The Apaches of New York

by Alfred Henry Lewis

At one time Spanish had a gallery number, and his picture held an important place in Central Office regard. It was taken out during what years the inadequate Bingham prevailed as Commissioner of Police. A row arose over a youth named Duffy, who was esteemed by an eminent Judge. Duffy's picture was in the gallery, and the judge demanded its removal. It being inconvenient to refuse the judge, young Duffy's picture was taken out; and since to make fish of one while making flesh of others might have invited invidious comment, some hundreds of pictures—among them that of Spanish—were removed at the same time.

It pleased Spanish vastly when his mug came out of the gallery. Not that its presence there was calculated to hurt his standing; not but what it was bound to go back as a certain incident of his method of life. Its removal was a wound to police vanity; and, hating the police, he found joy in whatsoever served to wring their azure withers.

When, according to the rules of Bertillon, Spanish was thumb-printed, mugged and measured, the police described him on their books as Pickpocket and Fagin. The police affirmed that he not only worked the Broadway rattlers in his own improper person, but—paying a compliment to his genius for organization—that he had drawn about himself a group of children and taught them to steal for his sinful use. It is no more than truth to say, however, that never in New York City was Spanish convicted as either a Fagin or a pickpocket, and the police—as he charges—may have given him these titles as a cover for their ignorance, which some insist is of as deep an indigo as the hue of their own coats.

Spanish was about seventeen when he began making an East Side stir. He did not yearn to be respectable. He had borne witness to the hard working respectability of his father and mother, and remembered nothing as having come from it more than aching muscles and empty pockets. Their clothes were poor, their house was poor, their table poor. Why should he fret himself with ideals of the respectable?

Work?

It didn't pay.

In his blood, too, flowed malignant cross-currents, which swept him towards idleness and all manner of violences.

Nor did the lesson of the hour train him in selfrestraint. All over New York City, in Fifth Avenue, at the Five Points, the single cry was, Get the Money! The rich were never called upon to explain their prosperity. The poor were forever being asked to give some legal reason for their poverty. Two men in a magistrate's court are fined ten dollars each. One pays, and walks free; the other doesn't, and goes to the Island. Spanish sees, and hears, and understands.

“Ah!” cries he, “that boob went to the Island not for what he did but for not having ten bones!”

And the lesson of that thunderous murmur—reaching from the Battery to Kingsbridge—of Get the Money! rushes upon him; and he makes up his mind to heed it. Also, there are uncounted scores like Spanish, and other uncounted scores with better coats than his, who are hearing and seeing and reasoning the same way.