IV

In the morning we are ordered into the new section of the prison. The

old bums go to the workhouse, and we await our turn to be placed in the

shops, according to our sentences and our work or profession. The

distribution of labor among us is strange and mysterious. A butcher, for

instance, is sent to work in the stone quarry, a smuggler into the

kitchen gang, a lawyer in the "skin gang," a "sissy" into the coal gang,

a waiter into the garden; a burglar is sent to make socks, and I am sent

into the tailor shop.

In this simple distribution of labor we shall learn many things which

will be highly useful and remunerative when we go out into the world

again.

I am finally alone in my new cell, which is spacious, clean, airy. I can

walk seven or eight paces up and down, like an animal in a cage.

The steel beds are chained to the walls; instead of the filthy canvas, a

steel wire is stretched across the frame, but there is no mattress or

sheets as there were in the Tombs. There is also a covered bucket in

the lower corner, and a tin cup. The bars are strong, but nevertheless

plenty of air and light come in from the large windows opposite our

cells. Two small hand towels and a piece of scrubbing soap are added to

our simple belongings.

The number of my cell is 23, the last one in our row, and on the second

tier, which contains men who work in the tailor shop. The shops stand

together, in a separate building between the prison and the river, on

the Brooklyn side. The shops where they make brushes, shoes, beds, and

the tailor and repair shops, are under one roof, and under the control

of a contractor. In the shops all kinds of work are performed:

repairing, cutting and making clothes for outgoing prisoners; there are

machines turning out underwear and socks; mattresses are made, stuffed

and sewn up. At one end of the large room a keeper sits on a platform,

while another surveys it from the other end.

Although the prisoners are forbidden to talk, nevertheless they

communicate as freely as if the rule did not exist. When I attempted to

ask my neighbour a question, he hushed me up with a hissing noise--but

he answered my question. His lips did not move, but I could hear him

talk in a faint murmur which would have been inaudible ten paces away.

It is very hard at first to follow this new method of carrying on

conversation, as in everyday life one is used to watching a man's eyes

and lips while listening to his voice. But after a while the hearing

becomes used to it and is trained to listen and catch these slightest

sounds, which escape the untrained ear of the keeper.

The convicts never glance into the speaker's face or at his lips; they

look straight ahead and talk in the manner of ventriloquists, but

instead of using a loud and clear tone they whisper in a low murmur. Men

who have passed years in jail can always be recognized by their

monotonous, whispering manner and their almost expressionless faces.

This form of speech is necessary in order to avoid punishment.

Under the pretext of helping me, a young convict comes over to my side

of the shop. He shows me the intricate workings of the machine which

turns out the uncut cloth for the prisoners. Later it is cut and

fashioned into prison underwear.

On top of the machine the spools feed the thread incessantly. Care has

to be taken not to use "sabotage" methods, as punishment is meted out

unmercifully by the contractor, who seems to have as much power over us

as the warden.

My other companion is a young Russian sailor, healthy looking, fair and

quite peaceful when let alone. He warns me that my anxious instructor is

a "stool pigeon," who proves his status by giving me very detailed

instructions as to how to manage to escape successfully.

I ask why he has not put his own methods into practice; and he gives as

an excuse that he is going to be released in a few days.

Then he furnishes me with paper, pencil, and soap; and he even offers to

send out letters for me. When I answer that I have no letters to write

he recites an endless list of rules, and tells me how to evade them, and

how to keep the friendship of the keepers.

He reveals to my astonished ears the underground system of communication

with the outer world. With money and friends a convict can get all the

contraband he desires: dope, newspapers, matches, letters--coming in and

going out--whiskey, writing paper and pens, stamps, delicacies, tobacco.

My mentor has passed a year in the penitentiary for the offense of

"repeating," or of voting many times on election day. The gang leader

who paid him for his work is looking out for him from his Brooklyn

haunts.

Facing us there is a long table at which old convicts are sitting,

without making a pretence at working. As long as they keep quiet nobody

notices them. Some of them look over seventy years old; sad-faced,

pallid, curved, almost venerable in their old age. They are mostly old

sneak thieves and pickpockets, the wrecks and failures of their

profession. They sit like graven images, silently, patiently, hour after

hour, year in and year out, until some fine day one of them will be

found rigid in his cell, and then four striped convicts and a keeper

acting as a pallbearer will carry him away in a large black coffin to

the morgue.

To-day for the first time since my incarceration I beheld the reflection

of my face in a mirror. The sight was humiliating and shocking in the

extreme. My keen sense of caricature lowered my well fed conceit half

way down the ladder of vanity.

