Excerpt from Proceedings of the Annual Congress of the National Prison Association of the United States: Held at Saint Paul, Minn., June 16-20, 1894 The National Prison Association was organized nearly a quarter of a century ago, and for a dozen years past its anual meetings have been held in the leading cities of the United States and Canada, and for the last ten years its presiding officer was an ex-president of the United States, and therefore it is fairly presumable that the average American has heard its name, and something of its objects. Still, to the average American, the consideration of crime and criminals is an uncanny subject, and therefore, he is a little shy of those who are interested in it, and his private opinion, I fear, is, that such people are to be avoided rather than commended. Still, in our country, the average American is the final arbiter in all matters of progress or reform, and as a rule his verdict for the right can be relied upon when all the facts are before him, and therefore this Association confronts him with the magnitude of the prison question, and its requirements. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.