"The Abyss."
The following law, if passed and enforced without mercy, would quickly
put a stop to the common practice of degenerates spoiling the lives and
futures of other people's children by training them to become tramps,
drunkards, professional beggars and even dangerous criminals, viz:
"Should any minor be found beyond the limits of his legal residence
tramping, peddling, begging or stealing at the command or for the
benefit of an adult person, who cannot prove that he had the legal
consent of the minor's guardian, then this adult person shall be
sentenced to a long term at hard labor in the state penitentiary."
* * * * *
(The actual experiences of the Author, who when a young boy was at one
time a plinger's road kid, are embodied into this chapter and have been
even far more revolting than herein described.)
* * * * *
It was several days after the terrible thrashing before Jim recovered
sufficiently to be able to show himself upon the streets.
On the morning of the fifth day after his arrival at Denver, he was told
by Kansas Shorty to accompany Danny upon his day's work and watch how
this small, weak boy managed to earn a living for himself and his
master, who under the pretense of "showing him the world", had enticed
him away from his home.
Danny had been trained by his jocker, an ugly ex-convict, who on account
of his ape-like face had been dubbed "Jocko", to peddle needle cases
from house to house. These needle cases are paper packages containing an
assortment of needles and are always retailed in every store in the land
for five cents. These harmless packages have made more useless, if not
dangerous men out of harmless youngsters than any other cause, as
printed in bold type across their face are these words:
"PRICE 25 CENTS".
This fictitious price mark works straight into the hands of the jockers
who purchase these needle cases by the gross for about two cents each
and teach their road kids to dispose of them, at a huge profit. If
needle cases can not be had, sticking plaster, aluminum thimbles,
pencils, shoestrings and other such articles are given to the road
kids to peddle.
From the pages of a Denver City Directory, Jocko had copied upon sheets
of paper the name, street and house number of every resident in the
city, overlooking none, as sometimes those who occupy humble homes buy
more needle cases and turn out more revenue than those who reside in
marble palaces.
Jocko had handed Danny a list of names and addresses and the road kid's
trick, which his ugly jocker had most carefully rehearsed with him, was
worked by calling at residences and by correctly quoting the names foil
the servants and obtain an interview with the lady of the house to whom
he would tell a story that would make a "stone weep." With Jim by his
side this morning he spoke of him as being his cousin, and with a string
of woeful lies attached to his yarn he usually managed not only to
receive the price printed upon the package, which he held up in such a
position that the lady could not fail to see its fictitious value, but
oftentimes he received more than this sum.
They sold a number of the needle cases, and although Jim had a look of
complete disgust upon his face, showing how he disapproved of Danny's
lying, the latter, proud as a peacock, instead of being ashamed of
swindling kind-hearted ladies, said in a tone of voice which left no
doubt that he would do exactly as he proposed: "Eh, Jim, when I get to
be a plinger I shall have at least a dozen road kids peddling for me and
not like Jocko, who besides myself has only three other kids hustling
for him," and after a pause he disdainfully added, just as if his jocker
was not already doing incalculable harm, "only four kids, with so many
of them hoboing about the country."
At one of the houses, after Danny had repeated his tale of woe, a
charitable lady told them to await her return as she had left her purse
in her bed room, located on the second floor. Never suspecting that boys
appealing for assistance would turn into ingrates, she left the front
door ajar. The next moment Jim almost sank to the floor when he saw
Danny sneak into the house, enter the nearest room, and just as the lady
descended the stairs, dart back to his former place upon the porch,
holding a silver spoon in his hand, which he hid in his pocket. After
the lady had paid him for a needle case they left.
Danny repeated this disgraceful trick of basest ingratitude at several
other houses. Then he coaxed Jim into making the lying appeal necessary
to sell the needle cases, and whenever Jim managed to make a sale
Danny's praises knew no bounds. Finally Danny had just one needle case
left out of the stock Jocko had handed to him to peddle, and while they
waited before the open entrance door of a palatial residence for the
return of the lady of the house, who had left them to find her
pocketbook, and whose footfalls they could hear as she descended the
stairway leading into the basement of her home, Danny deliberately
pushed the unsuspecting Jim through the half-open door into the hall of
the mansion, and told him in a whisper that if he did not steal
something he "would tell Kansas Shorty."
