The Subterranean Brotherhood by Julian Hawthorne

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I happened to be in the corridor one day when one of the guards, a tall,
strapping fellow, was bringing downstairs a convict of stature much less
than his own, a poor half demented youth, whose dementia was
unfortunately wont to express itself in foul or abusive language, which
came from him almost involuntarily, without any particular personal
application. The two men were half way down the final flight of steps,
when, without any visible pretext, but, I presume, on account of some
unlucky epithet or utterance let fall by the convict, the guard suddenly
seized the youth violently by the throat, hammered his head against the
wall, and dragged him headlong down the rest of the descent. They were
now in the corridor; the man, bewildered and giddy, was whirled round
and shoved to the head of another short flight of steps leading out to
the yard; the door was open. The guard came behind him, caught him by
the collar, and exerting his strength, hurled him through the door; he
fell prone on the ground, and lay there.

Here, my own view of the incident was cut off; but ten minutes afterward
I met a comrade, who, bristling with wrath, described the continuation
of the affray, which he had just witnessed. He said that the guard,
following the man, grasped him by the coat and jerked him off the ground
and shoved him, staggering, toward the isolation building on the other
side of the yard. There happened to be two visitors, a man and a woman,
under convoy of another guard, passing at the moment; the first guard
was by this time too much blinded by his own passion to notice them; the
other laughed, and apparently reassured the visitors. Upon nearing the
isolation building, a third guard, who was on duty at the gate, ran up,
and struck the prisoner several times on the head with his club. The man
put up his arms in an effort to ward off the blows, or to beg for mercy,
but without effect; he was dragged between his two assailants to the
deputy's office, as if he were a dangerous giant struggling to get away,
though, in fact, he was quite helpless and partly insensible. From
there, as we learned later, he was taken to a dark cell, charged with I
know not what misdeeds, and nothing was ever done to either of the
licensed ruffians who had mistreated him.

I recall such scenes with reluctance; they are ugly things to think of;
but some illustrations are necessary in order to put in your mind some
notion of what jails mean. An episode which, as it turned out, had
elements of the ridiculous, but which came within a hair's breadth of
having very fatal consequences, occurred a short time before I became an
inmate; it is still spoken of with emotion by those who participated in
it.

A large number of prisoners, some twenty or more, I think, were
collected in one of the basement work-rooms, when a fire broke out
there. The smoke soon became suffocating, and crept up into the ranges
above, alarming the whole prison. But conditions in the room itself were
immediately intolerable; the door had been locked, and the men were
jammed together there, frantically shrieking for the door to be opened.
Death for all of them would be a matter of only a few minutes. The guard
in the corridor above, a huge, burly personage, with the brains, it
would be flattery to say, of a calf, and exceedingly punctilious in his
notions, came down the stairs to see what was the matter. One of the men
shouted out to him, forgetting decorum in the desperate hurry of the
moment, "Why don't you open the door, you ---- ---- ----?" Now, it was
not only against the rules that the door should be opened between
certain hours, but it was altogether irregular and intolerable to
miscall an official. The guard stopped short. "Who's that called me a
----?" he demanded indignantly. But there was none to answer him, for
the men were by that time strangling and fainting.

Down the stairs at this juncture came one of the higher officials,
choking and gasping. "Open that door, why don't you?" he managed to call
out, seeing the guard below him. "I'm trying to find out," replied the
latter, "who it was called me a ----." The higher official was
understood to say something which penetrated the hide of his
subordinate, and stirred him at last to action--not a moment too soon.
The door was unlocked, and the captives tumbled and crawled out. The
burly personage, who rated punctilio and seemly language above the lives
of men, still retains his position in the corridor; but the prisoner who
had insulted his dignity has never been identified.

But what can be expected of men in the position of guards of a prison?
The function is abnormal, and unless it be undertaken from high motives
and with an exceptional endowment of intelligence and humane feeling, it
will steadily deteriorate a man; from being at the start to all
practical purposes a social derelict, incompetent for productive
employment, and often suffering from an incurable disease, he will sink
lower and lower in the scale of manhood and morality. He has two chief
aims in life--to requite himself upon defenseless convicts for the
kicking-out bestowed upon himself by the community; and to get an
increase of pay.

