Clarence Darrow

“ Of course, most people think that no man will work in a switch-yard unless he drinks. Perhaps no man would drink unless he worked in a switch-yard or some such place.
Well, on this day Hank was going to the jail, not on account of any of his own misdeeds, but on an errand of mercy. The night before, the priest had come to Hank’s home and told him that his old friend, Jim Jackson, had begged for him to visit the jail. Hank at first refused, but the priest told him that Jim had no friends and was anxious to have a few minutes’ talk with him before he died ”

“ I don’t know’s they could help it any more’n any of us can help the things we do. Anyhow, I sha’n’t never let the boy out of my mind a single minit, and I’ll do as much for him as if he was mine. I’ll look him up the first thing I do. I don’t know about changin’ his name, I’ll see. Anyhow, if he ever gets to hear a bit of it, I’ll see he knows how it was.”
Jim wrung Hank’s hand for a minute in silence, and then said: “And just one word more, Hank; tell him not to be poor; don’t let him get married till he’s got money, and can afford it, and don’t let him go in debt. ”

“ Hank asked. Jim’s face was pale for a moment, and his breath was short and heavy.
“Don’t you know? That’s the bag of sand.”
“What bag of sand?” Hank asked.
“Why, they always try the rope that way, to see if it’s all right. If they don’t, it’s liable to break, and they’d have to hang ‘em over again. They take a bag of sand that weighs just about the same as a man and tie the rope to the sand, and then knock the door out and the sand falls. I guess the rope’s all right; I hope so. I don’t want ‘em to make any mistake. It’ll be bad enough to be hung once. ”

“ Some of the prisoners seemed to like to go to church; some acted as if they understood all about it, and wanted to do better, and some of ‘em seemed to go so as to get out of their cells. Anyhow I s’pose the people that run the jail thought ‘twas a good thing and believed it was all so. But I know one feller that killed a man—he was kind of half-witted—and was tried the same as the rest of us when they had that crusade against crime. ”

“ I kind of think that the switch-yards make a feller reckless and desperate, and I don’t believe that a man that works in the switch-yards or stock yards looks at things quite the same as other people. Still you know them fellers ain’t bad. You’ve seen ‘em cry when they went home to tell a lady how her man had been run over, or tell some old woman about how her boy had got hurt, and you know we always helped the boys out and we didn’t have much money either. ”

“ Of course, I ought to have a fair and impartial trial, but I ought to be hung without delay, and no sentimental notoriety-huntin’ people ought to be allowed to see me. They wished that a judge could be found who had the courage to do his duty, and do it right off quick. I had already been indicted, and there wa’n’t nothin’ to do but place me on trial next day, and the verdict would be reached in a few days more. It was unfortunate that the law allowed one hundred days before a murderer could be hung after trial ”

“ If you’d just stay here a few days and see some of the wives and fathers and mothers come into the jail and see how they’d cry and go on over some of these people, and tell how good they was to them, it would open your eyes. They ain’t one of them people, unless it’s me, that don’t have someone that loves ‘em, and says they’ve been awful good to ‘em and feel sorry for ‘em and excuses ‘em, and thinks they’re just like everybody else. Now there was them car-barn murderers that killed so many people and robbed so much. ”

“ Jim took a long drink at the bottle, and then passed it to his friend. Hank was glad to have something to help him through the ordeal, which had been hard for him to bear.
Presently the guard came back to the grating and asked Jim what he wanted for breakfast.
“It ain’t breakfast time yet, is it?” Jim gasped.
“No, but I’m going to the office after a while and I want to give the order when I go. You’d better tell me now. You can have ‘most anything you want. You can have ham and eggs, or bacon or steak, and tea or coffee, and bread and butter and cakes; or all of ‘em—or anything else you want.” ”

“ When we got our minds made up we went to see about a lawyer. She’d been goin’ over to the Settlement a good deal for advice and they’d been good to us but they didn’t like me; they blamed me for ever’thing that happened, and of course them settlement ladies wa’n’t none of ‘em married and they couldn’t understand how a feller would drink or fight with his wife. They didn’t know what allowance a woman has to make for a man, same as a man does for a woman—only a different kind. ”

“ I want him to be taken care of and to be educated and grow up to be a good man, and maybe it’s a good deal better if he never knows anything about his father, but somehow I can’t help wantin’ him to know who I was and don’t want him to think of me just like the newspapers and everybody else does. I wouldn’t want him to grow up like that guard, even if he is real good. And you see there wa’n’t any one but you that I could send for and tell them just how it all happened. ”

