Front matter (continued 3)

At first I found myself the object of universal hostility. The Tombs was a feudal domain of Tammany Hall. I was regarded as an enemy.

The "spoils system" had given place to the evils of civil service. Municipal employees could not be displaced unless "charges" had been proven against them. The people of the Tombs did not worry much about the reform administration. They regarded it as an interruption in the even tenor of their ways, which happily would not last long. They were used to such moral spasms on the part of the electorate and knew how little they were worth. Some of the "Reform" officials tried earnestly to clean up their departments. Their efforts were defeated by unruly subordinates, men trained by and loyal to the machine.

The way things went in the Tombs was typical. Brace had a conference with the new commissioner of correction and as a result some "Instructions for the guidance of prison keepers" were pasted up on the walls. But district attorneys change with every election, while the warden—protected by civil service—goes on forever. The sale of "dope" to the prisoners, forbidden by the "instructions" in capital letters, was not interrupted for a day. Within a week the screws had forgotten to make jokes about it.

Having been appointed by the reformer Brace, I was naturally supposed to be his personal spy. I was saved from falling into so fatal a mistake by a queer old prison missionary called "General Jerry." He had lost an arm at Three Oaks, in the hospital at Andersonville he had found "religion." And as the Lord had visited him in prison, he had devoted what was left of his life to similar work. I think he had no income beyond his pension—he was always shabby. He had very little learning, but an immense amount of homely wisdom. If ever a man has won a right to a starry crown it was Jerry. He and the Father—each in his different way—were the most wholesouled Christians I have ever encountered. Such a noble dignity shone from the eyes of this humble old man that I felt it ever a privilege to sit at his feet and learn of him.

First of all, from watching him, I found that a man who was sincere and honest could win the respect of the Tombs, in spite of such handicaps. Before long we became friends, and he gave me much shrewd advice.

"I come here to save souls," he said. "That's all I come for. I don't let nothin' else interest me. I ain't no district attorney. Sure, I see graft. Can't help it. Every year—onct—I talk to each one of the screws about his soul. 'Big Jim,' I says, 'you ain't right wid God. I ain't the only one as seed you take money from the mother of that dago what was hanged. I ain't the only one as heard you lie to that Jew woman, telling her how you'd help her husband out. I ain't the only one as knows the hotel you took her to. God sees! God hears! He knows! You'd better square it wid Him!' That's all I says. They knows I don't go round tellin' it. And they helps me wid my work. Just yesterday Big Jim comes to me. 'General,' he says, 'there's a guy up in 431 what's crying. I guess you'd better hand him a bit of Gospel.'

"What do you come down here to the Tombs for? To help out the poor guys what they've got wrong. Well. Don't do nothin' else. The screws all think you're gum-shoein' for Brace. 'Jerry,' they says to me, 'who's the new guy? What's he nosin' around here for?' 'Don't know,' I says. 'Better keep your eye on him—same as I'm doin',' I says. 'After a while we'll know.'"

I felt their eyes on me all the time. A couple of months later I sat down beside Jerry in the courtyard; he had a Bible on his knees and a cheese sandwich in his hand.

"I ain't no good sayin' Grace," he explained, "so I always reads a Psalm when I eat," .... "Say, young man," he went on, "I got a word to say to you. The screws ain't got you quite sized up yet—but most of 'em agrees you ain't nobody's damn fool. Now I just want to tell you something. You take this here Tombs all together—warden, screws, cops and lawyers, district attorneys and jedges—you can't never be friends wid all of 'em. They's too many what's hatin' each other. So you got to pick. You say you're going to stay by this job. Well, you just better figure out who's goin' to stick wid you. The jedges stay and the screws stay. But the district attorneys don't never stay more'n two years. Figure it out. That's what the good book means by 'Be ye wise as sarpents.'"

Jerry's advice was good. I had already "figured out" that the favor of the judges was more important for me than that of the district attorney. I had to choose whom I would serve, and it was very evident that it was expedient—if I wished to accomplish anything—to make friends with the mammon of political unrighteousness. The reformers were not only pitifully weak, few of them commanded confidence. They had not been in office six weeks before it was evident that their reëlection was impossible. The best of them were rank amateurs in the business of politics and government. Much of their disaster was due no doubt to well intentioned ignorance. But very few of them stuck to the ship when it began to sink. It would furnish some sombre amusement to publish the figure about how many loud-mouthed reformers went into office again two years later—under the machine banner.

Brace, my chief, as soon as he discovered that the walls of Tammany would not fall down at the sound of newspaper trumpets, lost heart. He had no further interest except to keep himself in the lime-light. Just like all his predecessors, he neglected the routine work of his office and gave all his attention to sensational trials which added to his newspaper notoriety.

One of the big scandals of the preceding administration, which as much as anything else had stirred public indignation against ring politics, had centered about a man named Bateson. He called himself a "contractor" and got most of the work in grading the city streets. There was conclusive evidence to show that almost all the work he did was along the routes of the street car lines. The scandal had been discovered and worked up by one of the newspapers in a most exhaustive manner. The facts were clear. The engineer of the street car company would report to his superiors that such and such a street was too steep for the profitable operation of their cars. One of the directors would call in Bateson. Bateson would take up the matter with the mysterious powers on Fourteenth Street, the aldermen would vote an appropriation to grade the street; Bateson would get the contract and after being well paid by the city would get a tangible expression of appreciation from the street car company. The newspapers had already collected the evidence. The fraud was patent. Everyone expected Brace to call Bateson to trial at once. And it seemed inevitable that from the evidence given in this case, indictments could be drawn against both the "Old Man" on Fourteenth Street and the bribe giving directors of the street car company.

Brace began on this case with a great flourish of trumpets. But one adjournment after another was granted by the Tammany judges. It trailed along for months. And when at last it was called, the bottom had, in some mysterious manner, dropped out of the prosecution. Bateson was acquitted. A few months later Brace resigned and became counsel for the notorious traction reorganization. Some recent magazine articles have exposed the kind of reform he stood for.

"Politics" has always seemed to me a very sorry sort of business. I found plenty of non-partisan misery to occupy all my time. Gradually I fitted myself into the life of the Tombs and became a fixture. When the new elections brought Tammany back to power, "civil service" protected me from the grafters, just as it had protected them from their enemies. And so—in that ill-smelling place—I have passed my life.

To one who is unfamiliar with our juggernaut of justice it is surprising to find how much work there is which a person in my position can do, how many victims can be pulled from under the merciless wheels. First of all there are the poor, who have no money to employ an able lawyer, no means to secure the evidence of their innocence. Then there are the "greenhorn" immigrants who do not know the language and laws of this new country, who do not know enough to notify their consuls. Saddest of all—and most easily helped—are the youngsters. We did not have a children's court in those days. But most of my time, I think, has gone in trying to ease the lot of the innocent wives and children of the prisoners. Whether the man is guilty or not it is always the family which suffers most. And if there had been none of these things, I would have had my hands more than full with trying to help the men who were acquitted. Look over the report of the criminal court in your county and see what the average length of imprisonment while waiting trial is. It varies from place to place. It is seldom less than three weeks. And three weeks is a serious matter to the ordinary mechanic. About a third of all the people arrested are acquitted. They get no compensation for their footless imprisonment. Besides the loss of wages, it generally means a lost job.

Two stories, which have been told elsewhere, are worth retelling, as examples of the varied work I found to do.

It was in the summer of my first year in the Tombs that I got interested in the case of a redhaired Italian boy named Pietro Sippio. He was only fourteen years old and he had been indicted for premeditated murder.

The prosecution fell to the lot of the most brilliant young lawyer on the district attorney's staff. The Sippio family was too poor to employ counsel and Judge Ryan, before whom the case was tried, had assigned to the defense a famous criminal lawyer. The trial became at once a tourney of wit between these two men. Little Pietro and his fate was a small matter in the duel for newspaper advertising.

The principal witness for the state was Mrs. Casey, the mother of the little boy who had been killed. She was a widow, a simple, uneducated Irishwoman, who earned her living by washing. She told her story with every appearance of truthfulness. During the morning of the tragic day, she had had a quarrel with Pietro in the backyard of the tenement, where both families lived. Pietro had thrown some dirt on her washing and she had slapped him. Instead of crying as she thought an ordinary boy would have done, he had said he would "get even" with her.

When she heard the noon whistles blow in the neighboring factories, she had gone out on the front sidewalk to get her baby for dinner. The youngster was sitting on the curbstone and as she stood in the doorway calling him, a brick, coming from the roof of the tenement, struck the baby on the head, killing him instantly. She rushed out and—she swore very solemnly—looked up and saw "the little divil's red head, jest as plain as I sees yer honor."

The counsel for the defense was unable to shake her testimony in the least.

