In the rougher class the yegg stands prominently at the top. Taking the place of the old bank burglar, he has proved one of the most feared and the most desperate of all crooks. His is a roving life entirely. Using the railroads of the country as a method of transportation, distance to him but lends enchantment. In the yegg class are found graduates of all the other criminal professions. I have known stick-up men and former dips, burglars and a former counterfeiter as members of different gangs. The class is exclusive, the members seldom fraternizing with the others of the underworld. There is a loyalty to each other found among the yeggs which is characteristic of them. In all of my experience I know of but one yegg turning a “squealer” (State witness) against his pals. Woe to him if caught without the protection of the police. The yegg, unlike the gentlemanly types of the underworld, cares little for women. The ill-gotten gains are spent “slopping up” (getting drunk) in the jungles (outside the city) in the summer, or in some particular rendezvous of the city in the winter time. He never saves; his is the life of the present.
The stick-up man (hold-up), the burglar, and like, make up the other types, along with the bum, the tramp, and the hobo. I have often seen the bum, the tramp, and the hobo classed as one type of those fellows who love life better than they love work. As a matter of fact, each type is a class distinct in itself. The bum makes his residence, if it can be rightly called residence, exclusively in towns and cities; he never leaves them. He never works, and stands the lowest in the life of the other half. The tramp is a mixture of thief, mendicant, and loafer. He will never work; the genuine tramp excludes from his society those who ever do work. If he is ever required to work in return for a meal, he forfeits the meal rather than to soil his reputation by labor. He steals when opportunity offers, and begs when he gets the chance. He differs from the yegg, in that his life is not entirely devoted to crime. From the ranks of the tramp the society of yeggs is sometimes recruited; from the bum, never. The hobo differs from both in the respect that he works occasionally, and seldom steals. Roaming about the country, working here and there in railroad and lumber camps, and canneries, his traveling is always to a destination. A stake is made and he and his pals go to the city for a spree. The money spent, he is back again on the railroad looking toward a job.
In the spring, when the warm sun begins to kiss the green into the grasses, the tramp stretches his frame and listens. He hears the call of the road, and his nature hearkens thereto. Soon the railroads know him, and the farmers feel the weight of his appetite. It’s a care-free life these tramps live. Living in the present, without responsibility, they go their way until death claims them.
CHAPTER XII
MORALS IN THE UNDERWORLD
I left the prison with my moral sense warped and twisted. I do not mean to say that I had lost the faculty of differentiating between right and wrong entirely. No, not that, but association with debased natures and the influence of vicious environment had combined to break down my sense of moral values. Things which I had been taught to abhor as contaminating to health and morals I found myself looking at with complacent eyes.
Some few persons have asked me whether before the commission of a crime the man does not think of the right or wrong of it. I have answered them that he does not, that the question of morality never enters into the mind of the crook. Of course, if you could stop a crook immediately before the commission of his act and ask him if he didn’t know the act to be wrong, generally speaking, he would answer, “Yes.” He would answer thus because the morality of the thing would be put square before him. Lacking the reminders, it is safe to say that he never does.
The professional crook is a difficult problem to handle, when looking toward a reformation. Years of living without the necessity of labor have made him unsuited to a great many occupations, and this, coupled with the fact that a great many are without trades, makes it a problem which only the wise can handle.
I know there are a great many people in this world with just the best of intentions toward this class of men. They are interested in social work, they have a heart swelling with sympathy, and hands eager to help lift the load, but they lack understanding. I know a fellow helped toward hell by a man of good intentions. Men have been pauperized by sympathy. The lazy are ever ready for some one else to bear their load. It takes more than good intentions, more than sympathy, more than a readiness to help, to make a reformation in the character of the crook. The man who seeks to reclaim these men (I say man because I know of only one woman ever successful in this effort—Mrs. Ballington Booth) must first of all understand them. He must know life as it is, not as he thinks it is. He must have as his patron saint the virtue patience; absolutely he must be an optimist, yet not a visionary; he must be gentle, yet strong, acting absolutely on the square toward the man he fain would reclaim. He must be religious. Not a conventional churchgoer. No, he must be more than that. His religion must emanate from his personality. Creed must be subdued, sectarianism must give place to brotherhood. Even these qualifications do not necessarily mean success. As no man of the underworld is like his fellow, different methods will need to be followed in the effort to reclaim them. I have outlined the fundamentals essential to even a partial success in this line. The opportunities for good are beyond number.