In all his past life Jim had never stolen a single cent's worth of other
people's property, but with Danny threatening to tell Kansas Shorty
should he refuse to do as told, and remembering the cruel pounding he
had received at the hands of this fiend only such a short time before,
and the warning ere he and Danny set out upon their begging trip to do
exactly as Danny ordered, he realized that perhaps another far more
brutal beating would be his should he disobey Danny's command.
Before him was an open door, and when he entered the room he found it to
be the parlor. Looking about he saw a glittering gold watch lying upon
the piano, and picked it up, and gazed at it for a moment. "No, I must
not disgrace my honest name by becoming a common thief for the mere sake
of furnishing sodden wretches with rum," he mused, but while he
hesitated he heard the footfalls of the lady of the house as she
ascended the stairs, then the fear of the terrible punishment that would
be his if he disobeyed conquered his honesty and he slipped the time
piece into his pocket and joined Danny at the entrance.
When the lady of the house came to the door she handed Danny a bright
silver dollar and when he wanted to give her the needle case she refused
to take it from him, and while tears of pity streamed down her face she
said: "May God forbid that I take from you poor unfortunate boys an
article that you could dispose of to others, and thus further assist
your starving parents", and before the lads could utter a sound she had
shut the door in their faces.
It was now half past eleven in the morning, and as road kids do
"housework" only between nine and this time of the day, as after these
hours the police commence to be more active and the ladies become far
less inclined to listen to a tale of distress, they went back to the
plinger's headquarters.
In strict accordance with the unwritten code of the road although Jocko,
his ugly-visaged jocker, was amongst those in the room, Danny paid not
the least attention to his presence, but stepped up to the table upon
which an empty tin plate had been placed for just this purpose, and
deposited upon it every cent he had in his pockets and whatever he had
pilfered from the houses.
Danny now told Jim to place the watch he had stolen upon the tin plate,
which he did. Kansas Shorty picked it up and estimated its value at not
less than one hundred dollars, and then praised Jim for having upon his
first raid proven himself to be a first-class road kid, and that the
"gang" was proud to call him a pal. When Jim was out of hearing Danny
received much praise for having turned an honest boy into a beggar and a
thief by the same methods that he had been taught by his jocker and
other road kids.
So quickly had these rum-soaked, heartless monsters converted an
absolutely harmless lad into a criminal, that Jim pleaded with Kansas
Shorty to permit him to try unassisted to peddle needle cases. He was
not accorded this privilege, but was sent out with a boy nicknamed
"Snippy". This boy had a most repulsive looking sore upon his arm,
reaching from the wrist four inches upward. His graft consisted of
visiting offices located in the business district and showing to persons
this noisome sore, and then handing them the begging letter his jocker
had faked for him, he collected alms, while at the same time he
contorted his face as if suffering agony from his "disease".
When they returned to the hangout at the end of his working hours at 2
p.m., as the afternoon mails made charity calls of this class
unprofitable, Jim was given his third lesson by a lad who went by the
hobo name of "Spanish John."
On the preceding evening John and Jim had played catch ball in the
hallway and the way John chased after a ball he had failed to catch
caused Jim to greatly admire the boy's agility.
But this morning John certainly looked for all the world as if he had
passed through a long war. He upheld his body by means of a pair of
crutches and his face was all furrowed as if he were suffering agony,
while his left foot was drawn high above the ground just as if a cannon
ball had made its acquaintance, and it was with such a sad voice that he
called to Jim to follow him, that Jim felt so sorry for John he forgot
to ask him what had happened to him since both chased the elusive ball
in the hallway.
Spanish John had a sore upon his left leg just like Snippy had upon his
arm, and he used this sore, assisted by small cards called "duckets",
upon which an "appeal" was printed, to swindle honest and well meaning
people out of money. Proprietors of stores and shops were his favorites.
When supper time approached and while upon their way back to the
plingers' quarters, after they had left the business section, John
handed his crutches to Jim to carry, and told the astounded lad, who
supposed John had actually been crippled, that limping with crutches
was a "most tiresome job."
Everyone of the road kids had been trained by his jocker to become a
specialist in some particular brand of the begging game. One of them had
around his arm a plaster of Paris casting, that during his begging trips
would be filled with cotton upon which a few drops of carbolic acid or
some other "medicinally" smelling liquid had been poured, to give the
"phoney" broken-arm trick a cloak of respectability. When not at "work"
the "dummy" was shoved far above the boy's elbow and tied so that it did
not interfere with his playing "tag", and other boyish games.