I had not been three days in the prison, when one of them came to me in
my cell and asked me to write for him a letter to the Department urging
a raise of salary. So be it by all means, if higher pay will get better
men; but men who can command higher pay do not care to do such work.

Since my guard saw no impropriety in asking for it--though, of course,
it was against the rules--I wrote his petition for him. The rules
governing guards are explicit, but so far at least as they regard
treatment of prisoners they are freely disregarded. For example, guards
are forbidden by the rules to address prisoners insultingly, to apply
names or epithets to them, to lay hands upon them or to strike them
"upon whatever provocation" unless they believe their own lives are in
danger. A rabbit has as much chance of throttling a bulldog as the
ordinary prisoner of endangering the life of a guard; yet hardly a
prisoner in the penitentiary has not repeatedly either undergone or
witnessed, or both, insults and physical violence offered by guards to
the men. As to the impropriety of asking favors of the men, the guards
might plead distinguished precedent for it. One of the higher officials
of the penitentiary summoned me to his office one morning. He informed
me that he intended to devote his life to prison work, but that he was
still a young man, and that advancement was slow and difficult. "When
you were outside, you lived in society, and knew a lot of big men," he
was kind enough to say; "you will be going out of here again before
long. If you should find it in your way to speak a good word for me in
quarters where it would be likely to do me good, I should appreciate
it." I should perhaps have premised, lest he appear in the light of
asking something for nothing, that he had opened the conversation by
handing back to me the Ingersoll watch of which I had been deprived on
entering the institution. I knew that my young friend and benefactor was
deep in the darksome intricacies of prison politics, and was just then
getting rather the worst of it; but I was unable to give him any
positive assurance that my influence with the Department, or elsewhere,
would suffice to give him a lift.

Favoritism rules in all parts of the prison administration; it and
prison politics are, indeed, twin curses of our whole prison system. In
spite of all the specious official promises of reward for good conduct
in the form of parole and obedience to the rules, every prisoner knows
that they are apples of Sodom; the most correct conduct, maintained for
years, will gain a man nothing, while a worthless and heedless fellow,
if he has a friend among the men above, will have his way smoothed for
him. An official's pet snitch enjoys all manner of indulgences in the
way of food and freedoms, and if he be an intelligent fellow, he can
ride on his superior's neck and influence his conduct to a surprising
degree. Again, certain guards, in the eyes of their superiors, can do no
wrong whatever wrong they do; and others, who are apt to be men who
retain some conscientious notions as to their duties, find their path
difficult. Some guards, too, though they may be obnoxious to their
officers, are not dismissed because they know too much, and might reveal
uncomfortable facts were they cashiered. I could name an example of
this--a young guard who, a few years ago, committed a cold blooded crime
upon a convict, for which in the outside world he would have been liable
to a hanging. But the prison authorities did not find it expedient to
punish him, and he still saunters about the prison, with his cap tilted
on his head, and his rifle. He is a good shot, and is employed a good
deal on the towers, where quick marksmanship might be useful. He knows
too much.

Evil conditions breed evil deeds and dangerous secrets. Conditions have
improved somewhat during the last two or three years, but the
improvement has been more outward than inward. One day, two or three
years ago, suddenly appeared at the gates the Attorney-General from
Washington. He had not been looked for so early. He walked straight into
the dining-room, where he noticed a number of convicts standing up with
their noses against the wall. "What is this for?" he asked one of them.
The convict couldn't exactly tell; he was waiting to be had up for
examination. "How long are you kept there?" "From seven in the morning
till seven at night." "Have you had anything to eat?" The man had not,
nor any opportunity to discharge the functions of nature either.

This Attorney-General, in Washington, had never showed himself a friend
of convicts; but when he saw--and smelt!--this comparatively slight
instance of prison discipline, his gorge rose. He ordered all the
culprits to the kitchen for a meal, and issued an edict against this
punishment, and against some other things that he discovered. What he
would have done had he seen the dark cells, and the condition of the men
who had been kept there for a few months, may be conjectured. The public
is indeed assured that the use of these cells has long been
discontinued; but seven or eight hundred prisoners know that, as late as
last October, a certain convict commonly referred to as "the old
Englishman" was hung up by the wrists in one of them. And there were
others.

