No subject of equal social import has received such thoughtful
consideration in recent years as the question of Crime and Punishment. A
number of books by able writers, both in Europe and this
country--preëminently among them "Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist," by
Alexander Berkman--discuss this topic from the historic, psychologic,
and social standpoint, the consensus of opinion being that present penal
institutions and our methods of coping with crime have in every respect
proved inadequate as well as wasteful. This new attitude toward one of
the gravest social wrongs has now also found dramatic interpretation in
Galsworthy's "Justice."
The play opens in the office of _James How & Sons_, solicitors. The
senior clerk, _Robert Cokeson_, discovers that a check he had issued for
nine pounds has been forged to ninety. By elimination, suspicion falls
upon _William Falder_, the junior office clerk. The latter is in love
with a married woman, the abused and ill-treated wife of a brutal
drunkard. Pressed by his employer, a severe yet not unkindly man,
_Falder_ confesses the forgery, pleading the dire necessity of his
sweetheart, _Ruth Honeywill_, with whom he had planned to escape to save
her from the unbearable brutality of her husband.
_Falder._ Oh! sir, look over it! I'll pay the money back--I will, I
promise.
Notwithstanding the entreaties of young _Walter How_, who holds modern
ideas, his father, a moral and law-respecting citizen, turns _Falder_
over to the police.
The second act, in the court room, shows Justice in the very process of
manufacture. The scene equals in dramatic power and psychologic verity
the great court scene in "Resurrection." Young _Falder_, a nervous and
rather weakly youth of twenty-three, stands before the bar. _Ruth_, his
faithful sweetheart, full of love and devotion, burns with anxiety to
save the young man, whose affection for her has brought about his
present predicament. _Falder_ is defended by _Lawyer Frome_, whose
speech to the jury is a masterpiece of social philosophy. He does not
attempt to dispute the mere fact that his client had altered the check;
and though he pleads temporary aberration in his defense, the argument
is based on a social consciousness as fundamental and all-embracing as
the roots of our social ills--"the background of life, that palpitating
life which always lies behind the commission of a crime." He shows
_Falder_ to have faced the alternative of seeing the beloved woman
murdered by her brutal husband whom she cannot divorce, or of taking the
law into his own hands. He pleads with the jury not to turn the weak
young man into a criminal by condemning him to prison.
_Frome._ Men like the prisoner are destroyed daily under our law for
want of that human insight which sees them as they are, patients,
and not criminals.... Justice is a machine that, when someone has
given it a starting push, rolls on of itself.... Is this young man
to be ground to pieces under this machine for an act which, at the
worst, was one of weakness? Is he to become a member of the luckless
crews that man those dark, ill-starred ships called prisons?... I
urge you, gentlemen, do not ruin this young man. For as a result of
those four minutes, ruin, utter and irretrievable, stares him in
the face.... The rolling of the chariot wheels of Justice over this
boy began when it was decided to prosecute him.
But the chariot of Justice rolls mercilessly on, for--as the learned
Judge says--
"Your counsel has made an attempt to trace your offense back to what
he seems to suggest is a defect in the marriage law; he has made an
attempt also to show that to punish you with further imprisonment
would be unjust. I do not follow him in these flights. _The Law is
what it is_--a majestic edifice, sheltering all of us, each stone of
which rests on another. I am concerned only with its administration.
The crime you have committed is a very serious one. I cannot feel it
in accordance with my duty to Society to exercise the powers I have
in your favor. You will go to penal servitude for three years."
In prison the young, inexperienced convict soon finds himself the victim
of the terrible "system." The authorities admit that young _Falder_ is
mentally and physically "in bad shape," but nothing can be done in the
matter: many others are in a similar position, and "the quarters are
inadequate."
The third scene of the third act is heart-gripping in its silent force.
The whole scene is a pantomime, taking place in _Falder's_ prison cell.
"In fast-falling daylight, _Falder_, in his stockings, is seen standing
motionless, with his head inclined towards the door, listening. He
moves a little closer to the door, his stockinged feet making no noise.
He stops at the door. He is trying harder and harder to hear something,
any little thing that is going on outside. He springs suddenly
upright--as if at a sound--and remains perfectly motionless. Then, with
a heavy sigh, he moves to his work, and stands looking at it, with his
head down; he does a stitch or two, having the air of a man so lost in
sadness that each stitch is, as it were, a coming to life. Then, turning
abruptly, he begins pacing his cell, moving his head, like an animal
pacing its cage. He stops again at the door, listens, and, placing the
palms of his hands against it, with his fingers spread out, leans his
forehead against the iron. Turning from it, presently, he moves slowly
back towards the window, tracing his way with his finger along the top
line of the distemper that runs round the wall. He stops under the
window, and, picking up the lid of one of the tins, peers into it. It
has grown very nearly dark. Suddenly the lid falls out of his hand with
a clatter--the only sound that has broken the silence--and he stands
staring intently at the wall where the stuff of the shirt is hanging
rather white in the darkness--he seems to be seeing somebody or
something there. There is a sharp tap and click; the cell light behind
the glass screen has been turned up. The cell is brightly lighted.
_Falder_ is seen gasping for breath.
"A sound from far away, as of distant, dull beating on thick metal, is
suddenly audible. _Falder_ shrinks back, not able to bear this sudden
clamor. But the sound grows, as though some great tumbril were rolling
towards the cell. And gradually it seems to hypnotize him. He begins
creeping inch by inch nearer to the door. The banging sound, travelling
from cell to cell, draws closer and closer; _Falder's_ hands are seen
moving as if his spirit had already joined in this beating; and the
sound swells until it seems to have entered the very cell. He suddenly
raises his clenched fists.
"Panting violently, he flings himself at his door, and beats on it."
* * * * *
_Falder_ leaves the prison, a broken ticket-of-leave man, the stamp of
the convict upon his brow, the iron of misery in his soul.
_Falder._ I seem to be struggling against a thing that's all round
me. I can't explain it: it's as if I was in a net; as fast as I cut
it here, it grows up there. I didn't act as I ought to have, about
references; but what are you to do? You must have them. And that
made me afraid, and I left. In fact, I'm--I'm afraid all the time
now.
Thanks to _Ruth's_ pleading, the firm of _James How & Son_ is willing to
take _Falder_ back in their employ, on condition that he give up
_Ruth_. _Falder_ resents this:
_Falder._ I couldn't give her up. I couldn't! Oh, sir! I'm all she's
got to look to. And I'm sure she's all I've got.
It is then that _Falder_ learns the awful news that the woman he loves
had been driven by the chariot wheel of Justice to sell herself.
_Ruth._ I tried making skirts ... cheap things. It was the best I
could get, but I never made more than ten shillings a week, buying
my own cotton and working all day; I hardly ever got to bed till
past twelve. I kept at it for nine months.... It was starvation for
the children.... And then ... my employer happened--he's happened
ever since.
At this terrible psychologic moment the police appear to drag _Falder_
back to prison for failing to report to the authorities as
ticket-of-leave man.
Completely overcome by the inexorability of his fate, _Falder_ throws
himself down the stairs, breaking his neck.
The socio-revolutionary significance of "Justice" consists not only in
the portrayal of the inhuman system which grinds the Falders and
Honeywills, but even more so in the utter helplessness of society as
expressed in the words of the Senior Clerk, _Cokeson_, "No one'll touch
him now! Never again! He's safe with gentle Jesus!"