Other witnesses swore that, on hearing Mrs. Casey's cry for help, they had rushed up to the roof and had met Mrs. Sippio coming down through the skylight with her two younger children, Felicia a girl of eight and Angelo, who was five. When they had asked her where Pietro was she said she had not seen him. But these witnesses were Irish and sided with Mrs. Casey. They testified that it was easy to pass from one roof to another. And it was evidently their theory that Pietro had escaped in this manner.

A few minutes after the tragedy, Pietro had come whistling up the street and had walked into the arms of the police, who were just starting out to search for him.

In his own defense Pietro testified that after quarreling with Mrs. Casey he had played about in the street for some time and then had gone down to the river with a crowd of boys for a swim. They had not left the water until the noon whistles had warned them of dinner time. They had all hurried into their clothes and gone home. He swore positively that he had not been on the roof during the morning. He evidently did not realize the seriousness of his position and was rather swaggeringly proud of being the center of so much attention.

Two or three other boys testified that Pietro had been swimming with them and had not left the water until after the whistles blew. This was an important point as the baby had been killed a very few minutes after noon. But the district attorney, in a brutal, bullying cross-examination, succeeded in rattling one of the boys—a youngster of eleven—until he did not know his right hand from his left. He broke down entirely, and sobbingly admitted that perhaps Pietro had left before the whistles blew.

Mrs. Sippio testified that she had not seen Pietro after breakfast. She had gone upon the roof about half past eleven to beat out some rugs. She had taken the two younger children with her. But Pietro had not been on the roof. She was a very timid woman, so frightened that she forgot most of her scant English. But she seemed to be telling the truth.

After the testimony was in the counsel for the defense made an eloquent, if rather bombastic plea. He turned more often to the desk of the reporters than to the panel of jurymen. No one, he said, had given any testimony which even remotely implicated Pietro, except the grief-stricken and enraged Mrs. Casey. He made a peroration on the vengeful traits of the Irish. He almost wept over the prospect of eternal damnation which awaited Mrs. Casey's soul on account of her perjury. No reasonable man, he concluded, would condemn a fly on such unreliable testimony.

The prosecutor commenced his summing up by referring to his position as attorney for the people of the state of New York. He said that his able opponent was technically called "The counsel for the defense," but that in reality he himself more truly deserved that title. He was engaged not in the defense of an individual offender, but in that of the whole community of law abiding citizens. And in the pursuance of this most serious function he could not allow his personal pity for the youthful murderer to deflect him from his public duty.

He then gave a picturesque and blood curdling account of the Vendetta and Mafia. He called the jury's attention to the well known traditions of vengeance and murder among the Italians.

As for Mrs. Sippio's testimony—despite his high regard for the sanctity of an oath—he could not find it in his heart to blame this mother who by perjury was endangering bar own soul to save her son. He was more stern in regard to the evidence of the boys. Their only excuse for perjury was their youth. They were members of a desperate gang, of which Pietro was the chief. They were corrupted by the false standards of loyalty to their leader, so common among boys of the street.

The only testimony which deserved the serious attention of the jury was that of Mrs. Casey—the estimable woman, who had seen her babe foully murdered before her eyes. Her identification of Pietro had been absolute.

"I am sorry," he ended, "for this boy, who, by so hideous a crime, has ruined his life at the very outset. But you and I, gentlemen of the jury, are bound by oath to consider only the cold facts. The judge may, if he thinks it wise, be merciful in imposing sentence. But your sole function is to discover truth. Here is a boy of fiery disposition and revengeful race. He vowed vengeance. Some one must have thrown the brick. No one else had the motive. Either the defendant is guilty as charged in the indictment or the brick fell from heaven."

The law explicitly states that a person charged with crime, must be given the benefit of any "reasonable doubt." In the face of the manifestly conflicting testimony, I think every one in court was surprised when the jury returned a verdict of "guilty."

I had not then been long enough in the Tombs to get used to it. I had not become hardened. The tragedy of this case amazed me. A little boy of fourteen condemned of deliberate murder! But the thing which impressed me most was the way the lawyers in the court room rushed up to congratulate the prosecutor for having won so doubtful a case. It would be revolting enough to me if any one should congratulate me on having sent an adult to the gallows. But this little boy of fourteen....

I went over the Bridge of Sighs and talked to Pietro in his cell. If ever a boy impressed me as telling a straightforward story he did. I was convinced that he had been at the riverside when the Casey baby was killed.

After lunch I went up to the scene of the tragedy and my faith in Pietro's innocence was considerably shaken although not overthrown by my talk with Mrs. Casey. She was angry, of course, but she did not seem malicious or vindictive. As I talked with her in her squalid basement room, full of steam from the tubs of soiled clothing, I could not doubt her sincerity. She really believed that Pietro had killed her child. Wiping the suds from her powerful arms, she led me out on the sidewalk and showed me the place where the baby had been sitting and pointed out where she had seen the devilish red head above the coping.

The idea flashed into my mind that a boy would have to be surprisingly clever to throw a brick from that height and hit a baby. With Mrs. Casey following me, I went upon the roof. The chimneys were in a dilapidated condition and a number of loose brick lay about. I was a fairly good ball player at college, but when I tried to hit a water plug on the curb stone, six stories below, I over shot at least eight feet. I asked Mrs. Casey to try and her brick lit in the middle of the street. I called up some of the boys, who were watching my operations from the street, and offered them a quarter if they could hit the water plug. Their attempts were no better than mine.

A little further along the low coping some bricks were piled where children had evidently been building houses with them. I asked Mrs. Casey to push one of them over, easily as if by accident. It fell out a little way from the wall and crashed down fair on the curbing.

"Mrs. Casey," I said, "I don't think Pietro threw that brick. He couldn't have hit the baby if he had tried. Somebody pushed it over by accident."

She stood for some seconds looking down over the wall, shaking her head uncertainly.

"Faith, and I'd think ye were right, sir," she said at last, "If I hadn't seen his red head, sir, jest as plain as I sees yours."

And as we went down stairs, she kept repeating "I sure seen his red head." She was evidently convinced of it.

I went to see Mrs. Sippio. She had moved to another tenement, because of the hostility of the Irish neighbors. I found Mr. Sippio at home taking care of his wife, she was half hysterical from the shame and her grief over Pietro's fate. But she told me her story just as simply and convincingly as had Mrs. Casey. Pietro had not been on the roof. There had been only Felicia and Angelo. I was on the point of leaving in discouragement. Apparently one of the women was lying. I could not guess which. I had gained nothing but a conviction that the brick could not have been thrown with an intent to kill. And that would be a very weak plea against the verdict of a jury. Just as I was getting up, there was a patter of feet in the hall-way. Mrs. Sippio's face lit up. "It is the children," she said. As they rushed noisily into the room the whole mystery was cleared up. It had not occurred to me—nor to any one—that there might be two redheaded boys in the same Italian family. But Angelo's hair was even more flaming than Pietro's.

I took him up in my lap and amused him until I had won his confidence. And when he was thinking about other things, I suddenly asked him.

"Angelo, when that brick fell off the roof the other day, why didn't you tell your mother?"

For a moment he was confused and then began to whimper. He had been afraid of being whipped. I gave a whoop and reassuring the family, I rushed down town and caught Judge Ryan, just as he was leaving his chambers. He listened to me eagerly, for he was as tenderhearted a man as I have ever known and he had been deeply horrified at the idea of having to sentence such a youngster for premeditated murder.

The attorneys were summoned to the judge's chambers, and—I guess that the "pathos" writers of the newspapers were notified. For the next morning they attended court in force. The district attorney made a touching speech. He was grandiloquently glad to announce that new evidence had been discovered which cleared the defendant from all suspicion. The judge set aside the verdict of the jury. The district attorney said that Mrs. Casey had so evidently mistaken Angelo for his older brother that there was no use having a new trial and Pietro was discharged. In making a few remarks on the case, Judge Ryan mentioned my name and thanked me personally for my part in the matter. With increasing frequency he began to call on me for assistance in other cases and in time the other judges took notice of my existence. I found my hands more than full.

Very often I was able in a similar manner to unearth evidence, which the defendants were too poor and ignorant or the lawyers too lazy to obtain.

But it was in another class of cases that I proved of greatest utility to the judges. A large proportion of the prisoners plead guilty, without demanding a trial. If the whole matter is thrashed out before a jury, the trial judge hears all the evidence and so gets some idea of the motives of the crime, of the personality and environment of the accused. But when a prisoner pleads guilty, practically no details come out in court and unless the judge has some special investigation made he must impose sentence at haphazard. Ryan, almost always asked me to look into such cases. The other judges—with the exception of O'Neil—did so frequently. I would visit the prisoner in his cell and get his story, listen to what the police had to say, and then make a personal investigation to settle disputed points.