“ His lawyer got him out, but he says he was really guilty. That was a good many years ago. He says he believes if he had gone to the penitentiary he would never have amounted to anything, but as soon as he got out of jail he turned over a new leaf and made up his mind to make something of himself, and just see where he is now. He is an awful kind fellow. I know he feels sorry for me. He gives me all the cigars I want and all the privileges he can. There’s a guard here in the daytime that I don’t like; he was appointed by the Citizens’ Association. He’s strict and awful good. ”

“ I almost wish now he’d died, but maybe that’s wicked and God will take care of the kid better’n he did of me. Well, I haven’t heard a word about that boy since I came to the jail, or since I left him at the house that night, except a little bit in court and what that good guard says. He kind of holds out that he’s in some kind of an orphan asylum where he’s gettin’ plenty to eat and where he’ll learn what’s right and wrong, and be a good man, and that’s all right, but I’d like to know where the kid is. ”

“ It’s funny, too, about where you can sell stuff; you’d think you ought to go where people has got money but this ain’t no use; they never will buy nothin’ of peddlers and they won’t even let you drive on their high-toned streets, even after you’ve paid a license. If you want to sell anything you’ve got to go among the poor people. ”

“ The rich people say it’s because we drink so much, but I’d like to see them try to live on what we get. Why, you know we hardly ever go to the theater, and if we do we go up in the gallery. I never had a job of work done on my teeth in my life except once when I paid a quarter to get one pulled. Do you s’pose any of us would ever think we could get a gold fillin’ in our teeth? Now that suit of clothes over on the bed is the first whole suit of new clothes I ever had. The guard brought ‘em in a little while ago, and I’m to put ‘em on in the mornin’. ”

“ We always give ‘em anything they want, either tea or coffee, ham and eggs, bacon, steak, 8beans, potatoes, wheat cakes and molasses, almost anything you can think of. Of course most of ‘em can’t eat much, but some of ‘em take a pretty big breakfast. It really don’t do any good, only the taste of it goin’ down; they are always dead before it has a chance to digest. A good many of ‘em feel rather squeamish in the morning and drink a good deal before they start out. We always give ‘em all they want to drink; most of ‘em are really drunk when they are hung. ”

“ He said there was always somethin’ goin’ on in Chicago; a feller could get a run for his money no matter what kind of a game he played; that if he wanted to have a little sport, there was the pool-rooms and plenty of other places; that if he didn’t have much money he could get a little game in the back end of a cigar store, or he could shoot craps; if he wanted a bigger game there was Powers’ & O’Brien’s and O’Leary’s, and if that wa’n’t enough, then there was the Board of Trade. ”

“ Well, there ain’t very much more to tell, and I guess you’re glad. It’s been a tough night on you, poor feller. I hope no one’ll ever have to do it for you. But, say—you’ve done me lots of good! I don’t know how I’d put in the night, if you hadn’t come!
“Well—the last mornin’ they took me over to court, the room was jammed more’n ever before, and a big crowd was waitin’ outside. I heard the other lawyer say that the judge’s platform looked like a reception; anyhow it was full of ladies with perfectly grand clothes, and most of ‘em would hold their glasses up to look at me. ”

“ I rather thought it was all up and only a question of time when I’d get back here, but I knew where I stood and wa’n’t so scart. I’ve slep’ fine ever since I was here, only the time when the jury was out and when I was waitin’ for the Supreme Court, and some special times like that. As near as I can find out most of ‘em does when they know it’s all off, just like people with a cancer or consumption, or when they’re awful old. They get used to it and sleep just the same unless they have a pain, or somethin’. They don’t lay awake thinkin’ they’re goin’ to die. ”

“ There is nothing in these books to harm anyone, nothing to create any wrong ideas about life. The whole viewpoint is modern, sane, and healthful. These books foster a wholesome outlook on life, and at the same time give the facts everyone should know in a way which everyone can understand. ”

“ I was just mad and reckless and didn’t care much, and would keep thinkin’ of the steak, and you know all the time I was thinkin’ I could feel a kind of prickin’ up in my head, as if a lot of needles was runnin’ up toward my hair. I s’pose it was the blood runnin’ up there. That feller that I told you about that was talkin’ to us over here kind of made out that a man was a good deal like a machine, or an engine of some kind, and when the steam was turned on he had to go. He said that if the blood was pumped up in the head it made us do things ”

