The Subterranean Brotherhood by Julian Hawthorne

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I am not a sybarite or an epicure. For fifteen years before I was sent
to prison I lived on the hardest and most Spartan diet, eating as little
food as possible and that of the simplest kind. Wheat, milk, a few green
vegetables, and fruit made my menus. I was therefore better fortified
against hardships than the majority of prisoners; I could hold out
against starvation longer; but against the poison of rotten or bad food
I had no protection.

The wardens and the chief clerks of prisons often wish, for motives of
their own, to make an economical showing, and perhaps do not much care
if it is made at the expense of the health or lives of prisoners. Some
friends of mine in Atlanta prison and myself made an attempt to
determine just what was paid out per man in the prison for subsistence;
we quietly obtained statements from men in the kitchen and commissary
departments, and made our calculations. After careful revision, the
figures showed that we were being fed at the rate of from eight to
eleven cents per head, a day.

About that time, a great scientific discovery was announced by the chief
steward. Food, he had been informed, contained a certain amount of heat
and power; and these heat units, called calories, could be estimated for
any given article of diet. (As I write this, an editorial on the subject
in a recent issue of a New York newspaper states the matter in terms
which I am happy to reproduce.) "Physiologists have determined by
repeated experiments that a definite quantity of certain foods furnishes
a definite number of calories or heat units, which produce a certain
quantity of energy in the animal or human body.... In twenty-four hours
a normal man of about one hundred and thirty pounds at rest, needs 1680
calories or heat units, while a man doing severe physical labor would
require sufficient food to produce 3000 calories.... Since the
efficiency of labor depends upon the energy of the body and this energy
or power is produced by the food, it is not difficult to calculate the
actual outlay required for this purpose.... The household requirements
of a family where two servants are kept would at this rate be from $1.00
to $1.40 a day, a sum sufficient to furnish all the energy for all
purposes of normal maintenance."

Such being the case, our steward figured that the convicts could be well
enough supported by about 2500 calories apiece; and upon making a
scientific estimate of the calories in our average bill-of-fare, he
found that we were being overfed rather than the contrary. Meat, so many
calories; soup, so many; sweet potatoes, so many; bread, so many; and so
on. It was found possible, on this basis, to retrench here and there;
the bills were reduced--it was hoped that we might ultimately beat even
eight cents. The sole difficulty appeared to be that the men, the
subjects of the experiment, began incomprehensibly and perhaps
maliciously to starve.

I was fortunate enough to have access to a physician (a fellow
prisoner), of forty years' eminence in his profession, who solved the
enigma for me. The sum of his comment was this: "Put a Delmonico dinner
in one bucket, and an equal bulk of swill or garbage in another; the
number of calories may be the same in both. The steward, in his
calculation, has forgotten to consider the condition in which the food
is served--its eatableness, in short. If men could devour swill, it
would be all right; but if they cannot, they will starve in spite of
calories."

So the steward's calories became a byword and a mockery in the prison
for many weeks afterward.

Similar conditions, perhaps due to the same cause, seem to have obtained
at Sing Sing and elsewhere. It is not enough that prison food should be
sufficient in amount; it must also be of a quality such that the men are
able to get it down their throats. Nor are the doctor's salts a remedy;
their violent and abnormal action finally paralyze the excretory and
digestive powers of the organism, and the man dies from poisons
generated by indigestible food in his own system. Even keeping him in
the dark hole fails to recuperate him, though it has been constantly
tried at Atlanta, and very likely in other reformatory institutions.

Plenty of vigorous and hearty outdoor exercise would help much; not the
exercise of prison toil, which but deepens the darkness of the heart;
but exercise for its own sake, for the cheer and excitement of it. Much
has been said of the baseball at Atlanta Penitentiary; and doubtless it
has been of benefit. But only a handful of the prisoners, and
nine-tenths of them negroes, play the game; the others can only stand
and look on. The games occur, weather permitting, once a week, on
Saturdays. From Saturday at half past three until Monday morning at half
past seven, the men are locked in their cells, absolutely inactive in
body, and abandoned to such mental activities as, for the most part,
breed no good either for themselves or others. The only outlet is the
Sunday church service hour--a crowded session in a blank hall, with
rifles ready to subdue any disorder. A very apostle might fail in his
efforts under such circumstances; and very apostles are few.

