III
It did not take me very long to see that the trouble with our criminal courts goes deeper than the graft or ill-temper of the judges. Day after day the realization grew upon me that the system itself is wrong at bottom.
A man can do a vicious thing now and then without complete moral disintegration. It is constant repetition of the act which turns him into a vicious man. Brown may once in a while lose his temper and strike his wife, and still be, on the whole, an estimable fellow. But if he makes a regular habit of blacking her eye every Saturday night, we would hold him suspect in all relations. We would not only question his fitness to bring up children, we would doubt his veracity, distrust him in money matters.
The more I have been in court the stronger grows the conviction that there is something inherently vicious in passing criminal judgment on our fellow men. A Carpenter who lived in Palestine two thousand years ago thought on this matter as I do. His doctrine about throwing stones is explicit. If he was right in saying "Judge not," we cannot expect any high morality from our judges. The constant repetition of evil inevitably degrades.
Unless we can expect our judges to be omniscient – and no one of them is so fatuous as to believe himself infallible – we are asking them to gamble with justice, to play dice with men's souls. We give them the whole power of the state to enforce their guesses. The counters with which they play are human beings – not only individual offenders, but whole families, innocent women and children. Such an occupation – as a steady job – will necessarily degrade them. It would change the Christ Himself… But he said very definitely that He would not do it.
However, my work in the Tombs has not made me a pessimist. Science has conquered the old custom of flogging lunatics. The increase of knowledge must inevitably do away with our barbaric penal codes, with cellular confinement and electrocution. An enlightened community will realize that the whole mediæval idea of punishing each other is not only a sin – according to Christ – but a blunder, a rank economic extravagance, as useless as it is costly. We will learn to protect ourselves from the losses and moral contagions of crime as we do from infectious diseases. Our prisons we will discard for hospitals, our judges will become physicians, our "screws" we will turn into trained nurses.
The present system is epileptic. It works out with unspeakable cruelty to those who are suspected of crime – and their families – it results in the moral ruin of those we employ to protect us, and it is a failure. The amount of money which society expends in its war against crime is stupendous – and crime increases. All statistics from every civilized country…
But this personal narrative is not the place for me to discuss in detail my convictions in regard to criminology.
IV
The influence of the Tombs on my way of thinking was slow and cumulative, here a little and there a little. I got a more sudden insight into some of the ways of the world, some of its stupidities and pretenses, from the peculiar circumstances under which Benson and I were thrown out of the settlement. I had been there almost two years when the crash came. In this affair, I was little more than the tail of his kite. That is the fact I wish to emphasize. Benson was I think beyond any doubt, the most valuable "resident" in the Children's House. It was not only that he gave much money into the general treasury and that he gave far more to such subsidiary enterprises as his Arbeiter Studenten Verein, all of which gave added prestige to the settlement, but also his personality was a great asset. Through his professional and social connections he was continually recruiting new supporters. And certainly to the people of the neighborhood, he was the most popular of us all. And yet to preserve certain stupid ideas of respectability, Benson was sacrificed.
The Jewish population – penniless refugees from Russian massacres – had been growing rapidly in our district. They had almost entirely driven out the Germans and Irish. And as a result of their intense poverty, prostitution was becoming frightful. There were red lights all about us. To the thoughtful Jews this had become the only political issue. The machine was cynically frank in its toleration of vice. Two years before a man named Root had been elected congressman on the reform ticket. It was pretty generally known that he had used his time in office to make peace with the machine. And although he still talked of reform, he was so friendly with the enemy that they had nominated a figure-head named O'Brien. But this Democratic candidate was only for appearances, we all knew that Root was to be re-elected and that Tammany votes were promised him.
Benson shared my hatred of hypocrisy. We often talked over this political tangle.
"I'd like to get the evidence against him," Norman said one night. "Nothing I'd like better than to shoot some holes into his double-faced schemes."
I gathered a good deal of information, which if it was not legal evidence, was certainly convincing. The Tombs was a great place for political gossip. I was almost the only person there at this time who was not a Tammany man. And as in my two years of work I had taken no interest in politics, I was considered innocuous. From scraps of conversation I learned that there had been a meeting between Root and the Old Man and some treaty made between them. I could guess at the terms. The organization was to throw enough votes to elect Root, and he was to keep too busy in Washington to interfere in local affairs. But I did not dare to ask questions, and had no idea when or where the agreement had been reached. By the barest chance I was able to fill in these details:
Coming up the Bowery late one night, I ran into a crowd who had made a circle around two girls who were fighting. Just as I arrived on the scene one of the girls called out —
"Charley – give me a knife."
