The Sad State of McNeil Island

Having been an inmate of the United States penitentiary at McNeil Island, I desire to call the attention of the public to the need of a library there. On an average there are about thirty inmates who are not permitted to work during the winter months and who have much time even in summer which they do not know how to use. When I was there, all the reading matter they had was a copy of Tom Paine's works and some cheap novels. In some respects, the government is not at all stingy in dealing with prisoners there; they are fed rich foods, and even pastries, but the inevitable idleness caused by the fact that the government has not furnished a few books is certainly not conducive to any reform in character. The men who would otherwise read and study now learn to spend their time gambling for plugs of tobacco, and those who might be learning the moral laws of the universe are now, from the lack of opportunity in that direction, learning idleness, plotting crime, and falling into foul ways and language. A few dollars—a very few—would change the United States penitentiary from a school of idleness and excuse into an institution where culture and study of nature's laws would be combined with the just punishment incurred for breaking those laws.