You can't win

by Jack Black

I went back into the prison yard with his card in my hand and gave it to Shorty. He passed it to George and then to “Sanc.”

“I know him,” Sanc said. “He is in Powers’ firm. Powers will tell him what to do. You are all right. True, he is but a second-class man, but that’s not so bad. These second-class lawyers can skin a first-class bunko man any day in the week. I see no reason why he cannot skin a third-class judge in a territorial court.”

I soon saw that these three cellmates of mine practically controlled the inside of the prison. They had brains and character backed by courage and the valuable background of a reputation for doing things outside.

I say they had character because, while they did wrong things, they always tried to do them in the right way and at the right time. The thief who goes out and steals money to pay back room rent rather than swindle his poor landlady has character. The one who runs away without paying her has no character. The thief who holds out a lady’s watch on his pal to give to his girl has no character.

In the underworld one has good or bad character as in any other layer of society. The thief who pays off borrowed money, debts, or grudges has a good character among his fellows; and the thief who does the reverse has a bad character. Thieves strive for good character and make as great sacrifices to keep it as men do anywhere else. A burglar can have friends, but he has to pay his room rent or he will lose them, and they will despise him.

Because of this quality these three men had money in the prison office, sent them by friends at liberty.

They had visitors frequently, who kept them well supplied with books and magazines. The evening mail brought newspapers from many cities. They kept well informed, particularly about criminal and legal doings. The papers were carefully read at night, and the next morning “routed” throughout the prison till, torn and read ragged, they found their way into the hands of the lowliest “bindle stiff” in the farthest corner of the yard.

There were fat times when we didn’t go into the dining room for a week. A half-gallon bucket of milk was left at the cell every evening. Loaves of fresh, hot bread were smuggled up from the bakeshop, and juicy steaks from the guards’ quarters. These creature comforts helped to take the curse off the place, and mitigate the prison pangs. Our light was put out, not when the nine o’clock bell rang, but when George, or Sanc, or Johnnie felt like going to sleep. The guards looked the other way when they went by in their felt-soled shoes, on their night rounds through the prison.

In the prison yard there was a deep well from which water for bathing and other uses was pumped to a large tank on the prison roof. The pump was manned by four prisoners who had to work in one-hour shifts. A gang of eight men were detailed each week for this work, which was not hard—nothing more than exercise—and no one ever complained. My name was called one Saturday evening and I was instructed to report at the pump the following Monday morning. I thought nothing of it, and would have pumped cheerfully. But that night “Soldier Johnnie,” who was something of a jail lawyer and agitator for his and his friends’ rights, remarked that they were wrong in forcing me to work because I had not been convicted of any crime and that I ought to refuse to do it. The other two took the matter up and it was argued pro and con. They were pretty technical about it, and the weight of opinion was that it would be establishing a dangerous precedent for an unconvicted man to do any work of any kind in the prison and a test case should be made of it.

I was willing enough, and, looking back at it now, I believe I was glad of the chance to do something to raise myself in the estimation of these distinguished characters.