Her cadet handed her one with a very ugly looking blade. I seldom used my right as county detective to make arrests. But as this seemed to threaten serious bloodshed, I broke up the fight and collared the cadet. He turned out to be a man of some importance in politics, a runner for "The Old Man." Two or three times he had been arrested, but his pull had always got him off.
He was half drunk and in a great funk over the serious charge I said I would make against him. As I was jerking him along towards the station house, he threatened me with dire consequences if I ran him in – said he was a friend of the Old Man. I pretended not to believe him, and in his effort to convince me that he really was protected, he let the cat out of the bag. He had been the messenger from the "Old Man" to Root, and had arranged for the meeting between them. It had taken place on the evening of September third, in the back room of Billy Bryan's saloon. He did not know what had happened at the meeting, the only person present beside the two principals had been a "heeler" of Root's, named "Piggy" Breen. There was no use in arresting a man with his "pull," so I turned him loose.
I hurried back to the settlement and telephoned for Benson at his club. He brought along Maynard to give us legal advice. Maynard was an erratic millionaire. One-third of the year he played polo, one third he spent in entering his 75-foot sloop in various club regattas, and the rest of the time he lived in the city, leading cotillions at night and maintaining a charity law office in the day-time. He was also a trustee of the settlement. He was wildly indignant over the story of Root's treachery.
"We can defeat Root, dead easy," Benson said. "It's a cinch. Publicity has never been tried in politics" (as far as I know, Benson invented this term "publicity," now so commonly applied to organized advertising) – "it's a cinch. In less than twenty-four hours everybody in the district will know he's a crook."
"What reform man can we get to run in his place?" Maynard asked.
"Hell!" Benson said. "We haven't time to nominate anybody – election is only a week off. I don't care who's elected so we put Root out of business."
"Well, but," Maynard protested, "we don't want to throw the influence of the settlement in favor of Tammany Hall."
"We don't need to. There must be some other candidates – Socialist or Prohibition – just so he isn't a red-light grafter."
"There isn't any Prohibition ticket," I said. "The Socialist candidate is named Lipsky."
"All right," said Benson, "we'll elect Lipsky."
Maynard went up in the air. Help elect a Socialist! He did not believe in political assassinations.
"Oh, devil!" Benson snapped. "Would you rather see one of these cadet politicians in office than an honest working man? I don't know who this man Lipsky is, like as not a fool who sees visions. But the Socialists never nominate crooks. What we want is an honest man."
Maynard, however, did not believe in community of wives, felt it necessary to protect the sanctity of the home – even at the cost of prostitution. And so he left us.
I wish I could remember half the things Benson said about Maynard after he had deserted us. I have seldom seen anything more invigorating than Benson mad. But he did not let his indignation interfere with business. It was far along towards morning, but he set to work at once. He wrote to Lipsky promising to support him, and then began sketching cartoons and posters.
One was a picture of Root selling a girl in "parlor clothes" to "The Old Man." Another read:
"VOTE FOR LIPSKY
if you have a daughter!
If you vote Democratic, you
Vote for the RED LIGHTS!
If you vote Republican, you
Vote for the CADETS!
VOTE THE SOCIALIST TICKET, and you
VOTE FOR DECENCY!"
But the best were a series:
"ASK ROOT
where he was on the evening of September Third?"
"ASK ROOT
what business he had with the Old Man?"
"ASK ROOT
how much he got?"
Having mailed the letter to Lipsky and sent off the copy to the printer, we turned in just at sun-up.
We were awakened a few hours later by the arrival of a socialist committee. There was Dowd, a Scotch carpenter; Kaufmann, a brewery driver, and Lipsky, the candidate. He was a Russian Jew, and had been a professor in the old country. He could speak very little English, but he had served a long term of exile in the Siberian prison mines.
The socialists had no idea of winning the election. The campaign was for them only a demonstration, a couple of months when they had larger audiences at their soap-box meetings. They were suspicious of us.
That consultation is one of the most ludicrous of my memories. Benson, sitting in an arm-chair, in blue silk pajamas, smoking cigarettes, outlined the plan in his fervent, profane, pyrotechnic way – much of which was beyond their comprehension. Kaufmann had to translate it into German for Lipsky. And when we talked German, Dowd could not understand.
"But," said Herr Lipsky, when the posters had been translated to him, "there is nothing there about our principles. There is no word about surplus value. It is not the red lantern we are fighting – but the Kapitalismus."
"The people," Benson raged – "the people with votes don't know surplus value from the binominal theorem. Perhaps they will vote for their daughters – they can see them. But they won't get excited about their great-great-grandchildren."
There was a squabble among the committee-men. The Scotchman was too canny to take sides; he wanted to refer the matter to the local, which was not to meet until two days before the election.
"Aber," said the brewery man, "Ve need etwas gongrete."