Prison officials are political appointees, whose controlling aim must
therefore be the security and prosperity of themselves, and only
afterward (if at all) the welfare and just and decent treatment of the
convicts. They have their salaries (niggardly enough if we regard the
work they are supposed to do, but affluent in view of what they actually
do), and they have the government appropriations for expenses and
supplies for the penitentiary, which they are expected to handle
economically. But economy, and decent and humane treatment of prisoners
in a jail, are incompatible, even were the men kept steadily and
productively at work under proper conditions, and paid for what they
produced. A jail properly administered would be one of the most
expensive investments in the world; but Congress, as at present advised,
thinks only of cutting down the already miserably insufficient stipend;
and that warden who can, at the end of his fiscal year, show a balance
in favor of the government, may depend upon holding his position, and
nobody considers the mortal tears, misery and outrage from which that
favorable balance is derived. For not only if it be wisely and honestly
expended is the supply of money insufficient, but much of it is wasted
by mere ignorance, negligence and incompetence, and much more of it--as
recent exposures in newspapers indicate--leaks away in the form of
graft. For all this waste the convict must pay in privations and
cruelties not authorized or contemplated by a government none too
considerate at best; and men above grow fat and rosy gilled.

But nothing is so difficult to prove or so easy to conceal as graft; all
the ingenuity and resources of the grafters are primarily and
undeviatingly devoted to covering their tracks. So much is allowed for
maintenance, subsistence, construction; the bills and receipts are
shown; all seems right. And yet, somehow, buildings remain unfinished,
grounds are a raw wilderness, men are clad in rags inherited from
previous generations, and are starved and abused. Meanwhile, a warden on
a four or five thousand dollar salary contrives to live at the rate of
ten or twelve, and may own valuable real estate in the city.

Do miracles occur in jails, after having been so long discontinued
elsewhere? Or must we at last realize that the comfort and soft living
of a handful of rascals is obtained at the cost of the flesh and blood
and despair of thousands of men--I believe there are five hundred
thousand convicts in this country annually--gagged and helpless, to whom
we give the name of convicts, but who, whatever their crimes, are still
our own flesh and blood, brothers of ours, our own very selves but for
special circumstances for which we can claim no merit; but for their
souls and lives we are responsible, and to strive to redeem and succor
them our own intelligent self-interest should prompt us to spend and
labor lavishly. Instead of that, our habitual attitude toward them is
that of indifference or even hostility. For why should we honest people
waste our good money and precious sympathy on a convict? Has he not
already robbed us enough?

It would be a shallow thing to hold up as monsters of hardheartedness
and depravity the officials who have been entrusted with the conduct of
our prisons. If they do wickedly and corruptly, it is not because they
are to begin with preterhuman sinners, but because we summoned them to
duties far above their capacity and training, which involve temptations
and provocations which they lack will and power to resist, which give
them power over fellow creatures which the most magnanimous and purest
men might hesitate to assume, and which inevitably plunge men who are
not magnanimous or pure into deeds of injustice, dishonor and
inhumanity. In a sense, the officials are no less victims of the
ignorance and frivolity of the community than are the prisoners
themselves.

But, at any rate, the officials are few and the prisoners are many. If
anything is to be done to make things better, there is more hope in
dealing with the officials first. After they have been driven out, and
their places filled with honorable and enlightened men, who will at
least administer the law as it stands with integrity and judgment, we
shall be in a better position to consider whether the law itself be
beyond criticism, and its penalties justly and prudently devised. Crime
as it exists is an enormous evil, and it costs us enormously; and cheap
and pinchbeck methods will never rid us of it.