Then I consoled myself by thinking of all the good-looking, impressive,

well-groomed men friends, enemies and acquaintances of mine; and I

tried to imagine them with clipped hair, togged out in ill-fitting,

patched, striped garments and cap; collarless and tieless; with a week's

growth of beard on their cheeks--and the comparison made me laugh and

cheered me up considerably.

The Deputy Warden comes in on his daily visit. His approach has been

telegraphed in some mysterious manner and the whole shop takes on a

lively bustling appearance. Second in rank as an officer of the

penitentiary, the "Dep," a tall, good-looking man, strides into the room

like a Prussian officer. He is not disliked by the convicts, as he seems

just in his dealings with them.

Going back from work through the yards, a fat German convict who had

been working in the brush shops, broke away from the line and, before he

could be stopped, jumped into the river in an attempt to drown himself.

A few shots were fired. A negro and two white convicts jumped in after

him, and with the help of a keeper who patrols the island in a row boat,

they fished him out. They laid him flat on the ground and worked to

revive him.

His fat belly stuck out like a barrel, his face was livid, his lips

purple. Finally he opened his eyes, and sputtered and murmured: "Let me

die! Let me die!" "Shut up, you s----!" yelled an angry keeper, and he

was dragged feet first to the hospital.

V

My skin has been itching for two days, and I attribute it to the coarse

underwear and ill-fitting clothes. In my cell after the day's work I

make a careful inspection and am quite frightened to find my whole body

covered with red spots. Evidently I have caught some skin disease from

those tattered old rags which have been worn by generations of unclean

and diseased convicts. The thought of having to pass a year in a prison

hospital is anything but cheerful.

I turn my thoughts to other things by trying to read a novel from the

prison library. A slip had been left in the cell to be filled out with

the name of any book that I might desire to read. In my innocence I put

down "Shakespeare's plays or the Bible." A novel entitled "Truthful

Jane" was left in their stead.

But I cannot read. And so I start instead to inspect my surroundings.

The new cells compare very favorably with the cells of the old prison,

which are really holes in the wall and reeking with the mysterious

unwholesome smell of rat holes and graveyards.

At one end of the cell opposite the door are two small openings for

ventilation; one at the top on the right hand side and the other at the

bottom on the left. In trying to find out the depth and direction of the

holes I plunge my arm into the opening, and my hand feels a square

object. It is a small bible! I am delighted by the discovery. On the fly

leaf there is some handwriting in pencil in a careful, intelligent hand:

"To my successor: May this book while away your long and weary hours and

make you forget your troubles and worries as it did to me. Don't forget

to replace the book where you found it when you leave."

A tier man comes to the cells with a light for those who care to smoke.

He is a pleasant-faced individual, quite polite and ready to do any

small services within his limited powers. I find out that he has been

condemned to a year for keeping back mail in the post office. The tier

man who had made such a disagreeable impression on me that first night

in the old prison, is a church thief.

My battered and rusty cup has been filled up with water. I am afraid to

drink from it, as it might have been used by some consumptive or

syphilitic convict. Necessity being a great inventor, I press some

paper to the rim of the cup to prevent my lips from touching it.

As I walk up and down the cell I am always unconsciously trying to put

my cold hands in my trousers pockets, only to discover over and over

again that there are no pockets there, only one on the inside of the

coat.

The clipping of my hair so close to the skin at the height of the cold

season has brought a cold in the head. I have no handkerchief, and shall

have to wait a whole month until they allow me to write to have a few

sent by mail.

These apparent trifles, and all the nagging, idiotic rules, invented by

senile commissions and wardens to torment the helpless captives of

society, are always magnified by men brooding in the solitude of cells.

But I have made up my mind not to permit anything to ruffle my

equanimity, so I pick up some letters from friends and read and reread

their cheering contents. If people who write to their unfortunate

friends in prison only guessed how they yearned to receive those

familiar scrawls, and how they are treasured and memorized, they would

write oftener.

A night keeper walks by like a shadow, flashing a bull's eye lamp into

the cells to catch us in any infringements of the rules.

There is only one rule tacked up on the walls, but the other 999 we have

to guess or learn from fellow convicts. The list of rules which we have

to find out at our own expense or from wiser convicts would fill up a

small volume.

As there are no written rules, and nobody informs us of all the

unwritten rules on our entrance here, as is done in Sing Sing, the

thought comes to my mind that this apparent forgetfulness is really

meant to give the warden and the keepers an unchallenged power of

persecution over suspected and unruly convicts.

Most of the punishments inflicted by the warden are for infractions of

rules which the newcomers are in entire ignorance of, and these

infractions occur no matter how obedient and willing the new arrivals

may be to keep within bounds of the prison laws. The foreigners,

Italians, Slavs and Teutons, all those who do not know English and who

cannot learn the rules from their fellow prisoners, are the greatest

sufferers from this carelessness, whether it is intentional or

otherwise.