As time went on Ryan came to rely more and more on my judgment. He felt, I think, that I was honest; that I could not be bribed and that I was more likely to err on the side of mercy than otherwise. His easy going kindliness was satisfied with this and he was only too glad to let his responsibilities slip on to my shoulders. In the last years before he was elevated to the Supreme Court, he practically let me sentence most of his men. Except in the cases where political influences intervened, my written reports determined the prisoner's fate.

Of course I had to manage his susceptibilities. If I had presumed to suggest definitely what sentence he should impose he would have taken offense. He was very sensitive about his dignity. But I worked out a formal phraseology which did not ruffle his pride and accomplished what I intended. After stating the facts of the case I would end up with a sort of code phrase. If I wanted the judge to give the man another chance under a suspended sentence, I would say: "Under the circumstances, I believe that the defendant is deserving the utmost leniency. I am convinced that the arrest and the imprisonment which he has already suffered have taught him a salutary lesson which he will never forget." From that as the circumstances warranted I could go to the other extreme: "During my investigation of this case, which has been seriously limited because of lack of time, I have been able to find very little in this man's favor."

Every time I had to present such a report as this I felt defeated. It meant that the prisoner was an old offender, hardened to a life of professional crime. And that I could see no hope of reformation. But if I had not accepted such defeats, when circumstances compelled them, the judges would very quickly have lost confidence in my pleas for mercy.

I was valuable to the judges because I relieved them from worry. Whenever anyone approached them on behalf of a prisoner, they shrugged their shoulders and referred the suppliant to me. Now-a-days we have a probation law and such work as I have been describing is legalized. But in the early days, when I had no official sanction I found my position very embarrassing. Without having been in any way elected to office I was actually exercising a power which is supposed to be the gift of the voters. However—like so many things in our haphazard government—my position, extra-legal as it was, grew out of the sheer necessity of the case. The theory is that our judges shall be jurists. And a knowledge of the law does not fit one for the responsibility of deciding how we shall treat our criminals. In the old days when the law frankly punished offenders it was a simple matter and perhaps not too much to ask of judges. But today when we are beginning the attempt to reform those individuals who endanger society, the business of imposing sentence requires not so much a knowledge of law as familiarity with psychology, medicine and sociology. Although an expert in none of these lines, I was accepted as a makeshift. The law did not provide for the employment of specially trained men to assist the judges. I was informally permitted to entirely neglect the ordinary work of a county detective and give all my time to the courts.

The danger in such happy-go-lucky arrangements is that of graft. I could have doubled or quadrupled my salary with impunity. The "shyster" lawyers, who infest the Tombs tried for several years to buy my intercession for their clients. I had to be constantly on my guard to keep them from fooling me. And when they found that they could not reach me in this manner, they tried industriously to discredit me, to trick me into some suspicious conditions so they could intimidate me. More than once they set women on my trail.

The politicians also tried to use me. I received a letter one day from the "Old Man" asking me to intercede for a friend of his. I wrote back that I would investigate carefully. A couple of days later I sent another letter containing the prisoner's record, he had been twice in state prison and many times arrested. "Under the circumstances," I wrote "I cannot recommend mercy in this case."

The next day one of the "Old Man's" lieutenants met me in the corridor and leading me into a corner, told me I was a fool. When what he called "reason" failed to shake me, he became abusive and threatened to have me "fired." I took the whole matter to Ryan. He told me not to worry, that he would talk it over with the "Old Man." I do not know what passed between them. But after that I had no more trouble from Fourteenth Street. Whenever I saw the "Old Man," he gave me a cordial nod. Frequently his runners would hand me one of his cards with a penciled note, "See what you can do for this friend of mine and oblige." But with one or two exceptions the "friend" turned out to be deserving. One day he sent word that he would like to see me personally. I called on him in Tammany Hall. He thanked me for "helping out" one of his friends and told me that the city, in some of its departments, or some of his "contracting friends" were always taking on new hands and that he would try to find a place for any man I sent him. This was an immense help to me in my work and a God-send to many a man who had lost his job because of a baseless arrest.

So I gradually found a place of usefulness in the life of the Tombs.

Another typical case happened years later. I would not have known how to handle it at first. The defendant was a Norwegian named Nora Lund. She was about seventeen and the sweetest, most beautiful young girl I have ever seen in the Tombs. She was employed in one of the smartest uptown stores. It had an established reputation as a dry goods house. The founder had died some years before, a stock company had taken it over and was developing it into a modern department store. Besides the old lines of goods they were carrying silverware, stationery, furniture and so forth. Their patrons were most of the very well to do classes.

Just inside the main entrance was an especial show case, where a variety of specialties were exhibited. Nora presided over this display and it was her business to direct customers to the counters they sought and answer all manner of questions. She had been chosen for this post because of her beauty and her sweet, lady-like manners. If you asked her where the ribbons were for sale, you carried away with you a pleasing memory of her great blue eyes and her ready smile.

She was paid six dollars a week. Her father, who had been a printer, was dead. Her mother worked in a candy factory. A sister of fourteen was trying to learn bookkeeping at home while she took care of the two younger children.

Nora's wage, together with the mother's, was enough to keep them in cleanliness, if not in comfort, and to put by a trifle every week for the education of the boy whom the women fondly dreamed of sending to school. But the mother fell sick. Gradually the little pile of savings was swallowed up. Mrs. Lund needed expensive medicine. And six dollars a week is very little for a family of five, especially when one is sick and another must always have fresh clean linen collars and cuffs. At the store they insisted that the girls should always be "neat and presentable." The fourteen year old sister went to work looking after a neighbor's baby, but she only got two dollars a week and two meals.

When the savings had been exhausted Nora took her troubles to the superintendent. She did not want to seem to be asking for charity, she begged to be given some harder work so she could earn more. It was refused. That week Wednesday there was nothing in the house to eat. The druggist and tradesmen refused further credit, and the rent was due. Nora went again to the superintendent and asked to have her wages paid in advance or at least the three dollars she had already earned. The superintendent was angry at her importunity.

When Nora left the store that evening she carried with her a box containing a dozen silver spoons. Unfortunately she did not know any of the regular and reliable "receivers of stolen goods," so she had to take a chance on the first pawnshop she came to. The man suspected her, asked her to wait a moment and telephoned for the police. He kept her at the counter with his dickering until the officer came. Nora did not know the first thing about lying and broke down at the first question.

If she had been a man I would have encountered her sooner, but I very seldom went into the women's prison. It is part of the burden of their sex, I suppose, but the women one generally finds in prison are the most doleful spectacle on earth. Having once lost their self respect they sink to an infinitely lower level than men do. With the first enthusiasm of my early days I used often to dare the horror of that place. But I soon recognized my defeat before its hopelessness and gave it a wide berth. So I did not hear of Nora when she first came to the Tombs. It was two weeks before her case was called. It came up before Ryan. I was not in court when she was arraigned, but the next morning I found a note in my box from the judge.

"Please look into the case of Nora Lund, grand larceny in the second degree. She plead guilty yesterday but she does not look like a thief. I remanded the case till Wednesday to give you plenty of time."

Before Wednesday I had the facts I have already related. It was pitiful to see Mrs. Lund. The shame and disgrace to the family name hurt her much more than the starvation which threatened the household. She was really sick, but she came down every morning to cry with her daughter. They were in a bad way at home, as Nora's wage had stopped since her arrest. I fixed them up with some food, squared the landlord, and did what I could to cheer them. Ryan had already shown his sympathy and I allowed myself to do, what I made it a rule never to do. I practically promised the mother that Nora would be released.

I prepared my report with extra care. It was an unusually good case. All the goods had been restored. The firm had lost no money. I had rarely had an opportunity to report so strongly my belief that the offender could be safely discharged. I recommended the "utmost leniency" with a light heart.

When the case was called, I handed up my report to the judge. He read it rapidly as if he had already made up his mind to let her go.

"You're sure it's the first offense?" he asked perfunctorily.

I assured him it was.

"All right," he said, "I guess suspended sentence...."

The clerk stepped up and gave the judge a card.

"Your honor," he said, "a gentleman would like to speak to you about this case, before you impose sentence."

The man was called up and introduced himself as the regular attorney of the complainants. He was a member of one of the great down-town law firms. He had the assurance of manner of a very successful professional man. His clients, he said, had asked him to lay some information before the court. In the last few years they had lost a great many thousand dollars through such petty theft. The amount of this loss was steadily increasing. Most of the thefts were undiscovered because the employees protected one another. They seemed to have lost all the old fashioned loyalty to the firm. The directors' attention had been unpleasantly called to this very considerable outlet and they had decided to respectfully call it to the attention of the courts. If two or three offenders were severely punished it would have a salutary effect on the morals of their entire force.