VIII

FOR LIFE

When a man hears rumors that his application for parole is likely to be
acted upon favorably, a guard pauses at his cell door some morning, and
tells him to go to the clothing shop at a certain hour. The prisoner,
unless he has been forewarned, accepts this as proof positive that he
will really be set at liberty, and presents himself before the head
tailor with a smiling countenance. He is solemnly and specifically
measured for a suit, looks over the material out of which it is to be
made, perhaps ventures to mention some predilections as to the cut, and
takes his departure with a light heart. The fact that the cloth is
cheap, unshrunken goods, which will shrivel up at the first shower or
severe humidity, and will, at all events, get wrinkled out of shape in a
few days, does not dash the hopeful prisoner's jocundity; nor even the
consideration that the "prison cut" will be instantly recognized all
over the country, by every detective, private or federal, and acted upon
as circumstances may indicate. It is not the clothes, good or bad, that
makes his long-tried heart glad; it is the assurance of freedom. He
would be more than content with a simple loin-cloth, if only freedom
might go with it.

As a matter of fact, this measuring commonly means little, and
guarantees nothing at all. Indeed, it has rather the appearance of a
pleasant jest of the authorities--one of the cat-and-mouse plays with
prisoners with which every old timer is familiar. One would say the
authorities find amusement, amid the monotonous round of their
avocations, in thus stimulating hopes which they know are not likely to
be fulfilled. "Come, here is a heart not yet thoroughly broken; let us
try another blow at it!" Days, weeks, months, drag tediously by, and
nothing more is heard of the parole, or of the suit of new clothes. They
have never been made up, or if they by chance have been, they are put
away to gather dust on a shelf underground; they are old clothes
now--years old, sometimes. And when at last they are brought out again,
it is probable that they will be worn by some other, more fortunate man,
who ignored the misfit for the sake of getting past the prison doors.

When this little drama was acted for my benefit, I noticed a man sitting
in a certain chair amid the other tailor prisoners, stitching away
perfunctorily at a piece of goods. I call him a man, but he looked, to
my fancy, like an ancient frog, or the semblance of what had once been a
frog, from which, however, all the impulses and juices that had made him
alive had slowly leaked away, until nothing but the shell was left. He
was a pithless automaton, in whom mind and emotions had long since
become inert, and only enough sensibility was left to enable him to feel
dimly miserable. Who was he--or, better, who had he been? I learned that
for seven years he had sat in that same chair from morning till night,
doing the same job of sewing on one suit after another of prison
clothing. Seven years! But was he capable of no other employment? Might
he not have been given the relief of a change? Maybe; but what would be
the use? They couldn't be bothered finding him new stunts all the time,
since he had learned how to do that one thing satisfactorily. He was a
"lifer."

Life--your entire lifetime--means, perhaps, a good deal to you; even its
sorrows, in the retrospect, were good in their way; they meant
something. And you look forward to happier things in the future; it will
be a long and on the whole a successful future perhaps. Think of the
variety and the opportunity which this great, multiform, breathing world
holds forth to a man; the friends, the activities, the changes of scene,
the surprises, the conflicts, success and failure, hope and fear,
triumph, defeat--life, in a word. It is a divine thing, a glorious
thing, the God-given birthright of all men. It is the molding of
character, the endless, stimulating struggle, the growing sense of human
brotherhood, the faces and hands of our fellow creatures, the longer,
deeper thoughts aroused by the slow revelations of experience as to the
plan of human destiny,--and therefore are the words well chosen which
condemn a man like yourself to penal servitude "for life"?

But human language has no word to convey the significance of lifelong
imprisonment. It is surely not life: nor is it death--Oh, death would be
welcome! For death means either (as you may imagine you believe) total
extinction, or it means increased life, free from material trammels. But
death in life is a monstrous thing; life, for example, spent in a chair
in a squalid tailor's shop, doing over and over again the same piece of
squalid, meaningless work, with ever another squalid year stretching out
its length before you when the last one has been completed. Is life so
endured _life_--the sacred Creative gift, imparted to all things,
conscious or unconscious, without restriction? Life, the mystery, which
we are impotent to bestow, and which even death, self-inflicted or
inflicted by others, cannot take away; which one thing only can take
away--the death-in-life of penal imprisonment; is it not a formidable
thought that we have incurred the burden of this crime, which does not
transfer life from one phase to another, but seeks to annihilate it
absolutely?