A simple-faced chap, but one who knew the game from A to Z, played the
deaf and dumb game, for which purpose his jocker had forced him to learn
the sign language. Another boy had been taught to throw his hand and
fingers so far "out of joint" that a real crippled-for-life paralytic
could not have improved upon the deceptive deformity. Both of these lads
used duckets, pencils, shoestrings and thimbles as an addition to their
mute appeals, although it is a well-known fact that no genuinely
afflicted paralytics or mutes, least of all boys, ever resort to begging
for their living.
In the evening after supper had been served and things had somewhat
quieted down in the rooms, almost dumfounded by surprise Jim watched
Snippy's jocker paint a strong solution of lye into the dreadful
sore--known in the hobo vernacular as a "jigger"--upon the road kid's
arm. The poor little lad shrieked with pain as the acid ate into his
quivering flesh, which deepened the wound still more and gave it a
"fresh" look, which greatly added to its horrid repulsiveness so as to
all the more arouse the pity of those from whom he would be forced to
beg on the coming morning.
[Illustration: After supper Jim watched a hobo paint acid into the
dreadful sore upon Snippy's arm and heard the little lad shriek with
pain when the fluid ate into his quivering flesh.]
Joe made careful inquiries of one of the friends he had made among the
road kids, and this boy told him that oftentimes these inhuman monsters
continued the lye treatment for such a length of time and so fearfully
corroded their helpless victim's limbs, that blood-poisoning set in and
made amputations necessary to save their lives. The deeply seared, white
scars which these "jiggers" leave during the balance of the road kids'
natural lives, prove to those who are versed in the ways of the road, in
which school of crime a criminal branded with these tell-tale scars
received his first lesson.
Just before Jim went to rest for the night upon one of the bare wooden
benches that had been given to him for his bed, Kansas Shorty warned him
that if he ever said a single word of what had occurred since he left
Minneapolis, or would occur in the future, he would not only murder him
but would ramble to Rugby and tell his mother that her son had robbed a
house, and then he pulled out his notebook and repeated to Jim his
correct name and address, which the boy had in his innocence given him
at the Golden Rule Hotel.
The poor lad first shuddered with terror as he thought how his poor
mother would suffer should she be informed how he had disgraced her,
then he snuggled close to the black-souled fiend and solemnly promised
never to divulge a single word to any mortal.
The following morning Kansas Shorty gave Jim a package of needle cases
and in words that Jim could not misunderstand ordered him not to come
"home" until every one had been peddled.
Luck was with him. His rosy cheeks and his neat appearance opened the
hearts and loosened the purse strings of charitable ladies and it was
just ten o'clock when he returned to the hangout, having sold all of his
stock.
Jim pleaded to be permitted at least until the noon hour to sell more
needle cases, and his jocker, pleased to see the the lad so anxious to
support an able-bodied hobo loafer in idleness, consented and gave him
another supply.
Again fortune favored him and when a nearby clock pointed its hands to a
quarter of twelve he had just one needle case left. He rang the door
bell of a residence, and as if luck was with him, the lady of the house,
a matron with snowy hair and features which in every line bespoke the
kind-heartness of her soul, opened the door. After he had explained to
her his errand, she took the needle case out of his hand and then told
him to await her return as she had left her pocket book in her bed room
upon the second floor of her home. She went, leaving the front door
ajar.
Jim heard the lady of the house mount the stairway, then the second
flight, now she was walking towards the rear of the building, and when
he heard a door slam, indicating that she had entered the bed room, like
a flash of lightning an evil thought shot through his mind. It was just
one step to the open parlor door. He craned his head, and looked into
the parlor, and when he saw that the shades were drawn, which would
prevent his being seen from the outside, he thought that this would be a
fine chance to show to Kansas Shorty, Danny and all the rest of his
"friends" how well he had learned their lessons.
Without the least hesitation he stepped into the semi-darkness of the
parlor, where his eyes were attracted by the gleaming steel of a large
caliber revolver lying upon the center table. He heard the lady's
footfalls as she descended from the second flight of stairs, and quickly
reaching out his hand he picked up the pistol and slipped it into his
pocket. He then turned about, to quietly take his former place before
the front door, but just as he turned, he felt a pair of hands grip him
from behind by the throat. He struggled hard to free himself from the
ever tightening grip, and then lost consciousness.