My heart sank. I knew how the judge would take it. He was always impressed by people of evident wealth. I am sure that he thought of God as a multi-millionaire. He handed my report to the lawyer. He read it half through and returned it. It could not, he said, affect the attitude of the complainants. They were not interested in the family life of Nora Lund, but in the honesty of employee No. 21,334. Their view-point was entirely impersonal. "Even if my clients wanted to be lenient, they could not, in justice to the stockholders. It is purely a business proposition. The losses have been very heavy."

"Are you asking his honor," I said, "to punish this girl for the thefts of the others you did not catch?"

He ignored my question and went on telling the judge that unless something was done this sort of thing would increase until business was impossible.

"Our whole force," he said, "know of this crime and are watching the result. If no punishment follows there is sure to be a big increase of theft. But if she is sent to state prison it will greatly reduce this item of loss."

"Your honor," I broke in, thoroughly angry, "This is utterly unfair. He whines because the employees are not loyal. How much loyalty do they expect to buy at six dollars a week? They figure out just how little they can pay their people and keep them from the necessity of stealing. This time they figured too low, and are trying to put all the blame on the girl. If they paid honest wages they might have some right to come into court. But when they let their clerks starve they ought not to put silver in their charge. Its...."

"Hold on, officer," Ryan interrupted, "There's a great deal in their point of view. Our whole penal system is built on the deterrent idea. The state does not inflict penalties to repay the wrong done it by an act of crime, but to deter others from committing like crimes. As long as the complainants take this view of the case I cannot let her go without some punishment."

"Punishment?" I broke in again. "I hope we will never be punished so bitterly. The shame of her arrest and imprisonment is already far in excess of her wrong doing. The firm did not lose a cent and they want her sent to state prison."

"I won't send so young a girl to state prison," the judge said, "But I cannot let her go free. I'll send her to one of the religious disciplinary institutions."

I asked for a few days adjournment so I could lay the matter before the members of the firm personally.

"The delay would be useless," the attorney put in. "My clients have no personal feelings in the matter. It is simply a carefully reasoned business policy."

I persisted that I would like to try. The judge rapped with his gavel.

"Remanded till tomorrow morning."

As we walked out of the court room, the attorney condescendingly advised me not to waste much time on this case. "Its useless," he said. But I did not want to give up without a fight.

When I tried to see the members of the firm, I found that my opponent had stolen a march on me by telephoning to warn them of my mission. Their office secretaries told me that they were very busy, that they already knew my business and did not care to go into the matter with me.

I was acquainted with the city editor of one of the large morning papers and I had found that the judges were very susceptible to newspaper criticism. More than once a properly placed story would make them see a case in a new light. I found a vacant desk in the reporters' room and wrote up Nora in the most livid style I could manage—"soulless corporation," "underpaid slaves" and such phrases.

"It's a good story," the city editor said, "Too bad there isn't a Socialist paper to run it. But we can't touch it. They're the biggest advertisers we've got. I'm sorry. It certainly is a sad case. I wish you'd give this to the mother."

He handed me a bank-note. But I told him to go to the father of yellow journalism. It was not money I wanted. I stamped out of his office, angry and discouraged. But my promise to Mrs. Lund, to get Nora out, made it impossible for me to give up. I walked up the street racking my brains for some scheme. Suddenly an inspiration came. They would not listen to me. Perhaps I could make money talk.

My small deposits were in an up-town bank. It did not have a large commercial business, but specialized on private and household accounts. The cashier was a fraternity mate of mine. With a little urging I got from him a list of depositors who had large accounts at the store where Nora had worked. I picked out the names of the women I knew to be interested in various charities and borrowed a telephone.

It is hard to be eloquent over a telephone. The little black rubber mouth-piece is a discouraging thing to plead with, but I stuck to it all the afternoon. As soon as I got connection with some patron of the store, I told her about Nora's plight—most of them remembered her face. I tried to make them realize how desperately little six dollars a week is. I told the story of her hard struggle to keep the home going, how the firm had refused to give her a raise and were now trying to send her to state prison. I spoke as strongly as might be about personal responsibility. The firm paid low wages so that their patrons might buy silk stockings at a few cents less per pair. And low wages had driven Nora to crime. I laid it on as heavily as I dared and asked them to call up the manager and members of the firm—to get them personally—and protest against their severity towards Nora. I urged them to spread the story among their friends and get as many of them as possible to threaten to withdraw their trade.

I started this campaign about three in the afternoon and kept it up till after business hours. It bore fruit. Some of the women, I found out afterwards, went further than I had suggested and called on the wives of the firm. I imagine that the men, who had refused to see me, did not spend a peaceful or pleasant afternoon and evening.

In the morning, when Nora's case was called, the attorney made a touching speech about the quality of mercy and how to err is human, to forgive divine. He said that the firm he represented could not find heart to prosecute this damsel in distress and that if the court would be merciful and give her another chance they would take her back in their employment. Judge Ryan was surprised, but very glad to discharge her. However, I was able to find her a much better place to work.

Her story is a sad commentary on our system of justice. The court did not care to offend a group of wealthy men. The press did not dare to. The only way to get justice for this girl was by appealing to the highest court—the power of money.

It is always hard for me to write about our method of dealing with crime in restrained and temperate language—the whole system is too utterly vicious. I had not been many weeks in the Tombs before I was guilty of contempt of court.

Four of the five judges in general sessions were machine men. It was rare that their judgments were influenced by their political affiliations; in the great majority of the cases they were free to dispense what happened to strike them as justice. It is simpler for the organization to "fix" things in the police courts where there are no juries. But once in a while a man would come up to us who "had a friend." The "Old Man" on Fourteenth Street would send down his orders and one of these four judges would arrange the matter. The impressive thing about it was the cynical frankness. Everybody knew what was happening.

The fifth judge, O'Neil, was a Scotchman. He was said to be—and I believe was—incorruptible. He had been swept into office on a former wave of reform, and had no dealings with the machine. But he was utterly unfit to be on the bench. A few weeks after I was sworn in, I saw a phase of his character which was worse than "graft."

A man was brought before him for "assault"—a simple exchange of fisticuffs. In general such cases are treated as a joke. Two men have a fight—then they race to the police station. The one who gets there first is the complainant, the slower footed one is the defendant. Each brings a cloud of witnesses to court to swear that the other was the aggressor. It is hopeless to try to place the blame. The penal code fixes a maximum sentence of one year and five hundred dollars fine, but unless some especial malice has been shown, the judges generally discharge the prisoner with a perfunctory lecture or, at most, give them ten days.

This man had an especially good record. He had worked satisfactorily for several years in the same place, his wife and her three small children were entirely dependent upon his earnings. O'Neil skimmed over his recommendations listlessly, until his eye caught a sentence which told the nature of the man's employment. He stiffened up with a jerk.

"Are you a janitor?" he thundered.

"Yes, your honor."

"Well, I tell you, sir, janitors must be taught their place! There is no more impudent, offensive class of men in this city. This morning, sir, there was no heat in my apartment, and when my wife complained the janitor was insolent to her! Insulted her! My wife! When I went downstairs he insulted me, sir! The janitor insulted me, I say! He even threatened to strike me as you have wantonly assaulted this reputable citizen here, the complainant. It is time the public was protected from janitors. I regret that the law limits the punishment I can give you. The court sentences you, sir, to the maximum. One year and five hundred dollars!"

The outburst was so sudden, so evidently a matter of petty spite, that there was a hush all over the court.

"What's the matter?" his honor snapped. "Call up the next case."

Of course this sentence would have been overthrown in any higher court, but the man had no money. Such things did not happen very often, but frequently enough to keep us ever reminded of their imminent possibility.

I have sixty fat note-books which record my work in the Tombs. Almost every item might be quoted here to show how little by little contempt of court grew in my mind. It crystallized not so much because of the relatively rare cases where innocent men were sent to prison, as because of the continual commonplace farce of it.

Very early I learned—as the lawyers all knew—that considerations of abstract justice were foreign to the Tombs. Each judge had his foible. It was more important to know these than the law. Judges McIvor and Bell were Grand Army men. Bell was always easy on veterans. He had a stock speech—"I am sorry to see a man who has fought for his country in your distressing condition. I will be as lenient as the law allows." McIvor, if he saw a G.A.R. button on a man before him would shout, "I am pained and grieved to see a man so dishonor the old uniform," and would give him the maximum.

Ryan, the most venal, the most servile machine man of the five, had a beautiful and intense love for his mother. A child of the slum, he had supported his mother since he was fourteen, had climbed up from the gutter to the bench. And filial love, like his own, outweighed any amount of moral turpitude with him. When I found a man in the Tombs who seemed to me innocent, I did not prepare a brief on this aspect of the case. I looked up his mother, and persuaded the clerk to put the case on Ryan's calendar. If I could get the old woman rigged up in a black silk dress and a poke bonnet, if I could arrange for two old-fashioned love-locks to hang down before her ears, the trick was turned. All she had to do was to cry a little and say, "He's been a good son to his old mother, yer honor."

