THE NEED OF HELPING HEARTS AND HANDS.
[In the following story, which is one from real life, occurring only four years since, and printed at that time in a great daily, we have suppressed the names of persons and places. It is the moral, missionary lessons which we wish to inculcate.] HERE is a study for the humanitarian, the sociologist, and the criminologist. There are thousands of men in prison scheming, hoping, struggling, trying to move justice and mercy to get out, longing, praying, imploring for “just one more chance” in the world of free men; but in all the length and breadth of California, there is only one man trying to get into prison. He is an ex-convict, and he wants to go back to prison, not because he found life pleasant there, but because he finds there is neither room, nor help, nor hope for the man who has once worn stripes; because he finds that when he has paid the full penalty the law exacts for his crime, he still faces a life-punishment imposed by society. So he doesn’t want another chance. He has accepted defeat. He has had his tussle with the world and got his knock-out blow. He has thrown up the sponge. His name is ——. He is waiting apathetically in the county jail for the sentence to be pronounced that will send him to prison. “And my only wish,” he says, “is that it will be such a long one that I can end my days in prison.” The preliminary steps that lead to prison he has taken with deliberation. He has committed the necessary crime—the forging of a check; promptly submitted to arrest, and is waiting to plead guilty. “Why do you—” I begin, as he stands opposite me in the jail sitting-room, a man of middle age and slight physique, “an office man” with an office stoop, and above it an impressive head, the brow deeply lined more by thinking than reasoning, the eyes looking out from under it steady and joyless, dejection and dissipation traced around the mouth. “Because there’s nothing left me in the world to live for. In all the world there isn’t one human being bound to me by the ties of blood or friendship, and I can make no friends and inspire no confidence because I’ve been a convict.” “I couldn’t,” he adds, intuitively catching the thought that flashes through my mind, “I couldn’t commit suicide. I haven’t the courage, the brute courage, necessary to cut my throat, or blow my brains out, or take poison. I have wanted to, I have felt like it many a time since I came out of —— gates, but I just couldn’t do it—and after all, going to prison again amounts to the same thing. The world goes on without you, and it doesn’t reach you.” Then he sat down opposite me and told me, in an even, passionless voice, as one man telling the story of another, how he had tried to live down his past and failed; how the world, in which hearts filled with sympathy and faith and charity are said to dwell, turned from him wherever the prison brand was laid bare—and it always was laid bare wherever he went. “Eight years ago I was discharged from —— after serving out a sentence for forgery. Why I committed the crime doesn’t matter a great deal. Poverty, no work, association with men who are worse than I am and have suffered less for it, may have had their effect. I make no excuses. I committed forgery; I pleaded guilty; I took the punishment the law imposed. Three years and seven months of my life I spent behind the bars at ——, at the rock-pile and in the commissary department. No man ever grows to like prison life. Each day of it is harder to bear. I never wanted any more of it. The day I passed out of —— a free man, I made a resolution to live an honest life, never to do another wrong act, and God knows I tried to live up to it in spite of temptations and conditions that only a man who has been a convict can understand.” “I hadn’t been out of prison forty-eight hours when three ex-convicts tried to get me to join them in a job, and the argument they used was: ‘You might as well be crooked. No one will ever give you the chance to be honest.’” “I didn’t believe them, and I tried to make an honest living, to blot out my prison experience, and be a good man and a good citizen. I have always been accustomed to desk work. I am an accountant, and a good one. I couldn’t get that kind of work, so I tramped up and down the State, working as a ranch hand. Wherever I went, my prison comrades found me out. I ran across them everywhere, and was a victim of blackmail. It was pay them or stand exposure. People don’t care to employ an ex-convict, in town or country. They fear him and distrust him. Place after place I lost in that way, until I was utterly discouraged and so harassed that I knew no peace. “I made my way back to —— the very town that I went to prison from. ‘Here,’ I said to myself, ‘I’ll make a fresh start in life. I’ll be blackmailed no longer; I will succeed in life in spite of the mistake I’ve made. I’ve paid for that. The debt is cleared, and my new account shall be straight.’ I felt new courage.” “I had had Christian teaching from a Christian mother, and I wanted to turn back to the church again. I went to several churches in ——, and finally wandered into the —— Baptist church. I heard the Rev. ——. His earnestness and sincerity impressed me. I went the next Sunday to both morning and evening services to hear him. I felt confidence in him. I wanted to know him—to make a friend of him. After the evening services I waited in the darkness outside the church door to speak to him. He met me kindly.” “I went to his study one night that week, and I told him my whole story. I told him of my past.” “Why did you tell him?” I asked. The ex-convict turned his eyes on me wonderingly and then said, quite simply, as tho all the world should understand,— For a moment or two he looked out of the window on the bustling world going about its business—not longingly or regretfully, but with that filmy wistfulness that sees nothing—then he continued:— “Don’t you know it is an awful thing to keep your wrong-doing to yourself, to know that you have done wrong and that no one else knows it; to—do you see what I mean?