A man who is sick and sad day after day and year after year, and
conscious of his impotence to amend his state, is in no mood for moral
reform. Much of the sickness might be averted if the medical treatment
at the outset of disease were such as to encourage the patients to avail
themselves of advice. But each man, as he comes up in the sick line
every morning, is met with indifference or insults; he is presumed to be
a malingerer unless he can prove himself genuine on the instant; the
only other recourse is to become so sick as to be beyond help of
medicine, and then, taken belated to the hospital, to die outright. The
consequence is that the men will suffer silently in their cells rather
than appeal to the doctor; and many diseases become ineradicable from
this cause.

Even a convict, when he is miserable and weak from illness, shrinks from
facing rough and unsympathetic handling and words in the doctor's room,
with a good chance of being sent to the hole if he remonstrates. The
doctor of a prison could be its good angel, if he would.

XIV

THE POLICY OF FALSEHOOD

The subterranean brotherhood waxes curiously indignant over being lied
to by prison officials. For why should criminals, whose success in their
trade must depend largely on lies either spoken or acted, be resentful
when they are paid back in their own base coin? I am inclined to think
that the anomaly may be due to some survival in prisoners of the old
belief, that honor and fair play do, or should, exist in officers of
justice; although their own experience should admonish them that
officers of prisons, at least, cultivate the art and practise of
fighting the devil with fire (as we say), and so far from ever thinking
of keeping faith with a convict, study the art of deceiving and
hoodwinking him, and appear to derive no small amusement from their
results. Indeed, any tendency on the part of a guard or other official
in a prison to deal honestly and above board with their charges would at
once awaken suspicion of his loyalty to the "system," and his superiors
would be apt to improve the first opportunity of getting rid of him.

The lies told to prisoners are sometimes told for art's sake merely--for
the delight of the artist in his fabrication. There is fun in overcoming
the suspicions and skepticism of some old timer, and beguiling him into
the belief that for once, and at last, he really is getting trustworthy
information--that he has finally succeeded in touching the elusive hem
of the robe of Truth. But commonly the official liar has some practical
object in view. This object is usually the tightening of the prison's
grip upon the convict; not only to strengthen the bonds which confine
his body, but to bring his spirit or soul under more complete subjection
and to make him feel that so far from moral reform being the end sought
in his incarceration, he will best consult his private interests by
abandoning all thoughts of decency and honor, and acting, with the
officials, against the welfare and hopes of his own fellows.

The consequence of the falsehood policy in prisons is, for one thing,
that the men most worthless morally are uniformly those who get most
favors. Men of unbroken spirit are handled in a hostile manner, and are
subjected to a regimen calculated either to kill or cure their obstinacy
and themselves. "You have no right to do this--there is no law for it!"
the convict may protest. The reply is a sneer: "What are you going to do
about it?" What do you think you would do in such circumstances?--write
to the President, or to some Senator or Congressman? awaken the country
to these iniquities? The warden and the clerk will smile over your
letter, and drop it in the waste-basket, or will make it the basis of an
adverse report against you to the Department,--insubordination,
incorrigibility, insanity perhaps.

Or, if you reserve your protest till after you get out, and can then
find any medium for ventilating it, the prison authorities will promptly
and smilingly "welcome an investigation"; and the Department will
eagerly send down some old friend and boon companion of the officials,
to make a "strict investigation," "without fear or favor." Now, at last,
the truth shall be known, let it hurt whom it may! So the severe and
incorruptible inspector comes down; and after snubbing and insulting a
few prisoners, and taking notes of the information of a few snitches,
and dining and wining with the officials, and inspecting the country in
the government automobile, he goes back to Washington with the
reassuring news that the reports of abuses, where they were not absolute
fabrications, were gross exaggerations.

