THE HARVEST OF TARES.
The "growler" stood at the cradle of the tough. It bosses him through
his boyhood apprenticeship in the "gang," and leaves him, for a time
only, at the door of the jail that receives him to finish his training
and turn him loose upon the world a thief, to collect by stealth or by
force the living his philosophy tells him that it owes him, and will
not voluntarily surrender without an equivalent in the work which he
hates. From the moment he, almost a baby, for the first time carries
the growler for beer, he is never out of its reach, and the two soon
form a partnership that lasts through life. It has at least the merit,
such as it is, of being loyal. The saloon is the only thing that
takes kindly to the lad. Honest play is interdicted in the streets.
The policeman arrests the ball-tossers, and there is no room in the
back-yard. In one of these, between two enormous tenements that swarmed
with children, I read this ominous notice: "_All boys caught in this
yard will be delt with accorden to law._"
Along the water-fronts, in the holes of the dock-rats, and on the
avenues, the young tough finds plenty of kindred spirits. Every corner
has its gang, not always on the best of terms with the rivals in the
next block, but all with a common programme: defiance of law and
order, and with a common ambition: to get "pinched," _i.e._, arrested,
so as to pose as heroes before their fellows. A successful raid on
the grocer's till is a good mark, "doing up" a policeman cause for
promotion. The gang is an institution in New York. The police deny
its existence while nursing the bruises received in nightly battles
with it that tax their utmost resources. The newspapers chronicle its
doings daily, with a sensational minuteness of detail that does its
share toward keeping up its evil traditions and inflaming the ambition
of its members to be as bad as the worst. The gang is the ripe fruit
of tenement-house growth. It was born there, endowed with a heritage
of instinctive hostility to restraint by a generation that sacrificed
home to freedom, or left its country for its country's good. The
tenement received and nursed the seed. The intensity of the American
temper stood sponsor to the murderer in what would have been the common
"bruiser" of a more phlegmatic clime. New York's tough represents the
essence of reaction against the old and the new oppression, nursed in
the rank soil of its slums. Its gangs are made up of the American-born
sons of English, Irish, and German parents. They reflect exactly the
conditions of the tenements from which they sprang. Murder is as
congenial to Cherry Street or to Battle Row, as quiet and order to
Murray Hill. The "assimilation" of Europe's oppressed hordes, upon
which our Fourth of July orators are fond of dwelling, is perfect. The
product is our own.
Such is the genesis of New York's gangs. Their history is not so easily
written. It would embrace the largest share of our city's criminal
history for two generations back, every page of it dyed red with blood.
The guillotine Paris set up a century ago to avenge its wrongs was
not more relentless, or less discriminating, than this Nemesis of New
York. The difference is of intent. Murder with that was the serious
purpose; with ours it is the careless incident, the wanton brutality of
the moment. Bravado and robbery are the real purposes of the gangs; the
former prompts the attack upon the policeman, the latter that upon the
citizen. Within a single week last spring, the newspapers recorded six
murderous assaults on unoffending people, committed by young highwaymen
in the public streets. How many more were suppressed by the police, who
always do their utmost to hush up such outrages "in the interests of
justice," I shall not say. There has been no lack of such occurrences
since, as the records of the criminal courts show. In fact, the past
summer has seen, after a period of comparative quiescence of the gangs,
a reawakening to renewed turbulence of the East Side tribes, and over
and over again the reserve forces of a precinct have been called out
to club them into submission. It is a peculiarity of the gangs that
they usually break out in spots, as it were. When the West Side is
in a state of eruption, the East Side gangs "lie low," and when the
toughs along the North River are nursing broken heads at home, or their
revenge in Sing Sing, fresh trouble breaks out in the tenements east
of Third Avenue. This result is brought about by the very efforts made
by the police to put down the gangs. In spite of local feuds, there is
between them a species of ruffianly Freemasonry that readily admits to
full fellowship a hunted rival in the face of the common enemy. The
gangs belt the city like a huge chain from the Battery to Harlem--the
collective name of the "chain gang" has been given to their scattered
groups in the belief that a much closer connection exists between them
than commonly supposed--and the ruffian for whom the East Side has
became too hot, has only to step across town and change his name, a
matter usually much easier for him than to change his shirt, to find a
sanctuary in which to plot fresh outrages. The more notorious he is,
the warmer the welcome, and if he has "done" his man he is by common
consent accorded the leadership in his new field.
