The Subterranean Brotherhood

by Julian Hawthorne

In my own case (to cite an instance) the regular procedure was observed, with only one accidental modification. I received my suit of clothes, my five dollars, and my railway ticket—at least, the latter was given to the guard detailed to accompany me to the station, to be by him delivered to the conductor of my train. But I had previously made up my mind to say a few things to the reporter of a certain local newspaper, and I was ready, in case of necessity, to abandon my eleemosynary ticket and to pay my own way to New York on a later train. I had money of my own to do this with; most ex-prisoners, of course, have not. But the sacrifice was avoided by the circumstance that Mr. Moyer, the warden, was absent at the moment in Indianapolis, and the deputy incautiously let me out an hour or more before my train started. I lost no time in meeting my reporter, and during the next forty minutes, in an automobile provided for the occasion, we drove about the streets of Atlanta, while I imparted to his astonished ears my reasons for thinking that the penitentiary was not the paradise on earth that it had hitherto been believed to be. He brought me to the railway station in season for my train, and I got safely away, leaving mischief behind me.

That was my good luck. On the other hand, a friend of mine recently released told me that the warden had called him into his office at the last moment, and had extracted from him a promise not to talk to any reporter in the town before leaving. That is the usual way; but it is the exception, sometimes, that counts.

Let us return to our average convict, just out, and with the world before him, where to choose to display his prison-made garments and to spend his five dollars. It not seldom happens, to begin with, that he is not so much out as he had imagined. Our present method with convicts has peculiarities. Here is a common example.

A man was convicted and jailed for robbing a postoffice. The sentence was five years. The specific charge was of stealing postage stamps. Having done his bit in the federal penitentiary, he was given his outfit and the gates were opened. He was proceeding joyfully on his way, when a sheriff laid a hand on his shoulder, and informed him that he was his prisoner. What for? The sheriff smilingly explained that the sentence he had just served was for a federal offense; he was wanted now on a state charge of breaking into the grocery store in which the postoffice was housed. For this, the state prison accommodated him with lodging for five years more. The man outlived that, and fatuously imagined that his payment of that debt was fully discharged. He was awakened by the hand on his shoulder again. What was the matter now? Why, he had, while in the grocery store, and in addition to stealing the federal postage stamps, possessed himself unlawfully of a box of matches, thereby committing a second state crime, involving a further detention in the state prison of five years more.

This is an example of our cat-and-mouse way with convicts, and is, of course, much more destructive to the victim than an outright sentence of the same length would have been. But in what manner it tends to reform a man, or to protect a community, does not clearly appear.

Sometimes, the sheriff is dilatory in arriving to make the second or third arrest, and it would seem that the prisoner might have a chance to escape. But in such a case the warden himself would take a hand in the game. In an instance of which I heard a good deal, the man's sentence expired, we will say, on June 1st. The warden had been apprised that he was to be re-arrested, but the sheriff was not on hand—could not get there for two days. But the law, or prison regulations, or something, enables a warden to detain a prisoner beyond his fixed time, in the event of his committing some prison irregularity. The warden informed the man that he was reported to have broken a plate in the dining room, the penalty for which was three days more in his cell. Before the three days were up, the sheriff had arrived, the man was re-arrested, and justice was satisfied. We will suppose, however, that our man has no second or third or other indictments hanging over him, and that he really does get clean away. What will be his adventures?

If the weather be not rainy he reaches his train unscathed. But if that new suit, with "jail-bird" written all over it in characters which all detectives and police, at least, can read as they run, chance to get wet, the raw shoddy forthwith shrivels miserably up, and the wearer's ankles and wrists stick out so betrayingly that a mere child might recognize the sinister source of the garments. But, anyhow, a few days' wear will so wrinkle and crease and deform the suit that it becomes unwearable, and the man might as conveniently and more prudently go about in shirt and drawers. Should he present himself in it requesting a job from some virtuous citizen, the latter is less likely to grant it than to step to the 'phone and call up the police station. "There's a suspicious character here—better look him over!" The officer looks him over accordingly, and either advises him to betake himself promptly elsewhere, or, if a crime happen to have been committed recently in that neighborhood, the perpetrators of which are still at large, he takes the man into custody on suspicion.

That the man is utterly innocent makes small difference; his status as an old offender is readily established, and the rest follows almost automatically. "You did the job all right; but, if you didn't, you're a vagrant, without visible means of support, and they'll put you in the lockup for six months or a year. And let me tell you, our lockup is no joke! Likely you'll get on the chain gang, and then, God help you! If they don't take a fancy to you, they're liable to croak you any time. Now, I'd like to see you get out of this easy, and here's what you'd better do. You own up to the crime, and I'll have a word with the judge, so he'll let you off with a short sentence in a place where they treat men right, and you'll get out in about three or four months. That's what you'd best do; and if you don't, I wash my hands of you! What do you say?"

What would you do? Stand on your rights, demand a full and fair trial, prove your innocence, and be acquitted without a stain on your character? That is the proper and righteous course for a free and independent American citizen.

But you are not a citizen, in the first place; your civic rights are gone for good, and instead of your innocence being assumed till your guilt is proved, it is the other way about. Your friend the detective is prepared, for one, to swear that to the "best of his knowledge and belief," you are the culprit; and there is commonly a number of other easy swearers hanging about the court room to support him. You have no friends; on the contrary, every eye you meet is hostile. You have no money to hire a lawyer, for that five dollars had gone before you had mustered courage to ask for the job that got you into this trouble. And above all, your spirit is cowed and prostrate from years in prison; you have known the long, sterile bitterness of penal servitude, and you have no stomach for a fight. No, you will not fight—you cannot. You will stand up in the dock and confess to something you never did, and throw yourself on the mercy of the court. Your friend the detective whispers to the judge—"He's an incorrigible—he ought to get the limit!" And His Honor gives you ten years. It is less than a week since you put off stripes, and went out into the world resolved to make good. If you outlive your undeserved sentence, will you ever resolve to make good again?