Is this an imaginative sketch--or colored a little--or a good deal? How
shall it be determined?--for I am only an ex-convict, and we all know
what an ex-convict's word is worth. I can only suggest that, for your
own individual satisfaction at any rate, you commit a bona fide crime
and get sentenced to prison for it. If you survive, we can converse
further on the subject. Or--to offer a bolder suggestion yet--perhaps
the head of the Department himself might take a hand; perhaps he would
oblige us by breaking a law. Let him be handcuffed and brought to
Atlanta or elsewhere--we are not particular--and there be numbered and
U.S.P.'d and set to work. After a ten years' experience, or, if his time
be valuable, a year and a day might do, let him write his report, and I
for one will abide by it.

The prison policy of falsehood may be illustrated by the uses to which
the parole law is put. This unfortunate measure was no doubt conceived
by its parents in love and charity, to supply prisoners with a stimulus
to reform by rewarding them for it with early release from imprisonment.
If a man's conduct while serving his sentence had been orderly and
obedient to rules, he was to be freed after serving about one-third of
his appointed time; but he was required, for a reasonable period
thereafter, to make monthly reports to the prison, and to show that he
was usefully employed and was not frequenting drinking saloons or
otherwise going astray. A parole board was appointed to carry out the
law and to look after the paroled prisoner, helping him if necessary to
get employment. Meetings of the board were to be held at stated times,
to pass upon applications for parole; it was to consist of the warden
and the doctor of the prison, together with the president of the parole
board, who officiated at all Federal prisons, and who would, naturally,
be the superior official of the three. But two members of the board
would form a quorum; and meetings of the board at times other than those
regularly required could be held if thought desirable.

This looked humane and innocent, and raised great hopes in prisoners;
and an improvement in their general demeanor was soon observable.
Question soon arising as to whether life prisoners could be brought
under the new law, it was decided that lifers who had served fifteen
years were eligible, if of good record,--not an extravagant act of
mercy,--and in obtaining this concession it was made known that the
warden of Atlanta Penitentiary was instrumental. Of course the
reputation of Atlanta as a model and humane prison was greatly enhanced
thereby.

But the prisoners, and perhaps the framers of the law also, had
overlooked one little word in the language of the law, which grew to
have a large significance afterward. The language is, that if the
prisoner's conduct has been correct, etc., he may be granted parole. If,
for that harmless looking "may," had been substituted "shall," or
"must," the secret annals of federal prisons since then would have been
spared much rascality, corruption, cruelty, torture and death; and
prisoners would not have hated and distrusted their keepers as they do
now, and subordination on one side and humanity on the other would have
received an impetus.

That "may" rendered it optional with the board to grant or to refuse
parole in any given case; they might not only determine whether or not
the conduct of the applicant had been, while serving his sentence, good
enough to justify clemency; but also whether, even then, it were
expedient to exercise it. No matter how unexceptionable the behavior of
a prisoner were shown to be, it was open to the board to say to him, "We
hold that your liberation would be inimical to the welfare of society,
and we cannot therefore recommend it to the Department."

The prisoner, going before the board unsupported by the advice of
counsel, had no further recourse; he must go back to his cell feeling
that all his efforts to be obedient (persisted in through what
discouragements only prisoners know) had been futile; that he was not a
whit better off than was a man who had defied every regulation, and was
worse off in so far as he had taken all his pains and indulged all his
hopes for nothing. He must serve out his time; for if he renewed his
application at the next meeting of the board, he was told that nothing
could be done in his case except upon the presentation of "new
evidence."

New evidence of what? The obstacle he had to meet was the arbitrary
opinion, or fiat, of the board that it would not be a good thing to set
him free; with what argument, except his good conduct, which had already
proved unavailing, could he hope to reverse it? The decision left him
helpless and hopeless, and with a sense of despotic injustice on the
part of the authorities which was anything but conducive to good
discipline in him or in his comrades who were conversant with his fate.