From all this it might be inferred that the New York tough is a
very fierce individual, of indomitable courage and naturally as
blood-thirsty as a tiger. On the contrary he is an arrant coward. His
instincts of ferocity are those of the wolf rather than the tiger.
It is only when he hunts with the pack that he is dangerous. Then
his inordinate vanity makes him forget all fear or caution in the
desire to distinguish himself before his fellows, a result of his
swallowing all the flash literature and penny-dreadfuls he can beg,
borrow, or steal--and there is never any lack of them--and of the
strongly dramatic element in his nature that is nursed by such a diet
into rank and morbid growth. He is a queer bundle of contradictions
at all times. Drunk and foul-mouthed, ready to cut the throat of a
defenceless stranger at the toss of a cent, fresh from beating his
decent mother black and blue to get money for rum,[20] he will resent
as an intolerable insult the imputation that he is "no gentleman."
Fighting his battles with the coward's weapons, the brass-knuckles and
the deadly sand-bag, or with brick-bats from the housetops, he is
still in all seriousness a lover of fair play, and as likely as not,
when his gang has downed a policeman in a battle that has cost a dozen
broken heads, to be found next saving a drowning child or woman at the
peril of his own life. It depends on the angle at which he is seen,
whether he is a cowardly ruffian, or a possible hero with different
training and under different social conditions. Ready wit he has at all
times, and there is less meanness in his make-up than in that of the
bully of the London slums; but an intense love of show and applause,
that carries him to any length of bravado, which his twin-brother
across the sea entirely lacks. I have a very vivid recollection of
seeing one of his tribe, a robber and murderer before he was nineteen,
go to the gallows unmoved, all fear of the rope overcome, as it seemed,
by the secret, exultant pride of being the centre of a first-class
show, shortly to be followed by that acme of tenement-life bliss, a
big funeral. He had his reward. His name is to this day a talisman
among West Side ruffians, and is proudly borne by the gang of which, up
till the night when he "knocked out his man," he was an obscure though
aspiring member.
[Footnote 20: This very mother will implore the court with tears, the
next morning, to let her renegade son off. A poor woman, who claimed
to be the widow of a soldier, applied to the Tenement-house Relief
Committee of the King's Daughters last summer, to be sent to some home,
as she had neither kith nor kin to care for her. Upon investigation
it was found that she had four big sons, all toughs, who beat her
regularly and took from her all the money she could earn or beg; she
was "a respectable woman, of good habits," the inquiry developed, and
lied only to shield her rascally sons.]
[Illustration: A GROWLER GANG IN SESSION.]
The crime that made McGloin famous was the cowardly murder of an
unarmed saloonkeeper who came upon the gang while it was sacking his
bar-room at the dead of night. McGloin might easily have fled, but
disdained to "run for a Dutchman." His act was a fair measure of the
standard of heroism set up by his class in its conflicts with society.
The finish is worthy of the start. The first long step in crime taken
by the half-grown boy, fired with ambition to earn a standing in his
gang, is usually to rob a "lush," _i.e._, a drunken man who has strayed
his way, likely enough is lying asleep in a hallway. He has served
an apprenticeship on copper-bottom wash-boilers and like articles
found lying around loose, and capable of being converted into cash
enough to give the growler a trip or two; but his first venture at
robbery moves him up into full fellowship at once. He is no longer
a "kid," though his years may be few, but a tough with the rest. He
may even in time--he is reasonably certain of it--get his name in the
papers as a murderous scoundrel, and have his cup of glory filled
to the brim. I came once upon a gang of such young rascals passing
the growler after a successful raid of some sort, down at the West
Thirty-seventh Street dock, and, having my camera along, offered
to "take" them. They were not old and wary enough to be shy of the
photographer, whose acquaintance they usually first make in handcuffs
and the grip of a policeman; or their vanity overcame their caution.
It is entirely in keeping with the tough's character that he should
love of all things to pose before a photographer, and the ambition is
usually the stronger the more repulsive the tough. These were of that
sort, and accepted the offer with great readiness, dragging into their
group a disreputable-looking sheep that roamed about with them (the
slaughter-houses were close at hand) as one of the band. The homeliest
ruffian of the lot, who insisted on being taken with the growler to his
"mug," took the opportunity to pour what was left in it down his throat
and this caused a brief unpleasantness, but otherwise the performance
was a success. While I was getting the camera ready, I threw out a
vague suggestion of cigarette-pictures, and it took root at once.