—to have sinned and have people trust in you, and believe you are better than you know yourself to be? I can’t do anything wrong but that I’ve got to tell some one or other. I can’t keep it on my own soul. I can go just about so far in my wickedness, and then I must stop. I have committed crime, but I could not get up in a court of law and swear that I had not in order to save myself. I wanted that minister’s sympathy; I craved his help and friendship—not to bring me any material benefit—that is not what I mean, but to keep me from feeling so alone in the world. Yet I couldn’t win it or go to his church under false pretenses. So I told him. “Just as soon as I told him the truth about myself, the burden of it slipped from me. I felt easier. I could hold up my head before him. And he was kind to me. He made me welcome in his church, and treated me as an honored guest in his home. Never by word or look did he make me feel that I was unworthy. His kindness made me happier than I had been since I was sentenced to ——. “Little by little I made friends in the church. My own people were people of good standing in Iowa. They’re all dead, so it doesn’t matter who knows where I came from. I had good associations and good training as a boy, and when I found myself with a circle of friends again, things looked bright to me. I took an interest in the church work, and was a member of a little society connected with the church. I was making very little money, but I was content. “Then, just when everything seemed brightest, it leaked out among the members, somehow or other—I never knew how—that I was an ex-convict. It got noised about as such things do, until one person after another looked at me strangely; until one after another treated me coldly. They fell away from me, they avoided me, and of course I knew why. I saw then as I never saw before that there isn’t a chance in the world for me; that there’s no use trying to live a decent, honest life—no use trying to live down a past. “Most of the people I’d known just dropped me—made me understand that they didn’t want to know me; but one man seemed to want to punish me for having associated with them. It was just about election time, and I had registered as a voter. When I left the prison, the warden told me I had been restored to citizenship, but the papers were not there. I wanted to get away, so naturally I didn’t wait for papers. I supposed it was all right when I registered; but this man brought me up before the county clerk and made me have my name taken off the register. He wanted to have the reason put down, to have me put on record there as an ex-convict; but the county clerk had more kindness and wouldn’t do that. “Just before the story about me got out, one of the men who had been in prison with me ran across me. He was hard up and much discouraged. He told me that if he could raise $50, he could make his way to his people and live straight. I knew how he felt, for hadn’t I felt that way myself? I had been selling some tickets for an entertainment the society I belonged to was getting up, and had $35 which I had taken in for them. I hustled around and borrowed the other $15 and gave the ex-convict the $50 he needed. He gave me his solemn promise to send it to me within a week. I never heard from him. And then, altho I tried in every way I knew how to raise that money, I couldn’t do it. I had never the slightest intention of defrauding the society. I had no dishonest purpose. I had no sense of wrong-doing. My only thought was to help a man in a desperate position. The man who made the fight on me brought that up against me, to show that I couldn’t be honest. I told the members of the society frankly what I had done, and that I would turn over the money as soon as I could earn it. Nothing was done about the matter except that no one believed in me, no one wanted to have anything to do with me. I was friendless again, and with all the disgrace on me. “Crushed and disheartened, I started out in the world again without hope or courage or friends or money. I felt worse off than before; for my belief in my fellows had been destroyed, my faith in the Christian spirit they professed was gone, and with it went my last hope of a decent life. Of all those who had been my friends in that —— church circle, but one put out a helping hand. He wrote to me when I went away, telling me to come back and fight it out, that he would stand by me. I couldn’t do that. I’m alone in the world, and it wasn’t worth while. I gave it up, and began wandering up and down the State again, working where I could get work, moving on when exposure seemed likely—and living an honest life. I stood it as long as I could, and I can stand it no more. The only choice left for me is between prison and suicide, and I choose the prison. “Before making my choice I thought my whole life over, and came to the conclusion that prison is the place for me—it seems to be what fate intended me for. I was in prison in Colorado before ever I went to ——. I don’t want to hide that.11 “I started out in life all right with as good prospects as any boy who has to make his own way in the world, but things took a wrong turn when I was about twenty-three. And let me tell you what gave them the turn—my first drink of whisky!” “I was working as an accountant, and one night after working overtime I was completely tired out. A friend of mine came in to walk home with me, and seeing how tired I was he said, ‘Just let me look after you. I know what you need and what will do you most good.’ A drinking man himself, I quickly guessed his remedy and replied, ‘Whisky? O, no, not for me.’ We argued as we walked along, and ended before a bar. The drink I took affected me like an electric shock. I remember it yet, and I’ve had many a drink since then. It is astonishing to me how soon after that first drink of whisky I became a confirmed drunkard. Day after day I was at my desk so drunk I could scarcely sit up, but doing my work nevertheless. Three or four years after I began drinking, I married and sobered down. My married life was short and happy. When my wife died, I began drinking again. There was no reason why I shouldn’t, I was alone; so I told myself. “While working in Denver I stayed away from my desk several days, drinking. When I returned, $500 of the firm’s money was missing. I hadn’t taken it. I had an idea who did, but no proof. What could I do? I was culpable because of the neglect of my work, so I did the foolish thing that comes first to a man in my position—made a false entry on my books and trusted to luck. As a result, I was sent to prison and was there less than a year. When I got out, I left the State. I still drank occasionally, but I remained honest. In time I drifted to California, and here I did commit the crime that I paid the penalty for in ——. I’ve tried since then to live down the wrong I did, to make a place for myself in the world, no matter how humble, to be a man among men, and I’ve failed because of the prison brand. That brand sinks to the bone. It isn’t a mere matter of stripes that you lay aside within the prison gates. The world will never forgive a man for being a convict. It’s paying the penalty for his crime that ruins a man. He can lie and steal and forge; he can commit any crime in the calendar, even to murder, and society and the world will give him a chance to live, will forget and forgive, and take him in—if he doesn’t bear the prison brand. If he does, there is no place for him in church or home or office or shop. He is hounded on till in sheer desperation he turns for shelter to the prison walls. And that’s why I say, God help the ex-convict. There is no hope for him.” How far, think you, after Convict ——’s story, is man his brother’s keeper?