TRYING TO LIVE BY MY PEN
As I have said, my friends and acquaintances in New York were
comparatively few at the start. As I hark back over the beginning year
in that city I do not believe that I knew intimately more than six men,
and they, like myself, were also beginners so far as New York was
concerned. Strangely enough nearly every one of us came from somewhere
in the West, a fact which leads me to ask whether in such a city as New
York Westerners, Southerners and Easterners do not inevitably drift
together through some strange law? Certainly that little coterie of
young men of which I had the honor to be a part, came together, for
better or for worse, unannounced, not caring whom they met and yet
pushed on by circumstances to band together as Westerners.
We were called the Griffou push. Nearly every member of this
organization was a writer of some kind, or intended to be. Perhaps I was
the first of the original intimates in this little gathering to take up
residence at the Griffou Hotel in Ninth Street, which for several years
was our regular rendezvous and from which we got our corporate
appellation. I began to live there almost immediately after my
preliminary work for the Pennsylvania Company. There was something
quaintly foreign about the place at that time that satisfied my soul,
and it was located in the Washington Square neighborhood, which will
never be outdone in my affections by any other in New York. Although I
have lived all over the city, somehow on leaving the ferry, coming back
to New York on a journey, my steps naturally turn toward lodgings near
the Washington arch. I think that several of the other young men have
always felt likewise about this locality. Anyhow, here I began my fight
for a place in the city's business. I have said that we were writers, or
rather aspirants for distinction, as such. Why all of us should have
picked out this activity as the one in which we thought we could do best
I can hardly explain. That we were overweaningly literary on first
coming together does not seem to me to be the case. One or two had
written what were called academic essays at the time, but none, I think,
had done much money-making writing. For some reason--perhaps it looked
like the easiest thing to do--we all threw our lot in with that army of
men and women in New York who try to make their living with their pens.
I tried first for a position as a police reporter. I thought that if my
experience and training had prepared me to write about anything in a big
city they had fitted me for reportorial work as an observer in police
and criminal circles. My ambition in this direction came to nothing. I
honestly tried for the position in question on several newspapers, but
the editors did not see their way clear to be enthusiastic about my
ability. For several years after starting out in New York I continued to
annoy editors with my notions on their police reporting, but without
avail. As I had once been ambitious to be foreign correspondent, and
thought that with perseverance I could fill the bill, so, during the
years that I begged to be made a police reporter, another disappointment
and chagrin had to be jotted down in my notebook. Perhaps it is just as
well now that I did not succeed in my efforts with the editors along
these lines. But whether this be so or not I propose here, in what is my
own book and nobody else's, to give a short outline of what I believe
police reporting could be developed into if undertaken seriously.
In late years I have become convinced that that daily newspaper which
will keep a careful record of criminal goings on in this country--not
locally, but taking in all of the country that it can cover--doing this
day after day conscientiously, presenting to the public the criminal
facts about ourselves as we make them--will be doing a work which will
make its police reporting invaluable and will earn for it the grateful
thanks of all students of crime.
In a way I have in mind for a daily record of the nation's crime, the
presentation of our annual crime as found in the Chicago _Tribune_ when
it makes up our debit and credit account along these lines. It seems to
me perfectly feasible for a newspaper to gather the daily news in the
criminal world, so far as it should be given to the public, in as
interesting and as useful a way as that of the _Tribune_ and certain
other newspapers. I firmly believe that it would do good for us to see
ourselves just as we are in the criminal looking-glass every morning of
the year, not excepting Sundays. Statistics, quiet accounts of crimes
committed, anecdotes, illustrative incidents proving no theories, but
merely making graphic the volume of crime in our midst and its
intensity--all these factors would probably have to come into the scheme
I have in mind. The essential factor, however, must be that inexorable
display of our criminality as a people. There is no gainsaying the fact
that we are all ready, or are soon going to be, if jail and court
records tell the truth, the most criminally minded nation on earth. This
is not a pleasant fact or prospect. The function of the police reporter,
as I understand it, should be to keep this forlorn state of affairs ever
present in our minds until we wake up and say that this can no longer
be. Such a man, if he does his work well, is deserving of as high a
salary as his managing editor. High crime in the United States is one of
the most appalling problems staring us in the face and demanding a
solution. The description of it, its awful significance, its menacing
proportions--these things are not yet treated daily, as they ought to
be, by any newspaper known to me.
To all this there are those who will reply: "But our children read the
newspapers, our mothers, wives and sisters read them. Why increase the
criminal copy in the papers which must go into our homes? Why not
suppress as much as possible all reference to what is criminal and
sinful?"
My reply to these queries is that crime has become such a part of our
national character that it is high time that we have a criminal
thermometer indicating to us honestly and fairly our criminal
feverishness. The police reporter as here considered may be likened unto
the orderly in our hospitals, who puts a thermometer somewhere in or
about us and attempts to determine our physical temperature. The orderly
comes to us regularly, according to the physician's orders throughout
the day; and at night, or on the following morning, the attending
physician receives an accurate report of how our pulse has beaten for
twelve or twenty-four hours, as the case may be.
I throw out the suggestion that our well-trained police reporter
acquainted with police conditions and police departments, should be able
to tell us every night and morning how we are getting along as criminals
and as citizens of the republic, with our welfare at heart.
But to return to the Griffou push and to those early years of struggle
with editors and what-not. Perhaps the finest sensation I experienced
during those years was found in weekly trips to Park Row, usually to the
_Sun_ office, where I handed in my bill for space and collected such
money as was due me. I shall never forget how proud I was one Saturday,
when, with seventeen dollars' space money in my inside pocket, I
strolled back to Ninth Street, through the Bowery--or the Lane, as
"Chuck" Conners prefers to call it. I remember passing a dime museum.
That old boyish fever to see the animals and the wheels go round came
over me. It is impossible to tell now how much the visit to this
miraculous institution cost me. I do recall, however, that on arriving
later on at the haunt of the Griffou push my seventeen dollars were in a
strangely dilapidated state. I have never seen several of them since
this experience, but on looking back upon it I cannot say that I regret
their loss. To be able on a Saturday night to foregather with the push
and tell a story about how you had been "done" in the Lane or elsewhere
caused much merriment, and I think healthy criticism. As beginners in
the great city, as stragglers fighting to make our way, as men who knew
that the years were passing by altogether too rapidly--who does not feel
this way, say after thirty?--we were decidedly critical of one another,
and were very prone to tell an alleged delinquent member of our company
what we thought he ought to do to make a success of himself. But, after
all, we were youngsters in spirit and temperament, and were far more
given to laughing at our gatherings than to moping or solemnizing.
It hardly seems fair for me to mention here the names of the others in
this aggregation, although I would be inclined to say only friendly
things of them. Our original four, as the Griffou push was constituted
as far as I am concerned, have remained staunch friends, if not boys, to
this day. Later the push developed into a larger collection of men, and
I am sorry to say that some of these newcomers have passed on into
another world.
The men that I began with I will call Hutch, Alfred and Morey. Morey now
owns an automobile, and, when I send him copy, is in a powerful
position to turn said copy down. Hutch is writing books, and every now
and then writes us how glad he is that the days of the push are no more
and that he can bask under the Italian sun in his own righteousness.
Alfred has become a literary philosopher and thinks that beginning in
New York, as we did, looks better at a distance.