The common error is to assume that when a woman once loses her virtue, she thereby forfeits all claims to respect. With men sin is smoothed over, and sometimes even admired. Stokes commits murder, and at the end of his term of imprisonment returns to New York, mingles in the gay society which knew him of old, and gazes critically through his opera-glasses from the box of the theatre. He has committed a crime, to be sure, he is an ex-convict, and all that; but society does not hesitate to receive him back with open arms.
The worst libertine that walks the earth may still hold his head erect in the charmed circles of aristocratic society. But the woman who once goes astray is lost forever. The taint of suspicion is about her, and, strive as she may, the doors of respectability, of decency, of an honest life, are barred against her.
Why should this distinction be made between the wrong-doing of man and the wrong-doing of woman? No other answer can be made to this question than that society has so willed it. Now, society, in this matter, as in many others, is at fault. The girl who has fallen from the upright course should be given a fair chance to reform. She should not be branded with the scarlet letter for a sin which, in many cases, is less her fault than that of another.
This question of reform leads me to speak of another matter, which has claimed much of Hogan’s attention. All over the country there are so-called asylums for fallen women, reform schools, and charitable institutions without number. Besides these, are the prisons and jails, which are supposed to be instrumental in making their inmates better. How much good do you suppose these institutions accomplish.
Take the reform school, for example, as it is found in almost every county in the more populous States. A boy who has been guilty of some minor offense, or who is found difficult to manage, is committed to one of these schools, professedly with a view to reformation. Instead of learning anything good, he falls in with a class of boys more hardened than himself, and from these he gets his first lesson in crime. Reference to this very point has been made in the preceding pages, where it was attempted to show that Hogan’s brief sojourn in the Rochester Reform School fell far short of reforming him.
If this is true of the institution in which boys alone are confined, it is still more true of our prisons and penitentiaries. There the association with hardened criminals does more to foster crime than any other one thing in the world. A man may enter such a place comparatively innocent, but, after serving out an average sentence, he will return to the world thoroughly posted in the ways of evil. The great mistake lies in huddling all classes of prisoners together like so many sheep, and treating them as if they were all equally guilty. The young man, for example, who may have been driven by necessity to commit his first theft, and who might, under proper circumstances, be made a useful member of society, finds himself sandwiched between a veteran cracksman and a life-long adventurer. From such companionship it is only natural that he draws a fund of information which fits him only for a career of crime. All the good that may have been in him when he entered the institution is eradicated before he leaves.
If this be true in the case of men and boys, it is even more so with respect to women. The latter find in the institutions, which are supposed to be reformatory in their nature, the vilest kind of associations. Indeed, it may be safely asserted that when a woman once enters a prison or penitentiary, her utter ruin is inevitable.
Still another subject which has claimed Hogan’s attention is that of gambling. Here, again, his personal experience is large enough to enable him to speak understandingly. A man who has himself lost and won thousands of dollars over the green cloth, is perhaps better fitted to express himself on the evil than one who has no practical knowledge of its operations.
To begin with, no man who voluntarily enters a gambling room has a right to grumble if he loses his money. He is tempting fortune, and fortune is too fickle to be trusted without bitter disappointment. Even supposing that a man is playing at a perfectly square game, his chances of winning are less than even. But, in modern times, and in this country especially, absolutely square games are rarely found. The general policy among all professional gamblers is to take unfair advantage of their victims. Let it be understood that Ben Hogan does not denounce all men who make a business of gambling. He has counted among his personal acquaintances many of this class who were naturally generous and noble-hearted men. But the very nature of their occupation tends to blunt the sense of honor, and to make them treacherous even to their best friends. Outside of the game they may be genial, open-handed and companionable; but the power of the cards is such that they lose these qualities as soon as they are engaged in play.
This dishonesty is, in short, but another form of the petty trickery resorted to in almost all branches of business. The grocer sells stale butter, if he can find a purchaser; the butcher cuts the bone so that it weighs more than the meat; the baker makes his bread an ounce lighter than the regulation weight, and the dry-goods dealer measures cloth so that thirty-five inches make a yard. All these things are counted a species of shrewdness by those who practice them. On precisely the same principle, the gambler deals from the bottom of the pack, or stacks the cards whenever he thinks he can do so without detection. In one case, the dishonesty is called sharp bargaining; in the other, it is called cheating. Both are equally disreputable, and, therefore, the gambler is not to be signaled out for especial denunciation.