Death would be welcome; the infliction of it can find forgiveness; but
how can we forgive the infliction of death-in-life? How can God forgive
it, this profane meddling with sacred and fathomless life? Will He
accept the plea that we did it "for the protection of society?--for the
man's own good?--or a warning to others?" In that day of questioning, I
would rather take my chances with the man sitting in the chair in the
prison tailor's shop for seven years, a "lifer"! Infinite mercy may find
means to compensate him for what we robbed him of; but what can it do
with us, the robbers?

In the Federal prison there were a score or more of lifers, with some of
whom it was my fortune to become acquainted. I stood in a sort of awe of
them; the thought of their fate was so overwhelming that my mind could
not compass it, though my heart might approach some conception of it
through obscure channels of intuition. Their treatment by the prison
officials was not ordinarily severe; even a warden or a guard could feel
that clubbing and dark-celling would be a kind of anticlimax for a man
sentenced for life. Some of them--usually negroes--would be given easy
jobs, and not held too strictly to the petty regulations whose special
object is to humiliate the ordinary prisoner, under guise of
disciplining and reforming him. Nothing was to be gained by disciplining
or reforming a "lifer." Others, however, in whom despair had taken the
expression of obstinacy or savagery, were savagely handled; one of them
bears terrible scars from a shooting by one of the guards, and he told
me that, out of the twenty-two years he had already served, eight had
been spent in the punishment cells. Others are maltreated for a while,
experimentally, or to "put the fear of God in their hearts," and
afterward let alone. But as a rule, there is not much fun to be got out
of a "lifer" by the prison keepers, and they prefer to ignore him.

The introduction of the law allowing the privilege of applying for
parole, did, to be sure, place in the hands of the authorities a weapon
with which they could "get beneath the hide" (as they might term it) of
these obdurate subjects. Needless to say, this measure, which provides
that "lifers" may be paroled (at the discretion of the parole board)
after having served fifteen years with a good prison record, did not
contemplate introducing thereby a new element of misery into their
lives. But the men to whose hands the "lifer" is entrusted found in it a
means of making him more readily amenable to discipline by holding over
him the threat of an adverse report should he prove intractable. They
could keep him indefinitely in that state of torturing suspense as to
his fate, which is perhaps the worst of all tortures, by withholding
from him all information as to whether or not his appeal was likely to
succeed.

Several cases of this kind came under my observation. In one, the
release came before the man had collapsed; in others, too late. In only
one or two that I know of was there any pretext that his conduct during
imprisonment had been unsatisfactory. The delay was never explained; it
was due to wilful or careless neglect. Two men were carried out feet
foremost in a deal box after they had endured suspense up to the extreme
limit of mortal capacity. They died of broken hearts--gradually broken
through long months of hope slowly fading into despair.

The warden sat serene in his office, attending to business as a good
official should, writing reports to the Department which testified to
his efficiency and economy, welcoming visitors with his genial smile,
occasionally reading encomiums upon himself in a local newspaper,
written and inserted there by somebody; the guards sauntered jauntily
about, cocking their caps and making their clubs dance at the end of the
cords; eight hundred unsightly felons, who had once been men like you
and me, filed drearily in to their meals, and out again, the worse for
the experience; and all the while, from morning till night, Dennis sat
on the corner of his cot in the hospital room, waiting for the news of
his release. He felt, and said, at first, that it was sure to come; it
would come in a day or two, or at the end of the week anyway; or at the
beginning of the week after. He knew his application had been accepted;
of course, those big officials had lots to do, and could not be expected
to attend to him at once; but they would not forget him.

For several weeks--a month or two--Dennis kept up his spirits well; he
had been in prison many years, more than the number required for parole,
and he had no bad marks against him. His wife and two daughters were
still living, however, and he was full of plans for his future life with
them; what he would do, where he would live, how happy they all would be
together, after that separation. But one day as he sat on his cot, or
paced slowly up and down the hospital chamber, news was brought to him,
bad news, news that his wife had died unexpectedly.

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