The Subterranean Brotherhood

by Julian Hawthorne

I cannot for my part imagine any hard and fast plan being laid down in advance. But it would seem reasonable, to begin with, to free ourselves from the social crime of claiming superiority to our brethren. Having removed that beam from our eyes, we may see more clearly how to abate the motes in the criminal's. If we can bring ourselves to regard prisoners and jail birds as inferior to ourselves only in good fortune, which has kept us out of jail and put them in, we may find ourselves on the road to remedying their lapses from moral virtues.

The majority of prison crimes are against property, and are motived by want and poverty. If the man had opportunity to work for his living, he would as a rule abstain from stealing. Other crimes are committed in passion; but such criminals need education and training in self-control, and (often) removal of the provocations which set their passions afire. Many other crimes, and almost all vices, are due to physical or mental disease, or to actual insanity. It is the doctor and not the jailer who should seek the cure of these.

But there are also some persons, chiefly brought up or brought down in our cities, who practise crimes, apparently, for sheer love of evil. These gunmen gangs are the most depraved and malignant members of the community; they will not work, and they rob and murder not from want or passion, but because the suffering of their victims gives them pleasure and ministers to their pride and self-esteem. Most of these gangs, as we have too much reason to believe, stand in with the police, giving them a percentage of their plunder, and getting protection from them for their misdeeds.

These creatures, as I have already suggested, are the distillation of the various evils in our cities which society has failed frankly to face, or genuinely to attempt to lessen. They are not responsible for their existence, and, as they indicate a general condition, it can do no good to kill them or otherwise put them out of the way; others would take their place. They are not insane in the common sense, but they are the product of insane social circumstances, responsibility for which rests on us. They must be taken in hand individually, by workers self-consecrated to that duty, and deterred from doing evil, and showed the value of doing good. One might work a lifetime with some of them, and have little to show for it in the end; but it took a long time to build the pyramids and the Panama Canal, and to advance from the dugout of the savage to the Mauretania. It is work better worth doing than any of these.

Taking the situation by long and large, society must cease to be a sham and become truly social. The thing seems inconceivable, and still less practicable; but it is not. Nor has history failed to admonish us that it has sometimes been the most difficult and improbable things which have been nevertheless accomplished; as if their very difficulty, and the labor and self-sacrifice involved in doing them, were themselves a stimulus.

Europe, a handful of centuries ago, at the behest of a fanatical priest or two, forsook all else and spent a generation in journeying to Palestine and trying to get a certain city from the Turks.

The city was worth nothing to Europe; it was an idea that set them crusading. Nothing else seemed so unpractical and feeble as the gospel of Christ; but it crumbled the Roman Empire into dust, and has kept the world guessing and maneuvering ever since—never more than to-day. On the other hand, if you propose an easy job, something that can be done with one hand tied behind you, and your attention is diverted, it is apt to remain undone. Nobody can get up an interest in it. But talk of an expedition to the South Pole, or a flight round the earth in a biplane, with certainty of appalling hardships and all the odds in favor of death, and you are mobbed with volunteers. Human nature likes to test its thews and sinews.

Perhaps, however, nothing else was ever so difficult as to turn from our flesh pots, our dinners and tangos, our summer resorts and winter resorts, our business and idleness, and undertake to substitute for prisons our personal care and help for criminals—to remove the causes which led them to crime, to convince them of our good faith and good will, and to disabuse them of their suspicion that we distrust them, condescend to them, and despise them. For this prodigal brother of ours has become a very unsightly and unattractive object during these thousands of years of his sojourn among the pigsties and corn husks. He does not speak in our language or observe our manners or contemplate our ideals, or care for our refinements. We shall have to read again the fairy stories where the prince has been changed by evil enchantment into some uncouth and repulsive monster, but was redeemed to human form by sympathy. The evil spell was of our working, and it behooves us to overcome it. No one else can.

We must abolish the title of criminal as applied to any class or individuals of our race in distinction from others, and use those of unfortunates or scapegoats instead. They are our victims, and our salvation depends upon our making good to them the evil we have done them. It will not suffice to delegate the job to money, or to persons chosen for that purpose; we must do it ourselves—make it one of the main occupations of our lives. Riches and culture are fine things, but making good out of evil is better. Its rewards may not be so immediate or so visible, but they are real and permanent.

But I do not think morality will be enough to energize the effort; morality should always be the incident and consequence of religious feeling, not an aim in itself. As soon as it becomes an aim in itself, it leads to self-righteousness, and paralyzes human love in its marrow. And it is love, far more than wisdom, that is needed here. Love God and keep His commandments; unless you first love Him, His commandments will be left undone, or done only in the letter, which is the worst form of not doing. But the way to love God is to love the neighbor, and the neighbor is the criminal.