I may be asked, ‘What kind of work would you suggest?’ I reply at once, ‘Any kind of interesting work for which a market can be found.’ ‘But you become a competitor in the labour market.’ This cry, I know, would be raised, but it is a very stupid cry. See how the present system works. Numbers of men and women are detained in prison for long periods. During their detention they work at stale, uninteresting tasks, upon which there is no profit; consequently the community has to keep them. When released, numbers of them enter the ‘Arks,’ ‘Elevators,’ or ‘Bridges’ of the Salvation Army, or the labour homes of the Church Army, and proceed to work for nothing, becoming indeed and truth very serious competitors in the labour market, as the wood-cutters and mat-makers will tell you.
I cannot conceive how it can be wrong for a man to earn his own living while in prison. Neither can I conceive the wisdom of allowing to great trading organizations rights and privileges which we would withhold from the State. But I can see the absurdity of keeping a man in prison for years, during those years giving him unremunerative work, and handing him over when released to some society, to continue working for nothing. The cheapness of his labour when at liberty is the danger, not the work he may do in prison. The absurdity is seen to be the greater when we remember that a large proportion of the male prisoners are married, and ought when released to set to work to keep, or, at any rate, try to keep, their families. During their detention society has in many instances been maintaining or assisting those families, and it certainly seems hard that society should have to continue doing so when the husbands are at liberty, but are working for large trading organizations. The place for the married man when discharged from prison is his home; there his battle for social salvation will best be fought, and there it will have to be fought if fought at all. A half-year’s, or even a whole year’s sojourn in a shelter or labour home will not help him, for he has to come out and face the world, and by some means make a beginning. The recommendation of the shelter, or labour home, is by no means superior to the recommendation of prison--in fact, they are of equal value.