The cases were supposed to be distributed among the judges in strict rotation. It was, in fact, a misdemeanor for the clerk to juggle with the calendar. But the largest part of a lawyer's value depended on his ability to persuade the clerk to put his client before a judge who would be lenient towards his offense.

O'Neil believed that a lady should be above suspicion. So when a woman was accused of crime, she was certainly not a lady, and probably guilty. It was for the good of the community to lock her up. Of course whenever a lawyer had a woman client his first act was to "fix" the clerk so that the case would not be put down before O'Neil.

Yet I would be eminently unfair to the people of the Tombs, if I spoke only of their evil side. Of course this was the side I first saw. But by the end of a year I had established myself. Once they had lost their fear that I was trying to interfere with their means of livelihood—a fear shared by the judges as well as the screws—hostility gave place to tolerance, and in some cases to respect and a certain measure of friendship. I began to think of them, as they did of themselves, as dual personalities. There was sinister symbolism in the putting on of the black robes by the judges. The screws out of uniform, in off hours, were very different beings from the screws on duty.

It is a commonplace that machine politicians are big-hearted. They listened to any story I could tell of touching injustice, often went down in their pockets to help the victim. I have never met more sentimental men. All it needed to start them was a little "heart interest." Frequently Big Jim, the gate man, would raise ten or fifteen dollars from the other screws to help out one of my men.

Judge Ryan met me one day on the street and invited me into a saloon. There began a very real friendship. Off the bench he was a most expansive man; he had wonderful power of personal anecdote. In the story of his up-struggle from the gutter, his mother on his shoulders, he was naïve in telling of incidents which to a man of my training seemed criminal. He owed his first opportunity, the start towards his later advancement, to Tweed. And he was as loyal to him as to his mother. The soul of the slum was in his story. It was an interpretation of the ethics which grow up where the struggle for existence is bitter. An ethics which is foul with the stink of fetid tenements, wizened with hunger, distorted with fear.

The attitude of the people of the Tombs to this dual life of theirs, the insistence with which they kept separate their professional and personal life, was shown clearly when a young assistant district attorney broke the convention. He brought his wife to court! He was a youngster, it was his first big case, he wanted her to hear his eloquence. The indignation was general. I happened to be talking to Big Jim, the gate man, when one of the screws brought the news.

"What?" Jim exploded. "Brought his wife down here? The son of a ——! Say. If my old woman came within ten blocks of the place—or any of the kids—I'd knock their blocks off. Go on. Yer kidding me."

When they insisted that it was true, he scratched his head disgustedly and kept reiterating his belief in the chap's canine ancestry. Two hours later, when I was going out of the Tombs, he stopped me. It was still on his mind.

"Say," he said, "what d'ye think of that son of a ——?"

III

It did not take me very long to see that the trouble with our criminal courts goes deeper than the graft or ill-temper of the judges. Day after day the realization grew upon me that the system itself is wrong at bottom.

A man can do a vicious thing now and then without complete moral disintegration. It is constant repetition of the act which turns him into a vicious man. Brown may once in a while lose his temper and strike his wife, and still be, on the whole, an estimable fellow. But if he makes a regular habit of blacking her eye every Saturday night, we would hold him suspect in all relations. We would not only question his fitness to bring up children, we would doubt his veracity, distrust him in money matters.

The more I have been in court the stronger grows the conviction that there is something inherently vicious in passing criminal judgment on our fellow men. A Carpenter who lived in Palestine two thousand years ago thought on this matter as I do. His doctrine about throwing stones is explicit. If he was right in saying "Judge not," we cannot expect any high morality from our judges. The constant repetition of evil inevitably degrades.

Unless we can expect our judges to be omniscient—and no one of them is so fatuous as to believe himself infallible—we are asking them to gamble with justice, to play dice with men's souls. We give them the whole power of the state to enforce their guesses. The counters with which they play are human beings—not only individual offenders, but whole families, innocent women and children. Such an occupation—as a steady job—will necessarily degrade them. It would change the Christ Himself.... But he said very definitely that He would not do it.

However, my work in the Tombs has not made me a pessimist. Science has conquered the old custom of flogging lunatics. The increase of knowledge must inevitably do away with our barbaric penal codes, with cellular confinement and electrocution. An enlightened community will realize that the whole mediæval idea of punishing each other is not only a sin—according to Christ—but a blunder, a rank economic extravagance, as useless as it is costly. We will learn to protect ourselves from the losses and moral contagions of crime as we do from infectious diseases. Our prisons we will discard for hospitals, our judges will become physicians, our "screws" we will turn into trained nurses.

The present system is epileptic. It works out with unspeakable cruelty to those who are suspected of crime—and their families—it results in the moral ruin of those we employ to protect us, and it is a failure. The amount of money which society expends in its war against crime is stupendous—and crime increases. All statistics from every civilized country....

But this personal narrative is not the place for me to discuss in detail my convictions in regard to criminology.

IV

The influence of the Tombs on my way of thinking was slow and cumulative, here a little and there a little. I got a more sudden insight into some of the ways of the world, some of its stupidities and pretenses, from the peculiar circumstances under which Benson and I were thrown out of the settlement. I had been there almost two years when the crash came. In this affair, I was little more than the tail of his kite. That is the fact I wish to emphasize. Benson was I think beyond any doubt, the most valuable "resident" in the Children's House. It was not only that he gave much money into the general treasury and that he gave far more to such subsidiary enterprises as his Arbeiter Studenten Verein, all of which gave added prestige to the settlement, but also his personality was a great asset. Through his professional and social connections he was continually recruiting new supporters. And certainly to the people of the neighborhood, he was the most popular of us all. And yet to preserve certain stupid ideas of respectability, Benson was sacrificed.

The Jewish population—penniless refugees from Russian massacres—had been growing rapidly in our district. They had almost entirely driven out the Germans and Irish. And as a result of their intense poverty, prostitution was becoming frightful. There were red lights all about us. To the thoughtful Jews this had become the only political issue. The machine was cynically frank in its toleration of vice. Two years before a man named Root had been elected congressman on the reform ticket. It was pretty generally known that he had used his time in office to make peace with the machine. And although he still talked of reform, he was so friendly with the enemy that they had nominated a figure-head named O'Brien. But this Democratic candidate was only for appearances, we all knew that Root was to be re-elected and that Tammany votes were promised him.

Benson shared my hatred of hypocrisy. We often talked over this political tangle.

"I'd like to get the evidence against him," Norman said one night. "Nothing I'd like better than to shoot some holes into his double-faced schemes."

I gathered a good deal of information, which if it was not legal evidence, was certainly convincing. The Tombs was a great place for political gossip. I was almost the only person there at this time who was not a Tammany man. And as in my two years of work I had taken no interest in politics, I was considered innocuous. From scraps of conversation I learned that there had been a meeting between Root and the Old Man and some treaty made between them. I could guess at the terms. The organization was to throw enough votes to elect Root, and he was to keep too busy in Washington to interfere in local affairs. But I did not dare to ask questions, and had no idea when or where the agreement had been reached. By the barest chance I was able to fill in these details:

Coming up the Bowery late one night, I ran into a crowd who had made a circle around two girls who were fighting. Just as I arrived on the scene one of the girls called out——

"Charley—give me a knife."

Her cadet handed her one with a very ugly looking blade. I seldom used my right as county detective to make arrests. But as this seemed to threaten serious bloodshed, I broke up the fight and collared the cadet. He turned out to be a man of some importance in politics, a runner for "The Old Man." Two or three times he had been arrested, but his pull had always got him off.

He was half drunk and in a great funk over the serious charge I said I would make against him. As I was jerking him along towards the station house, he threatened me with dire consequences if I ran him in—said he was a friend of the Old Man. I pretended not to believe him, and in his effort to convince me that he really was protected, he let the cat out of the bag. He had been the messenger from the "Old Man" to Root, and had arranged for the meeting between them. It had taken place on the evening of September third, in the back room of Billy Bryan's saloon. He did not know what had happened at the meeting, the only person present beside the two principals had been a "heeler" of Root's, named "Piggy" Breen. There was no use in arresting a man with his "pull," so I turned him loose.

I hurried back to the settlement and telephoned for Benson at his club. He brought along Maynard to give us legal advice. Maynard was an erratic millionaire. One-third of the year he played polo, one third he spent in entering his 75-foot sloop in various club regattas, and the rest of the time he lived in the city, leading cotillions at night and maintaining a charity law office in the day-time. He was also a trustee of the settlement. He was wildly indignant over the story of Root's treachery.