“ He gave me a letter to some men who run a renderin’-plant and I went out there and bought an old horse for five dollars. It was one they was goin’ to kill, and it seemed too bad to make him work any more; still I guess he’d rather work than be killed; that’s the way with people and I guess horses is about like people. I always thought that horses had about the worst time there is; they can’t never do anything they want to, they have to get up just when you tell ‘em to and be tied in a stall and eat just what you give ‘em and depend on you to bring ‘em water. ”

“ Papa, have you been here all the time? Why don’t you come back home?” Young girls, too, pressed closely up to the screen, each with that look at the youth inside that neither the wise nor the foolish have ever failed to understand. ”

“ My best chum read the piece all over out loud to me after we got through work, and he said it beat all what a place Chicago was; that such things as that was always happenin’ in Chicago; and that Jackson must have been an awful bad man—wouldn’t I hate to meet him out in the woods some place! A man like that would rather kill anybody than eat. I didn’t say much about it, but of course I didn’t contradict him. But I simply couldn’t talk very much myself. He said he wished he could get the one thousand dollars, but no such luck would ever come to him. ”

“ Of course, I s’pose other people would make some other excuses for their fights and that no one would be to blame if you would let ‘em tell it themselves, but I’m ‘most sure that if I’d only been gettin’ money enough to keep a hired girl and live in a good place, and get good clothes and dress her and the boy the way they ought to have been, and not get in debt, we wouldn’t have fought. ”

“ The debts kep’ gettin’ bigger all the time and I begun to get scared for fear the furniture would be took away—we hadn’t paid more’n half up and then there was a good deal of interest. I went one day to see a lawyer, but he didn’t tell me anything that done me any good and I had to pay him ten dollars out of my next month’s wages, so that made me all the worse off. Lawyers get their money awful easy, don’t they? I always wished I could be a lawyer and if I had my life to live over again I would be one if I could. ”

“ Well, I’d been dependin’ on the turkey and it made me feel a little blue, for I didn’t know how I was goin’ to get anything for Thanksgivin’, and I didn’t think that you could have much of a Thanksgivin’ just on potatoes and mebbe a little pork. So I wa’n’t feelin’ none to good when I got on the wagon and drove away from the last place. It seemed as if everything had turned against me and I didn’t know what I was goin’ to do. It’s funny how much difference luck makes with a feller. ”

“ There was feller came over here to the jail to talk to our Moral Improvement Club and he had some queer ideas. Most of the prisoners rather liked what he said and still they thought he was too radical. I never heard any such talk before and I don’t quite see how they let him do it, but I’ve thought about what he said a good deal since then and think mebbe there’s somethin’ in it. He was a good deal different from the other ones that come. Most of ‘em tell us about our souls and how we can all make ‘em white if we only will. They all tell us that we are a bad lot now ”

“ I believe sometimes that the hangin’ makes more killin’. Now look at them car-barn fellers; they just went out and killed people regardless, same as some men go out to shoot game. I don’t believe they’d ‘ve done it if it hadn’t been so dangerous. And then you know when they hung the whole three of ‘em at once, and one feller cut his own throat so as to cheat ‘em, and they took him right up and hung him, too, though he was so weak they had to carry him onto the scaffold, and the doctors done ever’thing they could do to keep him from dyin’ just so’s they could hang him. ”

“ A good many times my lawyer objected to something that they tried to prove, or to something that the other feller was sayin’, but ever’ time the judge decided ‘gainst my lawyer, and he ‘most always seemed kind of mad when my lawyer said anything. The other one was a good deal the smartest; ever’one said he wanted to be a judge, and he took all the murder cases he could get, and they called him the ‘hangin’ lawyer,’ because ever’one he had anything to do with got hung. ”

“ Hones’ly I believe if anyone stays ‘round here for a week he’ll see that the people that ain’t done nothin’ is punished 74a good deal more’n the others. Why, there was one awful pretty-lookin’ girl used to come here to see her father, and the fellers told me that she was studyin’ music or somethin’ like that, and her father was put in jail on a fine, and she came here to see him every day, and done all she could to earn the money to get him out, but she couldn’t do it, and finally she went into one of them sportin’ houses down on Clark Street, and lived there long enough to get the money. ”

“ Of course, the trains bother us a good deal and the switch engines are goin’ back and forth all the time, and the house is pretty old and not very big, but all them things has to be taken into consideration in the rent, and I got it enough cheaper to make up. I presume that’s the reason no poor people live out on the avenues, because the rents is so high, and in one way mebbe the switch tracks is a good thing, for if it wa’n’t for them I’d had to go out to the stock yards to live, and I’d rather have the engines and the smoke than the smell. ”