmates of prisons and reformatories. But 
I wish to say that, if investigation shall show that there have been 
excessive castigations and sudden blows, which no just person 
could defend, my confidence will not be shaken in the Elmira 
system, including its necessary use of force, nor in the Elmira Re- 
formatory, nor in the fitness of Mr. Brockway to be at the head 
of it. He is human, he is liable to err; and, in view of his great 
purpose and his long tried character, I could forgive him - though 
I do not expect it will ever be necessary - a passionate moment. 
He is not by nature cruel, he is not brutal. On the contrary, he is 
eminently humane, and has a most sympathetic spirit; and he has 
the invaluable quality of arousing in others an enthusiasm for a 
better life. His ruling purpose, his anxiety day and night, is to 
benefit every criminal put into his charge and make him a law- 
abiding citizen. 
I ask you for a moment to consider the purpose of the Elmira 
institution and the material it has to deal with. The purpose is a 
radical change in the thoughts, habits, and direction of men's lives. 
It is this more than anything else that makes it hateful to the AMERICAN SOCIAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION 
14 
average criminal. It is not because he has passively to endure 
something, loss of liberty and severe regimen, but that he has to 
make an active effort to change all his habits. He expects occa- 
sional punishment in his career. What his whole nature revolts 
against is being reformed. He has never come in contact with 
any authority, any serious interference with the lawless habits of 
body and mind. Naturally, he rebels at taking an active campaign 
against himself. He rebels, and is much less tractable to ordinary 
discipline than the experienced occupant of a penitentiary, whose 
personal habits are not much interfered with, who accepts the jail 
routine, and who may be a model of good conduct in the hope of 
shortening his term of confinement and getting back to his life 
of adventure. The Elmira inmate has a much more difficult task. 
As I said, it is not to endure punishment, but to work out a refor- 
mation. Besides, with fiery and uncontrolled impulses, he has a 
feeble will. When he sees the right way, it is very difficult to keep 
in it. Some natures, when they stray, can be kept in this way, or 
repeatedly helped into it, by long-suffering kindness; others, only 
by severity. They have to learn that to spoil the rod is to spare 
the child. 
Again, as to material, the inmates are sent there on a first con- 
viction of a felony. It may not be the first offence : in the majority 
of cases, they are of depraved habits. It is the first conviction for 
a felony or crime of high grade, though it may have been pre- 
ceded by many convictions and imprisonments for misdemeanor. 
Yes, criminals between the ages of sixteen and thirty are more 
easily influenced than older criminals; but they are in the full 
vigor of passion, of wilfulness, of the impulses of self-indulgence. 
They have not learned the submission that hardened criminals 
have learned. To merely control a thousand or fifteen hundred 
lusty, vicious men at this age is not easy work. To change their 
habits is a gigantic task. When I see what has been done at 
Elmira, I am lost in wonder. 
If I had space, I should like to speak of the wider application 
of the Elmira system. It should be extended to all penitentiaries. 
It is so scientific, so economical, and so humane that I have no 
doubt it will be, when the public understands it. The idea is 
embraced in one phrase,- the indeterminate sentence of all felons 
with a view to their reformation. But the carrying out of it will 
require radical changes in administration. The head of an educa- 
tional institution of this sort must be a man of high character. THE ELMIRA SYSTEM CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 
15 
There is no other place where character will be more influential. 
He must be an educated man, a man of executive ability and 
capable of enforcing discipline. His subordinates must be like 
him in degree. They must be pervaded with the spirit of the 
system. To reform diseased bodies and crooked minds is the 
work of experts, it is scientific work. Such an institution as I 
have in mind, and as Elmira is, affords an opportunity for the ex- 
ercise of the highest talent, the best scholarship, the investigation 
by the most interested students of the laws of the human mind 
and body. To rectify the bodies, to develop and train the abnor- 
mal minds,- this is a glorious work. When we go at it seriously, 
we shall begin to deal adequately and intelligently with the refuse 
and slag of our civilization. 
The attack upon the Elmira Reformatory is not altogether to be 
deplored. It is a sign that the work tells. This work has aroused 
the active opposition of the criminal class and of those who pander 
to it. It shows that we are moving in the right direction against 
an entrenched position of the enemy,- the enemy of orderly 
society, of law, of discipline. If we were having no effect, we 
should not be opposed. There is little opposition to the soft-shell 
institutions either of reform or religion. The work will go on, and 
go on all the more vigorously, owing to the clamor and detraction. 
It will rally to it the clear-sighted well-wishers of humanity. The 
fight will be a long one, and mainly an individual one. Our fore- 
fathers looked for an Armageddon, a field whereon the forces of 
good and evil were to meet for a final conflict. There will never 
be an Armageddon. The powers of evil will never risk all on a 
single fight. Nor is it in nature. For the conflict of good and 
evil is in every man's heart. But daily we get a little more light, 
and the area of darkness withdraws. Let us have courage.