When he opened his eyes he found he was lying upon the floor in the
entrance hall of the residence, and he gazed upon two pairs of
handcuffs, one of which was clasped around his wrists, while the other
held his ankles in their steel embrace, while above him, watching his
every movement, was a man dressed in the uniform of a captain of police
who in a most menacing manner fingered the trigger of a revolver, which
Jim recognized as the same weapon that he had attempted to steal off the
parlor table.
Jim could not speak, as his badly crushed throat would not permit this
even had he wished to do so, but he further saw the same charitable lady
who had been so willing to purchase his last needle case, bending over
him, and while she looked at him as he lay there upon the floor before
her, handcuffed like a hardened, dangerous criminal, he heard her plead
with him. "Boy," she said, while her pitying eyes looked straight into
his own, "is there not somewhere in this world a good mother who has
taught you that honesty is always the best policy?" And while tears of
bitter repentance commenced to course down the poor boy's cheeks she
repeated the question, which caused the now heart-broken lad to sob
aloud in his anguish.
A moment later the police patrol was heard clanging in the distance--it
had been called by telephone. It stopped in front of the house and
presently two blue-coats saluted their superior and then picked up the
boy, but before they carried him to the waiting police patrol the
captain told them that as he had come home for dinner a little earlier
than usual, he had divested himself of his heavy pistol and then, while
he was taking a mid-day rest upon the parlor lounge he had watched the
boy sneaking into the room, picking up the revolver from the center
table, and then he pictured to the policemen how he had quietly arisen
from the lounge and like a bolt from the blue sky made a prisoner of the
chap, whom he described as a most dangerous sneak thief--he did not know
the true story of the boy's past nor that not two weeks had elapsed
since the same handcuffed lad would have willingly laid down his life
before he would have permitted himself to stoop so low as to touch
property belonging to another person with the intention of stealing
same, nor was the captain acquainted with the fact that a tramp within
an even shorter space of time had killed this honesty, had spoiled the
future and virtually wrecked the life of the lad by forcing him to
become his road kid.
* * * * *
Within an hour's time the plinger gang in their rooms above the slum
saloon had been apprised by the subtle and mysterious means which is a
sixth sense with criminals, that the missing Jim, who had not shown up
for dinner, was behind the bars of the city prison, and afraid that he
would "peach" they made haste to vacate their quarters and scattered to
the four winds, each jocker taking his road kids with him. Just as they
separated, while the other scoundrels tried to console Kansas Shorty for
having so quickly been deprived of such a good road kid as Jim had
proven himself to be, he cheerily replied to their words of consolation:
"There are many more cities like Denver in the States and Canada where
we can ply our profession the same as we have here, and there are any
number of other people's sons whom I can entrap and can force through
fear of exposure and by brutality into becoming tramps, drunkards,
beggars and criminals, all at one and the same time."
* * * * *
They carried Jim to the city prison and locked him into a dark dungeon,
from which, after several hours of solitary confinement, three
detectives took him into the chief of police's office and there pleaded
with him to reveal the whereabouts of his jocker, as they were well
aware that this lad was merely a tool in the hands of some designing
scoundrel, but Jim, as all the other road kids before him have done,
refused to divulge the least word that would have caused his jocker's
apprehension.
Finding that pleading and threats were unavailing, the officers in their
efforts to catch the man "higher up" swore at Jim, then cuffed him and
finally, angry at the stubborn silence of the boy, they beat him
dreadfully, but even this punishment was in vain for Jim ever repeated
in his mind at every cuff and lick he received, that Kansas Shorty had
his mother's correct address and that this scoundrel would do far worse
than merely murder him, should Jim fail to keep the promise not to tell
who was his jocker.
Unable to extort a word from Jim that would lead to the arrest of his
jocker, the officers dragged the staggering, heart-broken lad back to
his cell and locked him up. When from sheer exhaustion he fell asleep
late in the night, he dreamed that Kansas Shorty's grinning face was
pressed against his steel-barred cell door. "Jim, Jim," he could
distinctly hear the scoundrel say mocking him in his helplessness, "come
on, Jim, let us go and peddle needle cases and loot more houses." Jim
leaped from his bunk at Kansas Shorty's throat, as if he were a wounded
tiger, to strangle with his bare hands the fiend who had so wantonly
spoiled his life, but he only gripped the cold steel bars of his cell
and awakened, then as he sank back upon the edge of the prison-bunk, he
realized that now it was too late--and he burst into bitter tears.
[Illustration: Behind bars]