"We can defeat Root, dead easy," Benson said. "It's a cinch. Publicity has never been tried in politics" (as far as I know, Benson invented this term "publicity," now so commonly applied to organized advertising)—"it's a cinch. In less than twenty-four hours everybody in the district will know he's a crook."

"What reform man can we get to run in his place?" Maynard asked.

"Hell!" Benson said. "We haven't time to nominate anybody—election is only a week off. I don't care who's elected so we put Root out of business."

"Well, but," Maynard protested, "we don't want to throw the influence of the settlement in favor of Tammany Hall."

"We don't need to. There must be some other candidates—Socialist or Prohibition—just so he isn't a red-light grafter."

"There isn't any Prohibition ticket," I said. "The Socialist candidate is named Lipsky."

"All right," said Benson, "we'll elect Lipsky."

Maynard went up in the air. Help elect a Socialist! He did not believe in political assassinations.

"Oh, devil!" Benson snapped. "Would you rather see one of these cadet politicians in office than an honest working man? I don't know who this man Lipsky is, like as not a fool who sees visions. But the Socialists never nominate crooks. What we want is an honest man."

Maynard, however, did not believe in community of wives, felt it necessary to protect the sanctity of the home—even at the cost of prostitution. And so he left us.

I wish I could remember half the things Benson said about Maynard after he had deserted us. I have seldom seen anything more invigorating than Benson mad. But he did not let his indignation interfere with business. It was far along towards morning, but he set to work at once. He wrote to Lipsky promising to support him, and then began sketching cartoons and posters.

One was a picture of Root selling a girl in "parlor clothes" to "The Old Man." Another read:

"VOTE FOR LIPSKY

if you have a daughter!

If you vote Democratic, you

Vote for the RED LIGHTS!

If you vote Republican, you

Vote for the CADETS!

VOTE THE SOCIALIST TICKET, and you

VOTE FOR DECENCY!"

But the best were a series:

"ASK ROOT

where he was on the evening of September Third?"

"ASK ROOT

what business he had with the Old Man?"

"ASK ROOT

how much he got?"

Having mailed the letter to Lipsky and sent off the copy to the printer, we turned in just at sun-up.

We were awakened a few hours later by the arrival of a socialist committee. There was Dowd, a Scotch carpenter; Kaufmann, a brewery driver, and Lipsky, the candidate. He was a Russian Jew, and had been a professor in the old country. He could speak very little English, but he had served a long term of exile in the Siberian prison mines.

The socialists had no idea of winning the election. The campaign was for them only a demonstration, a couple of months when they had larger audiences at their soap-box meetings. They were suspicious of us.

That consultation is one of the most ludicrous of my memories. Benson, sitting in an arm-chair, in blue silk pajamas, smoking cigarettes, outlined the plan in his fervent, profane, pyrotechnic way—much of which was beyond their comprehension. Kaufmann had to translate it into German for Lipsky. And when we talked German, Dowd could not understand.

"But," said Herr Lipsky, when the posters had been translated to him, "there is nothing there about our principles. There is no word about surplus value. It is not the red lantern we are fighting—but the Kapitalismus."

"The people," Benson raged—"the people with votes don't know surplus value from the binominal theorem. Perhaps they will vote for their daughters—they can see them. But they won't get excited about their great-great-grandchildren."

There was a squabble among the committee-men. The Scotchman was too canny to take sides; he wanted to refer the matter to the local, which was not to meet until two days before the election.

"Aber," said the brewery man, "Ve need etwas gongrete."

Lipsky accused him of being a "reformer."

After an hour's wrangle, it was decided that they could not stop us from attacking Root. But we were to hold up the posters asking votes for Lipsky. He would not permit his name to be used without the consent of the local.

As they were going downstairs, I heard Kaufmann protesting—"Aber, Genossen—ich bin eine echte revoluzionaire!"

So Benson ran the campaign unaided. The effect of his posters was electric. The next day he brought out some more:—

"ASK THE OLD MAN."

Of course they both denied. But as the posters made no specific allegations, they did not know what to deny. Their output was conflicting. During the afternoon, Benson stirred things up again with a series—

"IF ROOT WON'T TELL, ASK 'PIGGY' BREEN."

Breen was rattled, and said it was all a lie, that the red light business had not been discussed at the meeting in Billy Bryan's saloon. Both Root and the Old Man had denied the meeting. So Benson had them on the run. The more they explained the worse they tangled things. The cadet from whom I had forced our information, fearing the wrath of The Old Man, was of course keeping his mouth shut. We did not give away on him. So they could not guess Benson's source of knowledge, and would have given anything to know just how much he knew.

The Socialist local nearly broke up over the affair. A number were absolutely set against accepting aid from a "Bourgeois philanthropist," like Benson. Lipsky was in a violently embarrassing position. Suddenly there was a good chance of his election. The people of the district were manifestly excited over the issue. They were ready to vote for any one who would promise effective war against the cadets. It must have been a frightful temptation to him. But he stood fast for his principles. He did not want to be elected on a chance reform issue. If the people of the neighborhood stood for Marxian economics, he would be glad to represent them. But he would have nothing to do with demagogy.

On the other hand, a young Jewish lawyer named Klein was the Socialist candidate for alderman, and he saw a chance of being elected on the "Down with the red light" cry. He was ready to tear the hesitaters to pieces. He felt that the social revolution and universal brotherhood only awaited his installation in office.

At last it was agreed that a mass meeting should be called in the Palace Lyceum on Grand Street and that Klein and Benson should speak on the red light issue and Lipsky on economics. We brought out the "Vote the Socialist Ticket" poster.

Benson was at the very top of the advertising profession, and he certainly threw himself headlong into this job.

"I've persuaded about fourteen million people to buy Prince of Wales Aristocratic Suspenders," he said. "I don't see why I can't persuade a few thousand to vote right once in their lives."

He certainly did marvels at it.

The night before election, the Palace Lyceum was packed to the roof. And this in spite of the organized efforts of the strong-arm men of the machine. But the meeting was a miserable fizzle. Benson was helpless between those two speakers.

Klein's discourse consisted in telling what he would do if elected—among other things, I recall, he was going to nationalize the railways and abolish war.

Benson was not much of a public speaker. As far as I know, it was his one attempt. But his success at advertising was based on his knowledge of the people and how they thought. They were not interested in Klein or the nationalization of the railroads. The one thing which moved them was the sale of their daughters. Benson went right to the point, reminded them of it in a few words, and then told the story of Root's treachery, piecing together our facts and guesses. "It is not legal evidence," he said, "you can take it for what it is worth. It's up to you—tomorrow at the voting booths."

"To hell with Root!" somebody yelled.

"There's only one candidate better than Root," Benson shouted back,—"Lipsky!"

When they got through cheering, he gave them the words of a song he had written to "Marching through Georgia." He had trained the Männer Chor of the Arbeiter Studenten Verein to sing it. It caught on like wildfire. I am sure that if the meeting had broken up then, and they could have marched out singing that song, Lipsky would have been elected overwhelmingly. But Lipsky spoke.

"Der Socialismus ruht auf einer fasten ekonomischen grundlage...."

For twenty minutes in deadly German sentences he lectured on the economic interpretation of history. Then for twenty minutes he analyzed capitalism. Then he drank a glass of water and took a fresh start. He referred to Klein's speech and pointed out how the election of one or a hundred officials could not bring about Socialism; the only hope lay in a patient, widespread, universal organization of the working class. Then in detail he discussed the difference between reform and revolution, how this red light business was only one by-product of the great injustice of exploitation by surplus value.

When he had been talking a little over an hour, he said "Lastly." He began on a history of the International Socialist Party from its humble beginning in Marx' Communist League to its present gigantic proportions.

On and on he drawled. Many got up and left—he did not notice. Someone in the gallery yelled,

"Cheese it! Cut it out! We want Benson!"

He went right on through the tumult, and at last discouraged the disturbers. The recent International Socialist Congress had discussed the following nine problems: (1) The Agrarian Question, (2) The Relation of the Political Party to Trade Unions.... It was hopeless. The audience melted. And they did not sing as they left.

At last he was through. I remember the sudden transformation. The set, dogged expression left his face, as he looked up from his notes. His back straightened, his eyes flashed—a light came to them which somehow explained how this dry-as-dust professor of economics had suddenly left his class-room and thrown his weak gauntlet at the Tsar of all the Russias. It was the hope which had sustained him all the weary years in Arctic Siberia.

"Working-men of all lands—Unite!" he shouted it out to the almost empty house—his arms wide thrown in his only gesture—"You have nothing to lose but your chains! You have a world to gain!"