Lipsky accused him of being a "reformer."
After an hour's wrangle, it was decided that they could not stop us from attacking Root. But we were to hold up the posters asking votes for Lipsky. He would not permit his name to be used without the consent of the local.
As they were going downstairs, I heard Kaufmann protesting – "Aber, Genossen – ich bin eine echte revoluzionaire!"
So Benson ran the campaign unaided. The effect of his posters was electric. The next day he brought out some more: —
"ASK THE OLD MAN."
Of course they both denied. But as the posters made no specific allegations, they did not know what to deny. Their output was conflicting. During the afternoon, Benson stirred things up again with a series —
"IF ROOT WON'T TELL, ASK 'PIGGY' BREEN."
Breen was rattled, and said it was all a lie, that the red light business had not been discussed at the meeting in Billy Bryan's saloon. Both Root and the Old Man had denied the meeting. So Benson had them on the run. The more they explained the worse they tangled things. The cadet from whom I had forced our information, fearing the wrath of The Old Man, was of course keeping his mouth shut. We did not give away on him. So they could not guess Benson's source of knowledge, and would have given anything to know just how much he knew.
The Socialist local nearly broke up over the affair. A number were absolutely set against accepting aid from a "Bourgeois philanthropist," like Benson. Lipsky was in a violently embarrassing position. Suddenly there was a good chance of his election. The people of the district were manifestly excited over the issue. They were ready to vote for any one who would promise effective war against the cadets. It must have been a frightful temptation to him. But he stood fast for his principles. He did not want to be elected on a chance reform issue. If the people of the neighborhood stood for Marxian economics, he would be glad to represent them. But he would have nothing to do with demagogy.
On the other hand, a young Jewish lawyer named Klein was the Socialist candidate for alderman, and he saw a chance of being elected on the "Down with the red light" cry. He was ready to tear the hesitaters to pieces. He felt that the social revolution and universal brotherhood only awaited his installation in office.
At last it was agreed that a mass meeting should be called in the Palace Lyceum on Grand Street and that Klein and Benson should speak on the red light issue and Lipsky on economics. We brought out the "Vote the Socialist Ticket" poster.
Benson was at the very top of the advertising profession, and he certainly threw himself headlong into this job.
"I've persuaded about fourteen million people to buy Prince of Wales Aristocratic Suspenders," he said. "I don't see why I can't persuade a few thousand to vote right once in their lives."
He certainly did marvels at it.
The night before election, the Palace Lyceum was packed to the roof. And this in spite of the organized efforts of the strong-arm men of the machine. But the meeting was a miserable fizzle. Benson was helpless between those two speakers.
Klein's discourse consisted in telling what he would do if elected – among other things, I recall, he was going to nationalize the railways and abolish war.
Benson was not much of a public speaker. As far as I know, it was his one attempt. But his success at advertising was based on his knowledge of the people and how they thought. They were not interested in Klein or the nationalization of the railroads. The one thing which moved them was the sale of their daughters. Benson went right to the point, reminded them of it in a few words, and then told the story of Root's treachery, piecing together our facts and guesses. "It is not legal evidence," he said, "you can take it for what it is worth. It's up to you – tomorrow at the voting booths."
"To hell with Root!" somebody yelled.
"There's only one candidate better than Root," Benson shouted back, – "Lipsky!"
When they got through cheering, he gave them the words of a song he had written to "Marching through Georgia." He had trained the Männer Chor of the Arbeiter Studenten Verein to sing it. It caught on like wildfire. I am sure that if the meeting had broken up then, and they could have marched out singing that song, Lipsky would have been elected overwhelmingly. But Lipsky spoke.
"Der Socialismus ruht auf einer fasten ekonomischen grundlage…"
For twenty minutes in deadly German sentences he lectured on the economic interpretation of history. Then for twenty minutes he analyzed capitalism. Then he drank a glass of water and took a fresh start. He referred to Klein's speech and pointed out how the election of one or a hundred officials could not bring about Socialism; the only hope lay in a patient, widespread, universal organization of the working class. Then in detail he discussed the difference between reform and revolution, how this red light business was only one by-product of the great injustice of exploitation by surplus value.
When he had been talking a little over an hour, he said "Lastly." He began on a history of the International Socialist Party from its humble beginning in Marx' Communist League to its present gigantic proportions.
On and on he drawled. Many got up and left – he did not notice. Someone in the gallery yelled,
"Cheese it! Cut it out! We want Benson!"
He went right on through the tumult, and at last discouraged the disturbers. The recent International Socialist Congress had discussed the following nine problems: (1) The Agrarian Question, (2) The Relation of the Political Party to Trade Unions… It was hopeless. The audience melted. And they did not sing as they left.