Nothing would do then but that I must take the boldest spirits of the
company "in character." One of them tumbled over against a shed, as if
asleep, while two of the others bent over him, searching his pockets
with a deftness that was highly suggestive. This, they explained
for my benefit, was to show how they "did the trick." The rest of
the band were so impressed with the importance of this exhibition
that they insisted on crowding into the picture by climbing upon the
shed, sitting on the roof with their feet dangling over the edge, and
disposing themselves in every imaginable manner within view, as they
thought. Lest any reader be led into the error of supposing them to
have been harmless young fellows enjoying themselves in peace, let me
say that within half an hour after our meeting, when I called at the
police station three blocks away, I found there two of my friends of
the "Montgomery Guards" under arrest for robbing a Jewish pedlar who
had passed that way after I left them, and trying to saw his head off,
as they put it, "just for fun. The sheeny cum along an' the saw was
there, an' we socked it to him." The prisoners were described to me by
the police as Dennis, "the Bum," and "Mud" Foley.
It is not always that their little diversions end as harmlessly as did
this, even from the standpoint of the Jew, who was pretty badly hurt.
Not far from the preserves of the Montgomery Guards, in Poverty Gap,
directly opposite the scene of the murder to which I have referred in
a note explaining the picture of the Cunningham family (p. 169), a
young lad, who was the only support of his aged parents, was beaten to
death within a few months by the "Alley Gang," for the same offence
that drew down the displeasure of its neighbors upon the pedlar: that
of being at work trying to earn an honest living. I found a part of the
gang asleep the next morning, before young Healey's death was known,
in a heap of straw on the floor of an unoccupied room in the same row
of rear tenements in which the murdered boy's home was. One of the
tenants, who secretly directed me to their lair, assuring me that no
worse scoundrels went unhung, ten minutes later gave the gang, to its
face, an official character for sobriety and inoffensiveness that very
nearly startled me into an unguarded rebuke of his duplicity. I caught
his eye in time and held my peace. The man was simply trying to protect
his own home, while giving such aid as he safely could toward bringing
the murderous ruffians to justice. The incident shows to what extent a
neighborhood may be terrorized by a determined gang of these reckless
toughs.
In Poverty Gap there were still a few decent people left. When it
comes to Hell's Kitchen, or to its compeers at the other end of
Thirty-ninth Street over by the East River, and further down First
Avenue in "the Village," the Rag Gang and its allies have no need of
fearing treachery in their periodical battles with the police. The
entire neighborhood takes a hand on these occasions, the women in the
front rank, partly from sheer love of the "fun," but chiefly because
husbands, brothers, and sweet-hearts are in the fight to a man and
need their help. Chimney-tops form the staple of ammunition then, and
stacks of loose brick and paving-stones, carefully hoarded in upper
rooms as a prudent provision against emergencies. Regular patrol posts
are established by the police on the housetops in times of trouble in
these localities, but even then they do not escape whole-skinned, if,
indeed, with their lives; neither does the gang. The policeman knows of
but one cure for the tough, the club, and he lays it on without stint
whenever and wherever he has the chance, knowing right well that, if
caught at a disadvantage, he will get his outlay back with interest.
Words are worse than wasted in the gang-districts. It is a blow at
sight, and the tough thus accosted never stops to ask questions.
Unless he is "wanted" for some signal outrage, the policeman rarely
bothers with arresting him. He can point out half a dozen at sight
against whom indictments are pending by the basketful, but whom no
jail ever held many hours. They only serve to make him more reckless,
for he knows that the political backing that has saved him in the past
can do it again. It is a commodity that is only exchangeable "for
value received," and it is not hard to imagine what sort of value is
in demand. The saloon, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, stands
behind the bargain.
For these reasons, as well as because he knows from frequent experience
his own way to be the best, the policeman lets the gangs alone except
when they come within reach of his long night-stick. They have their
"club-rooms" where they meet, generally in a tenement, sometimes under
a pier or a dump, to carouse, play cards, and plan their raids; their
"fences," who dispose of the stolen property. When the necessity
presents itself for a descent upon the gang after some particularly
flagrant outrage, the police have a task on hand that is not of the
easiest. The gangs, like foxes, have more than one hole to their
dens. In some localities, where the interior of a block is filled
with rear tenements, often set at all sorts of odd angles, surprise
alone is practicable. Pursuit through the winding ways and passages is
impossible. The young thieves know them all by heart. They have their
runways over roofs and fences which no one else could find. Their lair
is generally selected with special reference to its possibilities
of escape. Once pitched upon, its occupation by the gang, with its
ear-mark of nightly symposiums, "can-rackets" in the slang of the
street, is the signal for a rapid deterioration of the tenement, if
that is possible. Relief is only to be had by ousting the intruders.