There was a brave attempt at a cheer from the few devoted Socialists who remained. The exultation left him as suddenly as it had come, and he sat down, a tired, worn old man. Klein rushed at him, with tears in his eyes. "You've spoiled it all!" he wailed. The old man straightened up once more.

"I did my duty," he said solemnly.

When the returns came in the next night, the Socialist vote had jumped from 250 to 1800. Root had only 1,000. O'Brien, the machine candidate, won with 2,500. At the last moment, the Old Man, seeing that Root was hopelessly beaten, had gone back on his bargain and sent out word to elect O'Brien.

"The funny thing about the Socialists is," Benson said to me, "that they are dead right. Take Lipsky. He's a dub of a politician, but pretty good as a philosopher. Wasn't it old Mark Aurelius who wanted the world ruled by philosophers—not a bad idea—only it's impracticable. They are right to suspect us reformers. Nine out of ten of the settlement bunch are just like Maynard—quitters when it comes to the issue. They'd like to uplift the working class, but they don't want to be mistaken for them. And after all this red light business is only a symptom. You and I and Lipsky can afford to be philosophic about it—we haven't any daughters. But the fathers who live in this dirty district—they ask for bread—not any philosopher's stone. Any way, we fixed Root, and that is what we set out to do."

"It cost me a lot of money," he said later. "And I did not want to go broke just now. There is a bunch of swindlers out in Chicago with a fake shoe polish they want me to market. It will ruin a shoe in two months. They are offering me all kinds of money. I hate to go to it—but I guess I'll have to."

He sat down to his desk and began studying his bills and bank-book.

"How would 'shin-ide' do for a bum shoe-polish?" he said, looking up suddenly. "'Shin-ide. It puts halos on your shoes.'"

Our sudden burst into politics, at least Benson's—my small part in it was never known—attracted a good deal of newspaper notice. Certainly Root realized where his troubles started, and he went heartily about making us uncomfortable.

A couple of mornings after election, the Rev. Mr. Dawn, the head-worker, came to our room, his hands full of newspapers and letters—the "corpus delicti."

I wish I could give more space to Dawn. He was a thoroughly good man. And although we judged him harshly at the time, I think an admirable man. At least, I feel that I ought to think so about him, but some of the old contempt still clings to his memory.

His whole soul was wrapped up in the settlement movement. Socialism was repellent to him because it insisted on the existence of class lines. He had come to America from England because the class distinctions—so closely drawn there—were repugnant to him. He hoped in our young Republic to see a development in the opposite direction. His hope blinded him.

And in spite of his loudly-professed Democracy, he was essentially aristocratic in his ideas of social service. The solution of our manifest ills he expected to find in the good intentions of the "better bred." Their loving kindness was to bring cheer and comfort to the lowly. His faith in the settlement movement was real and great, which of course made him very conservative in the face of any issue which involved its good repute.

"You people seem to have seriously offended Mr. Root," he began.

"You don't say so!" Benson replied. He was shaving.

Dawn could not understand Benson's type of humor.

"I am afraid you have," he said.

Benson cut himself.

"I don't remember having called him anything worse than a cadet," he said sweetly.

"Oh, I see you are joking."

"No. I did call him that."

"I'm sorry to hear you say it. Sorry to have you verify the report that you used intemperate language. I have never met Mr. Root. But he has many friends among...."

"The best people?" Benson interrupted.

"I was about to say among our supporters. It is most regrettable that your ill-advised attack on him may alienate many of them. It seems also that you have dragged the name of the settlement into the mire of Socialism. I must confess that I hardly know—that, in fact, I am at a loss...."

"You needn't worry about it. Whitman and I will leave. All you have to do is to roll your eyes if we are mentioned, and say—'Yes. It was most regrettable—but of course they left the settlement at once!' Invite Root to dinner a couple of times. Walk up and down Stanton Street with him—arm in arm. It will blow over—it will square everything with 'the best people'!"

"I am sorry to hear you speak so bitterly," Dawn said, "But frankly, I think it wisest that you should sever your connection with us. When the welfare of the whole settlement movement is at stake, I cannot allow my personal feelings to blind my...."

"Oh, don't apologize. There is no personal ill-feeling."

And so we left the settlement.

BOOK V

I

Benson and I set up housekeeping in the top floor of an old mansion on Eldridge Street. Once upon a time it had boasted of a fine lawn before it, and of orchards and gardens on all sides. But it had been submerged in the slums. You stepped out of the front door onto the busy sidewalk, and dumb-bell tenements springing up close about it had robbed it of all its former glory. Two mansard bedrooms in the front we threw together, making a large study. We put in an open fire-place, built some settees into the walls and before the windows. There were bookcases all about, some great chairs and a round table for writing and for meals. Of the rooms in the back we arranged two for sleeping, turned one into a kitchen and a fourth into a commodious bath. With his usual love for the incongruous, Norman nicknamed the establishment—"The Teepee."

In my work in the Tombs I had one time been able to clearly show the innocence of an old Garibaldian, who was charged with murder. He felt that he owed his life to me, and so became my devoted slave. His name was Guiseppe and he had fought for Liberty on two continents. It was hard to tell which was the more picturesque, his shaggy mane of white hair or his language—a goulash of words picked up in many lands. Within his disappointed, defeated body he still nursed the ardent flame of idealism. The spirit of Mazzini's "Young Italy," the dream of "The Universal Republic" lived on in spite of all the disillusionment which old age in poverty and exile had brought him.

In the Franco-Prussian War, while campaigning in The Vosges, he had cooked for the Great Liberator. We installed him in the kitchen of the Teepee. His especial pride was a pepper and garlic stew which Garibaldi had praised. This dish threatened to be the death of us. It was the trump he always led when in doubt.

II

During the years I was in the settlement, I received regularly two letters a month from Ann. They were never sentimental. They dealt with matters of fact. Norman's uncle and aunt had interested themselves in her ambition and had allowed her much time to study. At first her work in Pasteur's laboratory had consisted in cooking bouillon for the culture of bacteria. It did not seem very interesting to me, but it fascinated her. She even sent me the receipt and detailed instructions about using it. After awhile she had been promoted to a microscope and original research. She soon attracted Pasteur's attention and he offered her a position as his personal assistant. Her employers were immensely proud of her success and, securing another nurse, released her. She was enthusiastic over this change. She could learn more, she wrote, watching the master than by any amount of original work.

It was part of her character that her letters gave me no picture of Paris. She had no interest in inanimate things, no "geographical sense." I knew the names and idiosyncracies of most of the laboratory assistants, she gave me no idea of Les Invalides, near which she lived. There was much about the inner consciousness of a German girl with whom she roomed, but I did not know whether the laboratory was in a business or residential section of the city. She wrote once of a trip down the river to St. Cloud, and all she thought worth recording was the amusingly idiotic conversation of an American honeymoon couple, who sat in front of her, and did not suspect that she understood English.

Although she wrote so much about people, the characters she described never seemed human to me. She did not understand the interpretive power of a background. Her outlook was extremely individualistic. Auguste Compte wrote somewhere that there is much more of the dead past in us than of the present generation. I would go further and say that there is much more of the present generation in us than there is of ourselves. If we stripped off the influence of our homes, of our friends, of the contempore books we read, of our thousand and one social obligations, there would be precious little left of us. Ann carried this stripping process so far that even Pasteur, for whom she had the warmest admiration, seemed to me a dead mechanism.

She never referred to our personal relations, never spoke of returning to America. And I avoided these subjects in my answers. I was afraid of them.

I thought about her frequently and almost always with passion. I dreamed about her. Fixed somewhere in my brain was a very definite feeling that such emotions ought not to exist apart from love. I was not in love with Ann. Her letters rarely interested me. It was a task to answer them. Our contacts with life were utterly different.

I kept to the "forms" of chastity. There are those who believe that there is some virtue in preserving forms. I have never felt so. It did not require much effort to keep to this manner of life. I was constantly observing prostitution from the view-point of the Tombs. And to anyone who saw these women, as I did, in their ultimate misery and degradation, they could excite nothing but pity. There is no part of the whole problem of crime so utterly nauseating. Although I held myself back from what is called "vice," the state of my mind in those days was not pleasant,—and I think it was not healthy. It was no particular comfort for me to learn that other men, living, as I was, in outward purity, were also tormented by erotic dreams.

Shortly after we moved into the Teepee a letter came from Ann which was bulkier than usual. The first pages were a statement of new plans. An American doctor, who had been working with Pasteur, was returning to establish a bacteriological laboratory in this country. He had offered her a good salary to come with him as his chief assistant. The laboratory was to be built in Cromley, a Jersey suburb, thirty minutes from the city. As soon as it was ready she was coming. It would be interesting, responsible work and she could make a home for her mother who was becoming infirm.

