My Life

by Josiah Flynt

From photograph taken in St. Petersburg
Josiah Flynt, in His "Garb of the Road," while Tramping in Russia

Outside of the criminal, it may be that we ourselves, and our friends, also, are none the worse because our powers of execution are numbed or hindered for a like reason. What an unbearable world this would be, if every man could give expression to the fads and fancies that, to use the phrase of the Under World, "wos eatin' him"! And what a readjustment of social, commercial and personal affairs would be necessary in order to insure one the bare essentials of existence under the circumstances!

I'll pass over the hour or so of gloom and doubt that was mine before our steamer tied up at her pier, and merely say, that, as soon as I descended the gangway and touched what, under the circumstances, stood for dry land, my depression went by the board and I was my own man again. I found myself eying the awaiting crowd inquisitively, in order to see whether it contained any familiar faces, welcome or the reverse. I may add that, for reasons which it isn't necessary to explain, I had not notified any of my friends of my intention to return to the United States. Hence a meeting with acquaintances would be the outcome of chance rather than of design.

It was with a mixture of pique, anger and regret, tempered—if I must confess it—with a touch of amusement, that I realized that my welcome home came in the shape of a broad smile from as clever a crook as ever turned a trick in Wall Street with the aid of a mahogany-fitted suite of offices and—the law itself.

It is a somewhat natural, although, if you come to think it over, rather an unreasonable expectation, that prompts us to look upon those whom we first meet on landing on a foreign, or on our native shore, as representative of the people of the country in general. But, after all, while the longshore population of every land is rather different from the rest of the inhabitants, the former, in Europe at least, exhibit the national earmarks to a degree sufficient to satisfy the average tourist. I need hardly add that such earmarks are, to an extent, of a distinctive and significant nature. The costumes, gestures, manners and the language of the longshore advance guard, always seem to me to have a due relation each to each, and to those other things that the traveler meets further inland.

Something like these thoughts came to me, as I mechanically returned the smile of the man who was making his way through the crowd, dodging the line of stewards and baggage that was swirling over the ship's side. It was a silly and unpatriotic thought, no doubt, and it was probably parented by a variety of factors, including my familiarity with the Under World, but it came to me with cynical force and humor that there was something not entirely inappropriate in the fact that a well-dressed, amiable-looking, and apparently prosperous individual, of devious morals and crooked methods, should be so much in evidence on the threshold of a land, so to speak.

Now, don't misunderstand me. I don't wish to imply by the foregoing that we are a nation of criminals large and small, and that, hence, we were, in this instance, properly represented on the pier head by my smiling friend. But I do earnestly believe that the American public does not, as yet, realize the danger that arises from the big masses becoming accustomed to the current and growing dishonesty of the small classes. I say "accustomed to," meaning thereby that the public apparently accepts the dictum that if a man or corporation steals on a sufficiently big scale, not only is the law paralyzed by the legal lights who are willing to accept retaining fees from thieves, but, in addition, our youths are taught to regard such thievery as equivalent to success.

My observation has taught me that crime is like water—it steeps from the top. A nation is, more or less, patterned after its prominent men. If these, when subjected to moral analysis, turn out to be simply "dips" who operate on a large scale, so much the worse for the nation, for, while the example of the men in question may not be followed in degree by the multitude, it surely is in kind. I'll defy any one to disprove this assertion by means of municipal or historic data. On the other hand, I could, if necessary, show that, in repeated cases, financial coups—so called—and "deals," and all the rest of the legalized robberies in high places, were followed or accompanied by a rushing business in the magistrates' or criminal courts.