Obviously, however, there was a weak point in this kind of arbitrary
rulings of the board; it was conceivable that some enterprising
Attorney-General might want to know why the board had not held the good
conduct specified in the law to be sufficient ground for freeing the
man. To guard against this, the services of a subordinate called the
parole officer were called in. This person's normal functions as
indicated in the law were to help paroled men to procure employment, to
aid them in general in their efforts toward a better life, and to stand
by them as an authoritative and kindly friend. But he was now required
to play a very different part.

As soon as a man applied for parole, the parole officer betook himself
to the place where the applicant had formerly lived or been known, and
there busied himself in unearthing whatever gossip and scandal of a
hostile nature any enemy might be willing to supply. There was no time
limit on these revelations, nor were any apparent precautions taken to
determine whether the evil reports were founded in fact; the tale bearer
was not compelled to testify under oath, and his story might refer to
incidents which had happened years before, and which had nothing to do
with the crime for which the prisoner was now undergoing sentence. With
this budget of information the parole officer returned to his superiors,
who were now prepared for any contingency.

When the prisoner comes up for examination, and has handed in his report
of good conduct while incarcerated, the president of the board fixes a
distrustful eye upon him, and says in effect, "Your behavior here seems
to have been unobjectionable; but the board cannot take the
responsibility of granting parole on that ground alone. It desires to be
informed what you were doing in such and such a place, in such and such
a year? Is it not true that you were arrested in this or that year for
this or that offense? Has your career, in short, been absolutely
blameless during the whole course of your life? Because, unless you can
prove such to be the case, it will indicate a predisposition to
law-breaking on your part which will render it imprudent for the board
to recommend you for parole to the Department."

The president has a sheaf of papers in his hand, which he glances over
significantly while the mind of the prisoner goes groping back over the
past, asking himself what he has done amiss in forgotten years, and who
can be his accusers. He has no counsel beside him to tell him that he is
being tried before an unauthorized tribunal, on unsupported testimony,
on charges irrelevant to that for which he is now undergoing punishment;
or to remind him that the judge who passed sentence on him had specified
that if his behavior were good while serving that sentence, he would be
eligible for parole--that he had, perhaps, given him a longer sentence
than he would otherwise have done, upon this very understanding; and
that, consequently, the parole board was now arrogating the power to
override the purpose of the federal court, and to inflict additional and
unwarranted punishment upon him for something which he may or may not
have done in the past, or for which, if he had done it and been
convicted, he may already have served sentence. He has no one to argue
thus for him; he feels that he is alone and among enemies; and he can
make no effective defense. And the parole officer stands by with a sad
countenance, as of one who had done the best he could for a protege, but
was powerless to stem the tide of justice.

It can't be done, legally or justly; but it is done; that is the gist of
the matter. There is no one to know the wrong and to insist upon the
right; and the wrong is perpetrated. Unnumbered victims of it, in every
federal prison of the country, substantiate this fact. The parole
board--which means, in practise, its president--exercises more power
than the federal court, and there is no appeal from his decision. At his
will, a man may be tried twice for the same offense, behind closed
doors, without aid of counsel. He may be condemned, though the offense
was never committed except in the imagination of an enemy. We tell our
convicts that they have no civic rights; but it is not generally
understood, I think, that the Spanish Inquisition of the Middle Ages can
properly be reproduced in Twentieth Century America even with men behind
the bars.

But let that pass. Things are done under the parole law worse than this.
If it were used merely as a means to induce unruly men to be docile, no
one could complain; if men thus induced should after all be deprived of
the reward they had earned, we might condone it. But what if we find the
parole board turned into an accessory of the secret service or spy
system, and learn that an applicant for parole, whether or not he have
maintained good conduct during his term, may yet hope for a favorable
report on his case if he will consent to betray some man on whom the
police have not yet been able to lay their hand?

