Same way with the slaughter houses. When Charley Murphy was wiping his beezer on the bar towel and asking, “Wot’ll youse guys have next?” most every town had an unlovely spot known as the slaughter-house district, and property was valued in an increasing ratio based on its distance therefrom. Because why? Foul-smelling waste. But along comes P. Armour, Esq., studies the waste question and says to the slaughter-house stiffs, “Gimme the leavings and other things you throw away and I’ll not only put Chicago on the map, but I’ll likewise build one of the loveliest trusts that ever allowed a fourth-rate lawyer to bust into public life by the attacking of the same.”
Well, that’s what’s wrong with this Osborne party. While he lets other ginks browse around the waste-heaps of the mills and factories seeing what can be done with their junk, he pokes around in the social waste-heap trying to find out if its contents can’t be converted into something useful. One might call him a social engineer; though as a rule men of original and new ideas are usually called nuts. But be that as it may, I note that Stevenson, Bell, Morse, Edison, and a whole list of folks who have done useful things, were at one time classed as being a bit odd but harmless.
As there are no personal dividends in the way of kale coming to any one who tries to convert the social waste-heap into something useful, the average stiff can’t understand why a guy with a bean on him like Osborne should want to waste his good time monkeying with it, when he might be more socially useful by inventing a new tango step.
You see, Tom, society is so constituted at present that it can’t understand why any man should want to do something that will bring him no financial returns; and yet this self-same society, that does all of its reasoning on a dollar and cents basis, can’t understand why some poor stiff interred in a penal institution should register a kick against being compelled to work five, ten, or fifteen years for nothing.
Society also doesn’t seem to realize that it constitutes and creates its own temptation—to wit, when a gink sizes up the class of stiffs big cities like New York and elsewhere pick up to run their public business, and the shake-downs they stand for from their own duly chosen and elected grafters, the little gink feels it to be his almost bounden duty to stock up a flossy silver quarry and lead them to it.
Of course there have been many changes in prison conditions since this Osborne party got fussing around, both inside and out, but nevertheless there is still room for more. Speaking of old conditions, I am personally acquainted with a party who could throw a piece of Irish confetti up in the air, and who, if he didn’t duck, would get it on his conk and be reminded of old times, who can most distinctly remember when the social unit who happened to land in the waste heap lost his hair, manhood, and faith in man and God Almighty, all inside of twenty-four hours.
This was in the days of zebra clothing, short hair, the lock-step, contract labor, and all around soul-murder.
I know, however, that there have been many changes since then; so that although your experience, while proving that the great and assinine waste of good material is still going on in the social mill, and therefore most heart-stirring, will never carry with it the soul-blighting memories of one who for fourteen years marched the lock-step.
Of course, now that you are free, you will be in for your knocks as an ex-con and all that, but why worry? You will still have the privilege of the free air with opportunity always before you. Of course you are bound to meet with that duty loving stiff who knowing of your having been in the social waste heap believes in advertising the fact. But again, why worry? If you feel that you can make good—why?
Some time I want to tell you about my old friend O’Hoolihan and the bird. He spent twenty-seven years in the place you just left and made one of the greatest sacrifices for a little robin redbreast that I ever knew a man to make—well, say for the benefit of a bird.