The rest, pages and pages, was a love letter. Every night, these years of separation—so she wrote—had been filled with dreams of me. As always she put her work above her love. Bacteriology was the great fact of her life. She held it a treason to reality when, as so often happens, people lose their sense of proportion and allow love to usurp the place of graver things. But now that her work brought her towards her love, she looked forward to a fuller life—a life adorned.

The letter brought a great unrest. Her passionate call to me certainly found an echo. I lost much sleep—tormented, intoxicated with the images her words called up. Years before an immense loneliness had pushed me into the comfort of her arms. This was no longer the case. My life was full, almost over-full of work and friends. But the pull towards her seemed even more irresistible now than before.

Marriage seemed to me the only worthy solution. But even more clearly than in the hospital days I knew I did not want to marry her. It was, I suppose, above all because I did not love her. It was partly because I liked my bachelor freedom, the coming and going without reference to anyone. It was partly my deep attachment to Norman. I felt he would not care for Ann. Anyway it would break up our household in the Teepee.

At last a letter came setting the date of her arrival. It coincided with a long-standing engagement I had made to lecture on criminology in a western college. I had an entirely cowardly sense of relief in the realization that the meeting and adjustment were postponed. But I thought of little else. Returning from my lectures, on the long ride across half the continent, with the knowledge that Ann was awaiting me in the city, that I could postpone things no longer, I won to a decision. I would see her at the earliest convenience—it seemed more straightforward to see her than to write—and tell her that I did not wish to recommence our intimacy. I might not be able to explain why I wanted to break with her, but I could at least make it plain that I did.

On my return, I found a letter waiting me in the Teepee. It contained her telephone number and a query as to when I could come out for dinner. I called her up at once. I would come that very day. The train out to Cromley seemed perversely slow. I was impatient to be through with it, to get back undisturbed to my work. It was only a short walk from the station to her house. The row of gingerbread cottages along her street is one of the fixtures of my memories.

Ann opened the door for me. She held me out at arm's length a minute.

"Woof!" she said, "You've grown old." Then she gave me a sudden kiss. "Come. You must meet Mother."

In the little parlor, Mrs. Barton greeted me cordially. She was a tall, angular New England woman, dried up in body, but her eyes were still young. I have seen many women like her down Cape Cod way. But her presence threw me into as much confusion as if she had been some threatening sort of an ogress. I could not fight out this matter with Ann before her mother. And some instinct warned me that I must plunge into my subject at once, if I wished to do it at all.

"Dinner is ready," Ann said in the midst of my embarrassment.

"This is my little grandson, William," Mrs. Barton said of a tow-headed youngster, of three, who caught hold of her skirt.

Ann picked him up.

"Can't you shake hands like a gentleman, Billy Boy?" she asked. "No? Well, you don't have to."

She swung him into a high chair opposite mine. I have never been more embarrassed in my life. It was all so different from what I had foreseen. I suppose I had expected some heroics. It was entirely common-place. It was hard to keep in mind that a big moral issue was at stake. Mrs. Barton was evidently taking my measure. And "Billy Boy" glared at me across the table out of his big, inane, blue eyes.

Ann did the talking, telling us of the wonders of her new laboratory and something of the personality of her chief. She looked younger than when she went away. She had filled out considerably and her face had lost the oldish, narrow look which I remembered. She had that surety of gesture and tone which comes only to those who have found the work they are fitted to. Above all she seemed happy, and contented and merry. Each glance I stole at her told me it would be harder than I had thought to keep my resolution. It was impossible to look at "Billy Boy," he would have stared the Sphinx out of countenance. So I gave most of my attention to Mrs. Barton.

When the dinner was over, we moved into the parlor for coffee. In a few minutes Mrs. Barton took the youngster to bed. The door had hardly closed behind them when Ann's arms were about me. There was a broken flood of words. I do not remember what she said. But somehow it seemed as if I were saying it myself, so wonderfully her words expressed my own longings. A great happiness had fallen upon me. Perhaps this passion was not right, perhaps it was neither moral nor wise, but it was overwhelmingly a part of me. It would have been utter self-repudiation to deny it.

In the morning I again asked Ann to marry me. It was my last ditch.

"Don't," she said, "dearest, don't talk of marriage. Why? Why do you want to take our love into a courthouse? Once for all—let's fight this out and be finished with it."

It was all very clear to her. Promises of love were futile. She had loved once before, had thought it would last forever. She was glad there had been no promises.

"I'm older now—not so likely to change—but why go to law about it? Why do you want to marry me? Isn't it partly because some people—perhaps your own family—would be shocked at a free love union? Well, haven't I a right to think of my people? My sister, who's dead, Billy's mother—she didn't think it was necessary to have a wedding ring and all that. My people would be grieved if I got married. They'd think I'd conformed—gone back on my principles. It would break mother's heart. It would seem like a repudiation of her way of living. And she's the finest mother anyone ever had. Even if I didn't believe in free love, I'd never get married on her account."

Despite what Ann told me I was decidedly embarrassed to meet her mother at breakfast. But when we appeared, Mrs. Barton kissed me. Her hands on my shoulders, she searched my face with her eyes.

"Ann loves you very much, my boy," she said. "Be good to her."

The breakfast was a far pleasanter meal than the dinner had been. Even Billy Boy's stare was not quite so hostile.

Yet as I rode into town on the early train my scruples came back. To be sure I had very little respect for the "sanctity" of formal marriage. I had seen too much of it in the Tombs. Certainly no amount of legal or religious ceremony is a guarantee of bliss or even of common decency. The minor marriage failures are attended to in the civil divorce courts. The domestic difficulties which are threshed out in the criminal courts show very clearly that there is no magic in church ritual to transform a brute into a good husband. Ten wedding rings will not change an alcoholic woman into a good mother. And then I was always witnessing "forced" marriages. Such was the cheap and easy solution in cases of seduction and rape in the second degree. Our law givers have decreed eighteen as the age of consent. The seduction of a girl under that arbitrary age is rape. Most of our grandmothers were married earlier. But the law is too majestic a thing to consider such details. It deals with general principles. If it has been flouted, Justice must be done though the heavens fall. However, it is an expensive matter to send a man to prison. So he is offered the alternative of marrying the girl. Justice gives no heed to the morality nor happiness of the two young people who have fallen in trouble, cares not at all for the next generation. Send the guilty couple to the altar. Their sins are forgiven them. The conventions have been vindicated. The juggernaut is appeased. No. I was very little impressed with the virtue of "legal" marriage.

But I had a strong, if rather indefinite, ideal of a "true" marriage, a real mating, a close copartnership, a community of interest and a comradely growth, sanctified by a mutual passion. I saw no chance of this in my relation to Ann.

At the Tombs that day, I tried, and to a large extent succeeded, in forgetting the problem. But back in the Teepee, at dinner with Norman, it seized me again. Even Guiseppe noticed my preoccupation and walked about on tiptoe.

"What's eating you?" Norman asked as we drank our coffee. "Any way I can lend a hand?"

"A woman," I said.

"That lets me out." And after a while he muttered "Hell."

"What do you think," I asked—suddenly resolved to get an outside opinion—"about one's right to be intimate with a woman, outside of marriage?"

"I don't think about it at all," he snapped. "Not nowadays. Time was when I didn't think of much else. It didn't do me any good. The times are rotten—out of joint. Everything we do is out of joint—inevitably. Ninety per cent of us want to do what's right and as it is ninety-nine per cent of us ball things up. I don't think much of marriage. I tried it once—divorced."

This was news to me.

"I don't like to talk about it. No use now. It was a miserable affair. I tried to be decent—did all I knew how to make it right. But I guess the girl suffered more than I did—which is one of the reasons why I hate God. Some people tumble into happiness—but it seems luck to me—pure luck."

I cannot recall that evening's talk in detail. Norman was unusually reticent. It was only by questions that I could draw him out.

"What do you think about free love?" I asked.

"It's a contradiction in terms. There's nothing free about love. It's tying oneself up in the tightest kind of a knot. A man will not only work his fingers off for the woman he loves—he'll have his hair cut the way she likes. A person in love doesn't want to be free. The hell of it is when the slavery continues after the love is dead. Don't try to free love—what's needed is the emancipation of the loveless."

We were silent for a while, very much distressed that we could find no solid anchorage. I was about to ask some other question when he broke out again on his own line of thought.

"Abolishing marriage won't do it. These Anarchists are naïve. They want to make things simple—say free love would simplify the matter. But all progress—all evolution—is towards more complex forms. Our brains are better than monkey brains because they're more complex. This "simple life" talk is rank reaction. I don't want to see laws abolished, but brought up to date. Civilization means ever increasing complexity in the forms of life. And we try to govern it by Roman law, plus a hodge podge of mediæval common law. Not less laws—but modern laws."