The Nation Behind Prison Bars

by George L. Herr

"I know what the average man thinks—that a real crook never turns straight. But it isn't so. Thousands of crooks—and I don't mean one-time offenders, but men in the class we call hardened criminals—have become honest men to my knowledge. It is not true, as some recent writer said, that as many crooks turn honest as there are honest men turn crooked, but I believe that one of the reasons is that so few men are willing to lend a helping hand. I don't mean that every crook is ready to reform if he is encouraged, but I do mean that society makes it hard for any man who has once been a criminal to lead an honest life.

"And I'll tell you another thing," continued Mr. Pinkerton: "I'm prouder of the fact that I have helped a few criminals to become honest men than of all the work I have done in putting criminals behind the bars. I'm proud of the fact that every crook knows that Pinkerton will deal squarely with him if he will deal squarely with Pinkerton—that I believe it is as important to keep faith with a bank thief as with a bank president.

"I know a score of business men in Chicago—not saloonkeepers, but reputable merchants—who have criminal records. These men have done time and have paid their debt to society for their crimes. I cannot tell you their names, for it would be unfair to them and to their wives and families, many of whom have no suspicion that there is anything wrong in the pasts of their husbands and fathers. Besides, when society discovers that a man is a former criminal it is not content to cancel the debt no matter how much imprisonment at hard labor the former crook may have given in expiation of his sin.

"I know men in trusted positions in New York who were convicts. In many cases only the man himself and his employer know the secret and sometimes the employer does not know it. I know men scattered all over the West—business men, professional men, many of them wealthy and prominent citizens—who have seen the inside of Joliet, Moyomensing, Sing Sing or Leavenworth. They have sons and daughters who never have suspected and never will suspect the truth.

"These are good men—as good men as any living. They have turned away from their old ways, in many cases have changed their names, and who shall say they are not as much to be respected as the honest man who never was tempted, never was forced into crime? I'll tell you about some of them.

"When I was a boy in Chicago there were two brothers, neighbors, about the age of myself and my younger brother, and we were friends. When the civil war broke out I went into the army secret service at the age of fifteen, and the older of these two boys, John, enlisted in an Illinois regiment. Jerry, the younger, was not old enough, but a little later, when the government began offering a bounty for soldiers, he became a bounty jumper. He would enlist, get the bounty money, then desert and enlist over again under another name. He was with a band of young fellows who were engaged in that way of getting easy money, and who found it so easy that they turned to other kinds of crime.

"When the war was over John came back to Chicago and settled down as a rather plodding sort of a mechanic. He tried to get Jerry to straighten out, but the younger brother was too far along the road to prison.

"In those days the Northwestern Railroad used wood for fuel, and the wood agent of the road was Amos Snell—the same Snell who was later murdered by 'Willie Tascott.' He lived in a suburb of Chicago, and one night Jerry and his crowd went out there and 'stuck' up the whole family—robbed them of everything they had. John was along with them, lying in the bottom of the hack. The police got a clew through the hack-driver and rounded up the whole band. All of them, including John, were sentenced to five years each except Jerry. When he came into the hands of the police a citizen who had been held up on the street some time before identified him as the hold-up man, and on the strength of that the Judge gave him fifteen years. It was an unjust sentence, for Jerry had not committed the hold-up—that was found out later.

"Well, John's old Colonel and some other army men and my father got together and got a pardon for John, who had merely gone along with the crowd and had taken no part in the robbery. He went back to work at his trade of brass finisher, but Jerry stayed in Joliet, rebelling against those long unjust years of his sentence.

Jerry was put to work in the engine room of the prison and soon displayed great aptitude for machinery. He served out his term with time off for good behavior and finally got out. I met him in Chicago. He was despondent. He felt that he had no chance to be anything but a crook, but he knew the terrible chances a once convicted man runs if he returns to crime. I told him the best thing for him to do was to go to New York, and I sent him on to my brother Robert, who had also known him as a boy.