Here comes a postoffice thief, for example. He was known to have had
confederates, but they escaped. He is up for parole, with only an
indifferent prison record to plead for him. "We do not find your case
meritorious," says the president to him (in substance), "but there were
two or three others concerned in your crime. If you are able to furnish
their names to the board, with such other information as may lead to
their arrest and conviction, we might see our way to recommend leniency
in your matter." I will not guarantee that the president expresses
himself in terms quite so explicit, but he makes himself perfectly
understood, and the prisoner perfectly understands that his liberty is
purchasable at the price of treachery.

I don't know what percentage of the miserable creatures accept the
ignoble offer; but I know personally of many who refused it. And I do
not need to ask what are the prospects of an honest and worthy career
for those who chose to be traitors. If they go to ruin, is not the
parole board responsible? On the other hand, who shall blame the convict
if he accedes to the bargain? The alternative presented to him is one
which might cause even virtue to waver, and convicts are not supposed to
be virtuous, especially when such an example as this action of the board
is set them. The alternative is liberty, or continued incarceration with
the strong probability of increased severity of treatment, and always
the off chance of death.

Meanwhile, is there not something humiliating in the reflection that a
tribunal authorized and appointed by the Government of the United States
should descend to such practises? Or are we content to accept the spy
system in toto, cost what it may? Perhaps, however, the president of the
parole board is prepared to deny that he ever entered into any such
compact with a prisoner; and perhaps the Department of Justice will be
astonished to hear that he ever did. Is the thing true, or not true? I
think men exist who have excellent reasons to believe, and who may be
willing to testify, that it is.

But take the case of a prisoner who had no confederates--how does the
board deal with him? According to my information, which includes my
personal experience, question is put to the applicant whether or not he
admits himself guilty of the crime for which he is undergoing sentence?
My own reply was, "Not guilty"; and though the president was very
courteous to me, and gave me every assurance that I might expect
favorable action on my application, as a matter of fact and of record
the recommendation made to the Attorney-General was that my application
be denied, and denied it accordingly was. But in other cases nearly
contemporary with mine, which came to my knowledge, the reply of "not
guilty" called forth the rejoinder that in that case the matter was not
one for the board to pass on, but should be referred to executive
action--that is, that the President of the United States should be
petitioned for a pardon. Some men are so persistent or so infatuated as
to take the suggestion seriously; but their petition does not bear
fruit; probably its path to the President is by way of the Department of
Justice, where it is either pigeonholed, or reaches him with an
endorsement to the effect that it is not a case for clemency. But in
such cases as came to my knowledge, the President never saw the petition
at all.

And what happens if our man pleads guilty? Why, in that event he is told
that such a person as he should not have made application for
parole--that he has not been sufficiently punished--that the best he
should hope for is to serve out his sentence, less the regular allowance
for good time. It is a case, in short, of heads the board wins, tails
the convict loses; and he withdraws, wondering, perhaps, what the board
is for. But let him beware of becoming restive under his disappointment,
or he may forfeit his good time too.

That the parole law is interpreted, under all conditions, as being a
favor or privilege and not a right earned by good conduct, is perhaps no
more than one might expect; but no prisoner who lacks powerful friends,
or whose parole does not in some way inure to the advantage of the
prison quite as much as to his own, can make his application with
assured hope of success. Upon the whole, prisoners feel that parole will
not be granted if any means can be found or devised to prevent it; the
good report of an entire county where a man formerly lived will not
prevail against the adverse report of some inspector--one enemy of a
prisoner outweighs, in the board's estimation, the favorable words of
many friends.

Moreover, men released on parole live in constant dread of the secret
service, for they know that unjust and trivial pretexts are often made
the occasion of their re-arrest; and a paroled man re-arrested must
serve out his whole time without rebate, and not including the period
during which he was at liberty. Some supervision by the Government is of
course proper; but the men feel it to be hostile, not friendly or
helpful; that any error they fall into or mishap they meet with will be
construed against them, not in their favor. In short, under the outward
forms of liberty, they are still in prison, and are often discouraged
from doing their best by this sleepless fear of the prowling spy.

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