An instance came under my notice in which valuable property had been
well-nigh ruined by being made the thoroughfare of thieves by night
and by day. They had chosen it because of a passage that led through
the block by way of several connecting halls and yards. The place
came soon to be known as "Murderers Alley." Complaint was made to the
Board of Health, as a last resort, of the condition of the property.
The practical inspector who was sent to report upon it suggested to
the owner that he build a brick-wall in a place where it would shut
off communication between the streets, and he took the advice. Within
the brief space of a few months the house changed character entirely,
and became as decent as it had been before the convenient runway was
discovered.
[Illustration: TYPICAL TOUGHS (FROM THE ROGUES' GALLERY).]
This was in the Sixth Ward, where the infamous Whyo Gang until a few
years ago absorbed the worst depravity of the Bend and what is left of
the Five Points. The gang was finally broken up when its leader was
hanged for murder after a life of uninterrupted and unavenged crimes,
the recital of which made his father confessor turn pale, listening
in the shadow of the scaffold, though many years of labor as chaplain
of the Tombs had hardened him to such rehearsals. The great Whyo had
been a "power in the ward," handy at carrying elections for the party
or faction that happened to stand in need of his services and was
willing to pay for them in money or in kind. Other gangs have sprung
up since with as high ambition and a fair prospect of outdoing their
predecessor. The conditions that bred it still exist, practically
unchanged. Inspector Byrnes is authority for the statement that
throughout the city the young tough has more "ability" and "nerve" than
the thief whose example he successfully emulates. He begins earlier,
too. Speaking of the increase of the native element among criminal
prisoners exhibited in the census returns of the last thirty years,[21]
the Rev. Fred. H. Wines says, "their youth is a very striking fact."
Had he confined his observations to the police courts of New York,
he might have emphasized that remark and found an explanation of the
discovery that "the ratio of prisoners in cities is two and one-quarter
times as great as in the country at large," a computation that takes
no account of the reformatories for juvenile delinquents, or the
exhibit would have been still more striking. Of the 82,200 persons
arrested by the police in 1889, 10,505 were under twenty years old.
The last report of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Children enumerates, as "a few typical cases," eighteen "professional
cracksmen," between nine and fifteen years old, who had been caught
with burglars' tools, or in the act of robbery. Four of them, hardly
yet in long trousers, had "held up" a wayfarer in the public street and
robbed him of $73. One, aged sixteen, "was the leader of a noted gang
of young robbers in Forty-ninth Street. He committed murder, for which
he is now serving a term of nineteen years in State's Prison." Four of
the eighteen were girls and quite as bad as the worst. In a few years
they would have been living with the toughs of their choice without the
ceremony of a marriage, egging them on by their pride in their lawless
achievements, and fighting side by side with them in their encounters
with the "cops."
[Footnote 21: "The percentage of foreign-born prisoners in 1850, as
compared with that of natives, was more than five times that of native
prisoners, now (1880) it is less than double."--American Prisons in the
Tenth Census.]
The exploits of the Paradise Park Gang in the way of highway robbery
showed last summer that the embers of the scattered Whyo Gang, upon
the wreck of which it grew, were smouldering still. The hanging of
Driscoll broke up the Whyos because they were a comparatively small
band, and, with the incomparable master-spirit gone, were unable to
resist the angry rush of public indignation that followed the crowning
outrage. This is the history of the passing away of famous gangs from
time to time. The passing is more apparent than real, however. Some
other daring leader gathers the scattered elements about him soon,
and the war on society is resumed. A bare enumeration of the names of
the best-known gangs would occupy pages of this book. The Rock Gang,
the Rag Gang, the Stable Gang, and the Short Tail Gang down about the
"Hook" have all achieved bad eminence, along with scores of others
that have not paraded so frequently in the newspapers. By day they
loaf in the corner-groggeries on their beat, at night they plunder the
stores along the avenues, or lie in wait at the river for unsteady feet
straying their way. The man who is sober and minds his own business
they seldom molest, unless he be a stranger inquiring his way, or a
policeman and the gang twenty against the one. The tipsy wayfarer is
their chosen victim, and they seldom have to look for him long. One
has not far to go to the river from any point in New York. The man who
does not know where he is going is sure to reach it sooner or later.
