He often claims press of business, until
finally some senator or congressman or influential politician calls on
him, and then he gets busy very suddenly....
"When he comes to a parole meeting he begins work generally with a rush
and a flurry.... Usually has about 180 cases; he rushes them at the rate
of 60 to 80 a day, without getting at the merits or giving them serious
deliberation. He brings a stenographer, his private secretary, from
Washington at a heavy expense.... Then, when they return to Washington,
the stenographer writes up the result of the meeting, while LaDow will
take a junketing trip at Government expense ... as a sort of recreation
from his arduous duties."
I had not been long in Atlanta before a guard informed me that LaDow was
the best hated man in the prison, by officials and convicts alike. Nor
did I find any prisoner there, afterward, who did not speak to the same
tune. If he be really an efficient and trustworthy official, this is
singular and unfortunate. Mr. Mackay's charges against him at
Leavenworth are almost identically the same as what may be heard against
him any day in Atlanta. If there be any basis for them, perhaps it would
be expedient for the Government to supersede him. The parole law, at its
best, seems to be rather a weak-kneed and perverse institution, and it
would be a pity to deprive it of what value it may have by committing
its dispensation to the hands of a man not peculiarly fitted by nature
and temperament to carry out its provisions.
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