At last he was through. I remember the sudden transformation. The set, dogged expression left his face, as he looked up from his notes. His back straightened, his eyes flashed – a light came to them which somehow explained how this dry-as-dust professor of economics had suddenly left his class-room and thrown his weak gauntlet at the Tsar of all the Russias. It was the hope which had sustained him all the weary years in Arctic Siberia.
"Working-men of all lands – Unite!" he shouted it out to the almost empty house – his arms wide thrown in his only gesture – "You have nothing to lose but your chains! You have a world to gain!"
There was a brave attempt at a cheer from the few devoted Socialists who remained. The exultation left him as suddenly as it had come, and he sat down, a tired, worn old man. Klein rushed at him, with tears in his eyes. "You've spoiled it all!" he wailed. The old man straightened up once more.
"I did my duty," he said solemnly.
When the returns came in the next night, the Socialist vote had jumped from 250 to 1800. Root had only 1,000. O'Brien, the machine candidate, won with 2,500. At the last moment, the Old Man, seeing that Root was hopelessly beaten, had gone back on his bargain and sent out word to elect O'Brien.
"The funny thing about the Socialists is," Benson said to me, "that they are dead right. Take Lipsky. He's a dub of a politician, but pretty good as a philosopher. Wasn't it old Mark Aurelius who wanted the world ruled by philosophers – not a bad idea – only it's impracticable. They are right to suspect us reformers. Nine out of ten of the settlement bunch are just like Maynard – quitters when it comes to the issue. They'd like to uplift the working class, but they don't want to be mistaken for them. And after all this red light business is only a symptom. You and I and Lipsky can afford to be philosophic about it – we haven't any daughters. But the fathers who live in this dirty district – they ask for bread – not any philosopher's stone. Any way, we fixed Root, and that is what we set out to do."
"It cost me a lot of money," he said later. "And I did not want to go broke just now. There is a bunch of swindlers out in Chicago with a fake shoe polish they want me to market. It will ruin a shoe in two months. They are offering me all kinds of money. I hate to go to it – but I guess I'll have to."
He sat down to his desk and began studying his bills and bank-book.
"How would 'shin-ide' do for a bum shoe-polish?" he said, looking up suddenly. "'Shin-ide. It puts halos on your shoes.'"
Our sudden burst into politics, at least Benson's – my small part in it was never known – attracted a good deal of newspaper notice. Certainly Root realized where his troubles started, and he went heartily about making us uncomfortable.
A couple of mornings after election, the Rev. Mr. Dawn, the head-worker, came to our room, his hands full of newspapers and letters – the "corpus delicti."
I wish I could give more space to Dawn. He was a thoroughly good man. And although we judged him harshly at the time, I think an admirable man. At least, I feel that I ought to think so about him, but some of the old contempt still clings to his memory.
His whole soul was wrapped up in the settlement movement. Socialism was repellent to him because it insisted on the existence of class lines. He had come to America from England because the class distinctions – so closely drawn there – were repugnant to him. He hoped in our young Republic to see a development in the opposite direction. His hope blinded him.
And in spite of his loudly-professed Democracy, he was essentially aristocratic in his ideas of social service. The solution of our manifest ills he expected to find in the good intentions of the "better bred." Their loving kindness was to bring cheer and comfort to the lowly. His faith in the settlement movement was real and great, which of course made him very conservative in the face of any issue which involved its good repute.
"You people seem to have seriously offended Mr. Root," he began.
"You don't say so!" Benson replied. He was shaving.
Dawn could not understand Benson's type of humor.
"I am afraid you have," he said.
Benson cut himself.
"I don't remember having called him anything worse than a cadet," he said sweetly.
"Oh, I see you are joking."
"No. I did call him that."
"I'm sorry to hear you say it. Sorry to have you verify the report that you used intemperate language. I have never met Mr. Root. But he has many friends among…"
"The best people?" Benson interrupted.
"I was about to say among our supporters. It is most regrettable that your ill-advised attack on him may alienate many of them. It seems also that you have dragged the name of the settlement into the mire of Socialism. I must confess that I hardly know – that, in fact, I am at a loss…"
"You needn't worry about it. Whitman and I will leave. All you have to do is to roll your eyes if we are mentioned, and say – 'Yes. It was most regrettable – but of course they left the settlement at once!' Invite Root to dinner a couple of times. Walk up and down Stanton Street with him – arm in arm. It will blow over – it will square everything with 'the best people'!"
"I am sorry to hear you speak so bitterly," Dawn said, "But frankly, I think it wisest that you should sever your connection with us. When the welfare of the whole settlement movement is at stake, I cannot allow my personal feelings to blind my…"
"Oh, don't apologize. There is no personal ill-feeling."
And so we left the settlement.