Which he probably would be. This was Murphy’s idea of a joke.
The third chap got about the same deal, and was waved away. “To the crusher with him, too.”
At that time prisoners were allowed, for economy, to keep the coats, vests, and hats they brought in with them, but were made to wear striped pants and shirts. As the last man turned away, Murphy saw he had a good hat. Calling him back he took it and threw it to his runner. “Here’s a hat for you, Shorty. If you can’t wear it give it to somebody else; it’s too good for the rock crusher.”
He knew all about us before we were brought to his office, and had us out there only to “throw the fear” into us and get a line on us by the way we answered his questions. He made three enemies right there. He received all prisoners that way and if they got insolent under his badgering he had them thrown into the dungeon for thirty days “to cool off.”
The dungeon was an empty cell with a solid door to darken it and contained nothing but a thin blanket, and a bucket strong with chloride of lime. In cases of this kind the captain signed the punishment order which included bread and water. Every third day the prisoner got a pan of beans. Most of them were so hungry they bolted the beans without stopping to chew them and a few dungeon sentences brought on stomach troubles that added to their misery.
My eight-year sentence was considered a short one at Folsom. I found nine hundred prisoners there whose sentences averaged twelve years. They were all hopeless. The parole law was a dead letter, inoperative. Only at Christmas or on the Fourth of July did any one get a parole. The place was a seething volcano of hatred and suspicion. Dirty Dick had in the twenty years he was there developed a perfect stool-pigeon system. A visiting warden, surprised because there was no wall around Folsom, asked Murphy how he managed to keep the “cons” there. “That’s simple,” he said. “I’ve got one half of them watching the other half.” His system caused many murders and assaults and at last it climaxed in the bloodiest prison break in the history of California.
Opium was the medium of exchange in the prison. About three hundred men used it habitually and a hundred more, occasionally. Incoming prisoners smuggled money in and we bribed the poorly paid guards to buy hop at Sacramento. No prisoner was allowed to buy anything through the office. The trusties stole every movable article they could from the guards’ and warden’s quarters and peddled them to us in the prison for their rations of hop. The “cons” were divided roughly into three groups. One group played the officers’ game, working in the offices or holding down other soft jobs where they could loaf about the place and spy and snitch on the others. Murphy rewarded them all. He gave the best snitches the biggest beefsteaks. Another and larger group openly antagonized the officers, engineering hop deals, planning the murder of stool pigeons, and promoting escapes.
Between these two groups was a small bunch of convicts who did not handle hop or curry favor with the officers. They were the best conducted prisoners there, yet they were ground to pieces by the two stronger factions. They got fag ends of food in the convict mess and wore the patched-up clothes of the others.
I had some thought of getting off the hop when I got to Folsom and of keeping my nose clean and trying to shorten my time by making a parole. But I saw quickly all that was impossible for me and that I would be lucky if I earned my credits. I joined the schemers and soon had my share of the opium which meant power and influence. We sold the hop to those who had money and with the money we bought more. Also we paid guards to smuggle in sugar, butter, and other food.
Conditions at San Quentin were the same. Martin Aguirre became warden there under Governor Gage. Aguirre introduced the strait-jacket punishment and I have been told he did it on the suggestion of a convict. This brutal and inhuman form of torture had been condemned in English prisons years before as dangerous to life and limb. Yet this man was permitted to revive it in California and its use was continued until Hiram Johnson became governor.