Should he foolishly resist or make an outcry--dead men tell no tales.
"Floaters" come ashore every now and then with pockets turned inside
out, not always evidence of a post-mortem inspection by dock-rats.
Police patrol the rivers as well as the shore on constant look-out
for these, but seldom catch up with them. If overtaken after a race
during which shots are often exchanged from the boats, the thieves have
an easy way of escaping and at the same time destroying the evidence
against them; they simply upset the boat. They swim, one and all, like
real rats; the lost plunder can be recovered at leisure the next day by
diving or grappling. The loss of the boat counts for little. Another is
stolen, and the gang is ready for business again.
[Illustration: HUNTING RIVER THIEVES.]
The fiction of a social "club," which most of the gangs keep up, helps
them to a pretext for blackmailing the politicians and the storekeepers
in their bailiwick at the annual seasons of their picnic, or ball.
The "thieves' ball" is as well known and recognized an institution
on the East Side as the Charity Ball in a different social stratum,
although it does not go by that name, in print at least. Indeed,
the last thing a New York tough will admit is that he is a thief.
He dignifies his calling with the pretence of gambling. He does
not steal: he "wins" your money or your watch, and on the police
returns he is a "speculator." If, when he passes around the hat for
"voluntary" contributions, any storekeeper should have the temerity
to refuse to chip in, he may look for a visit from the gang on the
first dark night, and account himself lucky if his place escapes
being altogether wrecked. The Hell's Kitchen Gang and the Rag Gang
have both distinguished themselves within recent times by blowing up
objectionable stores with stolen gunpowder. But if no such episode mar
the celebration, the excursion comes off and is the occasion for a
series of drunken fights that as likely as not end in murder. No season
has passed within my memory that has not seen the police reserves
called out to receive some howling pandemonium returning from a picnic
grove on the Hudson or on the Sound. At least one peaceful community up
the river, that had borne with this nuisance until patience had ceased
to be a virtue, received a boat-load of such picnickers in a style
befitting the occasion and the cargo. The outraged citizens planted
a howitzer on the dock, and bade the party land at their peril. With
the loaded gun pointed dead at them, the furious toughs gave up and
the peace was not broken on the Hudson that day, at least not ashore.
It is good cause for congratulation that the worst of all forms of
recreation popular among the city's toughs, the moonlight picnic, has
been effectually discouraged. Its opportunities for disgraceful revelry
and immorality were unrivalled anywhere.
In spite of influence and protection, the tough reaches eventually
the end of his rope. Occasionally--not too often--there is a noose on
it. If not, the world that owes him a living, according to his creed,
will insist on his earning it on the safe side of a prison wall. A
few, a very few, have been clubbed into an approach to righteousness
from the police standpoint. The condemned tough goes up to serve his
"bit" or couple of "stretches," followed by the applause of his gang.
In the prison he meets older thieves than himself, and sits at their
feet listening with respectful admiration to their accounts of the
great doings that sent them before. He returns with the brand of the
jail upon him, to encounter the hero-worship of his old associates
as an offset to the cold shoulder given him by all the rest of the
world. Even if he is willing to work, disgusted with the restraint and
hard labor of prison life, and in a majority of cases that thought is
probably uppermost in his mind, no one will have him around. If, with
the assistance of Inspector Byrnes, who is a philanthropist in his own
practical way, he secures a job, he is discharged on the slightest
provocation, and for the most trifling fault. Very soon he sinks back
into his old surroundings, to rise no more until he is lost to view in
the queer, mysterious way in which thieves and fallen women disappear.
No one can tell how. In the ranks of criminals he never rises above
that of the "laborer," the small thief or burglar, or general crook,
who blindly does the work planned for him by others, and runs the
biggest risk for the poorest pay. It cannot be said that the "growler"
brought him luck, or its friendship fortune. And yet, if his misdeeds
have helped to make manifest that all effort to reclaim his kind must
begin with the conditions of life against which his very existence is a
protest, even the tough has not lived in vain. This measure of credit
at least should be accorded him, that, with or without his good-will,
he has been a factor in urging on the battle against the slums that
bred him. It is a fight in which eternal vigilance is truly the price
of liberty and the preservation of society.